In Paris, cars forced to make way for the two-wheel revolution

PARIS: With the wind in their hair, they spin on bicycles, electric scooters and single wheels, browsing without fuss the lines of drivers on fire, stuck in the infinite Parisian traffic.

In the French capital, the new mobility revolution has grown in scale: residents and tourists are increasingly adopting ways to move based on applications.

And with global warming causing frequent heat waves and more alerts about pollution spikes, Paris is starting to resist the dominance of the car.

Not only is the city modernizing its transit system, including intercity trains, buses and the metro, but it is also experiencing an unprecedented explosion of alternatives.

"Our cities have been colonized by cars, they are entering the smallest spaces and today we have to put them back in their place," said Christophe Najdovski, deputy mayor of the city, in charge of transport.

"In Paris, they are used for only 10% of daily trips, but they occupy 50% of public spaces."

Car crushing

But the city has been at the forefront of innovation by setting up a pioneering self-service bike service in 2007.

Known as Velib & # 39 ;, it has since been copied around the world, from London to Chicago.

Then came the autolib, electric car-sharing system, which was followed by a flood of motorcycles without a dock, and then the night-time appearance of electric scooters that exploded in the streets at night. summer 2018.

Not to mention other private mobility devices, such as two-wheeled electronic hoverboards or electric unicycles.

But is there enough space?

Not according to taxi drivers, already infuriated by the growing demand for space and by the planned 1,000 km of bike lanes that are expected to be completed by 2020.

And the more than 15,000 electronic scooters on the streets also triggered a violent reaction, with motorcyclists throwing them at random on the sidewalks, curbing the sidewalk and creating a pedestrian nuisance.

"I would like to slap them," says Nordine, a woman in her 40s crossing the Swamp, muttering furiously about the "lack of public spirit".

"Paris is a great playground, but the space is saturated, they have to bring it back to two or three operators, like San Francisco, which has only two," says Najdovski of the Mayor's office. .

At its height, Paris had 13 companies operating scooter fleets, but their numbers dropped to around seven at the beginning of January, after the city launched a series of requests for operators.

37% of Parisians own a car

Every day, around 41 million trips are made in the Paris region, including 15 million by car and 10 million by public transport.

Since July 1, all diesel vehicles registered before 2006 have been banned from entering the city, but should the authorities go further and close the entire city center to cars?

Today, just over a third – 37% – of Parisian households have a car, this figure rising to one in five in the city center, according to the mayor's office.

"The priority is to allow city dwellers to move," says Jean-Pierre Orfeuil, engineer specializing in urban mobility.

"In general, those who use these new means of transportation are people who used the metro before," he said.

"They have not played a role in reducing traffic."

DIESEL DUMPING, GOING ON GASOLINE

To get away from fuel vehicles, the focus should be on e-bikes, which could potentially help suburban residents, he said.

But even there, the infrastructure is lacking.

"In France, we are two or three times worse off than Germany or the Netherlands" in terms of the number of e-bikes, he said.

Even though carsharing has taken a long time to take off in France compared to its neighbors, a way to encourage carsharing could be shared lanes, especially on the city's peripheral ring road, its ring road. 34 km.

"At peak times, there is an average of 1.1 people in each car, and if you increase that number to 1.7, it would eliminate traffic jams," said Nadjovski.

But these new means of transportation do not work for everyone, which raises questions for families.

And for many city dwellers, the car is a private space, similar to their living room, which offers some form of privacy, says Orfeuil.

"You can make private calls, you can listen to music."

For Mireille Apel-Muller, sociologist at the head of the Institute City on the Move, mobility is not limited to transport.

"It's a way of life," she said.

"All these new forms of transport require a smartphone and applications that you need to master, otherwise it becomes exclusive."