Can Cities Be Re-Engineered?–The Case of Paris

Those are not parked cars on the right!  That is the single traveling lane on the Rue Rivoli, a major street in Paris, that goes by the Louvre and some of the ritziest stores and hotels in Paris.  And the two “emptyish” lanes on the left are bike lanes!

Can cities with small numbers of bicyclists and with relatively poor infrastructure become more bike friendly and attract more bikers?  We will be talking about this later in the course, but the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, is trying such an experiment.  In 2010, Paris lagged behind most major cities in the number of people who biked.   Since Hidalgo became mayor in 2014, she has worked to make Paris more bicycle friendly, as well as waging war on the car.  I experienced this myself in May when I was in Paris. Hidalgo has put the Rue Rivoli on an extreme road diet, opening up two broad bike lanes, and reducing the space allowed for cars to one narrow lane.  While there was quite a back-up of cars, bikers had a greater share of the road than they really needed. So much so that I was a little embarrassed at having so much space.  This raises the question, which comes first–the bikers or the biker infrastructure.  Here Mayor Hidalgo seems to have taken an “If you build it they will come” approach.