I lived in #Paris in the 90s. A city totally dominated by cars.
Hard to walk in, a nightmare to ride a bike in.
Look at it now: a city where cars, rather than people, have trouble moving.
Which, in the overheated, hurricane-plagued 2020s, is how a city *should* look.
Cyclists in #Paris now outnumber drivers.
And that's a good—no, a great—thing.
I wrote about what it was like to ride a bicycle in #Paris for the NY Times over 20 years ago. It was...a struggle.
No #bikeshare, you had to rent a bike from the RATP (which runs the metro.)
You can find a link to the article on my webpage:
Taras has been writing travel features since the mid-90s, for the likes of The New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Condé Nast Traveller, Travel & Leisure, Afar, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and The Times of London. He's especially interested in food, slow travel, trains
@straphanger Hmm...
Well by the argument of every NIMBY-anti-bike-lane-complainer I've ever heard rant at council for 5 minutes straight about the idea of losing even a single parking space in front of their home, cars should now be relegated to driving in the gutter between sidewalks and bike paths...
"Dans Paris à vélo à on dépasse les autos" 🎵
https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/c-est-la-france/13h54-c-est-la-france-du-mercredi-17-avril-2024-1045614
Some things in this video that stood out to me and when I was in Amsterdam as well: people wear everyday clothing, not specialized bike wear; and, except for children and a few adults, no helmets. It's cars that make biking dangerous.
@Mikal @straphanger A few months ago, I compared fatalities per-traveller mile of car drivers/passengers in Ireland, versus cyclists in Amsterdam (who don't wear helmets). The car users in Ireland experienced more deaths.
So... pretty clear that the traffic environment (with fast heavy vehicles piloted by fallible humans) is the source of danger.
@NNN @Mikal @straphanger
Interestingly, when Dutch people present at hospitals with head injuries acquired when cycling, they're more likely to have been wearing helmets than the general (very low) rate of helmet wearing among Dutch bike riders.
It's not that the helmets somehow attract injury or course, but simply that when Dutch people do wear helmets to ride a bike, it's generally because they're doing some higher risk kind of riding - road racing or BMX stunts or the like.
Makes perfect sense.
@straphanger Republicans and their shills say these don't exist.
Anyone with a brain seems to want to go to them.
Hmmmm.
I must say, I feel increasingly prescient, having decided in 1970 never to own a car.
That & six bucks'll get you bad coffee in a paper cup, but it's proof of concept, at least?
@straphanger I'm wondering what this will do to Gershwin's "An American in Paris" symphonic poem, with the garish car horn interrupting the melody.
Maybe it will have to be renamed "A Parisian in America".
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