How Paris beat the car

Each morning, as I cycle to my office along Paris’ new bike paths, my only aim is survival. In my decades here, I have absorbed the uniquely Parisian mix of officiousness and rule-breaking: One moment I’ll be yelling self-righteously at a truck chilling on the bike path, and the next I run a red light. In Paris, other cyclists get angry if you block them by stopping for red.

The city’s transition away from the car, though fantastically chaotic, has become a global role model. Under Mayor Anne Hidalgo, Paris was “the most influential city in the world”, says Canadian urbanist Brent Toderian.

Parisian car traffic fell by more than half between 2002 and 2023, while cycle lanes expanded sixfold. Bikes now make more than twice as many journeys as cars.

Ms Hidalgo, stepping down after 12 years, exulted: “The bike beat the car.”

On March 15 and 22, Paris elects a new mayor. The election is in part a referendum on cars.

The front runners are Mr Emmanuel Gregoire of the left, who follows Ms Hidalgo’s line even though she seems to dislike him, and car-friendly right-winger Rachida Dati. So what are the lessons from the Parisian revolution?

First, pushing out cars improves life for most inhabitants. Paris has reduced traffic accidents, noise and air pollution. More than 300 “school streets” have been pedestrianised; kids play there after school.

More than ever before, Paris is a sea of terraces: From April to October, cafes and restaurants can put tables on parking spaces outside their premises. Cities shouldn’t be storage spaces for heaps of metal.

Lesson two is that banishing cars doesn’t hurt an urban economy. Retailers often worry it will deter their customers. Studies repeatedly show it doesn’t.

More broadly, French Hidalgo-haters need to explain why Paris is in the global top four of business-focused rankings of cities by Oxford Economics, the Mori Memorial Foundation and Kearney.

Lesson three: Car-free cities must offer people good alternative ways to travel. Paris itself does: It has world-class public transport plus cycle lanes. Only 28 per cent of Parisian households own a car.

But Paris is a relatively small city of 2.1 million inhabitants. The five million people living outside the ring road in the “Grand Paris” metropole are less well served. True, connections are improving.

Sixty-eight suburban metro stations are opening from 2024 through 2031. Meanwhile, suburbs too have built bike paths, and e-bikes enable long commutes.

But suburbs need rapid bus lanes that take people to the stations, says Mr Jean-Louis Missika, who was Paris’ long-time deputy mayor for urbanisation.

Lesson four: A city needs to control deliveries (typically made in Paris by double-parked vans). A study by MIT found that delaying deliveries by five minutes could cut the kilometres travelled by delivery vehicles by about 30 per cent, because that lets transporters bundle parcels.

To do this, cities need to meet a bigger challenge: get a grip on tech firms operating in their streets, and get those firms’ data. Firms like Waze or Google often possess the deepest knowledge of a city’s workings, says Mr Missika.

Lesson five: Cities must discipline bikes. Aggressive cyclists terrorise pedestrians. Early motorists were just as wild until laws came in. Mr Gregoire, himself once fined for cycling with earphones on, promises stricter policing.

Even his car-loving rival Ms Dati won’t kill cycling. She pledges “to preserve the bike’s place”. She talks of adding some bike paths. But she also promises cheaper and abundant car parking, whereas a dense city needs to choose – not all modes of transport can coexist. Victory for her would slow the car-free cause worldwide.

Mr Missika believes urban car ownership will keep diminishing regardless. “Cars are the most absurd means of transport in a city. They are parked 95 per cent of the time. It takes two tonnes to move someone who weighs 70kg. And the denser the city, the more absurd it is.”

He predicts that car ownership will take another hit from driverless robotaxis. After proving themselves in American and Chinese cities, they launch in London in 2026.

They can drive around endlessly, never parking in downtowns, and should keep getting cheaper. They will further the urban trend started by Uber: car rides become a service.

Now robobuses have begun puttering through many cities. Other places lead the new phase, but Paris was queen of the last one. FINANCIAL TIMES