City Gets A Little Greener

Bastille Day is over, the parading soldiers have gotten back on their buses and left town and the Firemen’s Balls have all closed their doors. And now, on July 15th the bicycles have arrived in Paris. They said they would be there at the stations on Sunday morning, and like clockwork there they were. But very few people were out there riding them in the blazing sun of the first day, and the few curious people at the bike stations were mostly just kicking the tires and sitting on the saddles.. It will take a few weeks before the impatient queues begin to form at the kiosk as the ever machine challenged Parisians try to get the unfamiliar mechanisms to dispense with a bike..

With 750 bike stations dispersed throughout the city, and ten thousand bikes to start out with (there will be 20,000 by the end of the year) Paris has embarked on yet another scheme meant to cut down the automobile traffic in the city. Users pay 29 euros per year for a membership card, which entitles them to use the bikes as often as they like, the first half hour free, then one euro per half hour after that. The bikes are then dropped off at any other station in the city. Membership requires a 150 euro deposit to cover any damage or lost bicycles. It has worked in Lyons, and the mayor is confident that it will work here.

This is only the latest strategy in a campaign that is far more forward looking than the short sighted “build more highways” solution that has been such a disaster for cities in the U.S. and elsewhere. This is a relentless carrot and stick campaign, with improvements in mass transit, the opening of a tram line that encircles the city, and the introduction of bus lanes and bicycle paths along major boulevards, and on the other hand, fewer traffic lanes for private autos, and more parking restrictions. The results are already encouraging: an almost three percent rise in use of the subway, and a three percent decrease in automobile traffic: modest improvements that the new bicycle scheme should build upon.

However, one concern on everyone’s mind is how the sudden rise in bicycle traffic will affect the already chaotic nature of traffic in the streets. There have already been twenty traffic deaths in the city this year, and with bicycle use already on the rise even before the new bike stations, (bicycle use was up 44 percent during the first few months of the year) it is certain that many of those traffic accidents will involve cyclists, especially those new to the streets. In 2006 there were 577 accidents in the city streets involving bicycles and cars or motorcycles, with 506 injuries and two deaths.

And then, what about the ever suffering pedestrians? They already have to look both ways even on one way streets to see where motorcyclists and wayward autos might be coming, have to dodge wild riding police cars and ambulances rushing at dragracing speeds, motorcycles on the sidewalks, and now 20,000 free bicycles on the newly paved bicycle paths. It makes this one resident at least, dream of moving to Venice and just forgetting what an asphalt street looks like.