Paris Embraces Plan to Become City of Bikes
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 24, 2007; Page A10


PARIS, March 23 -- Paris is for lovers -- lovers of food and art and wine, lovers of the romantic sort and, starting this summer, lovers of bicycles.

On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city's image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place.

Paris Embraces Plan to Become City of Bikes (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/23/AR2007032301753.html)


In case you missed it - here is a NPR segment that I linked to 3 months ago:

'Greening' of Paris Rough on Motorists

by Eleanor Beardsley

Weekend Edition Saturday, December 23, 2006 · The mayor of Paris is widening sidewalks and expanding green spaces. Pedestrians may like this new Paris, but it is frustrating to many motorists.

'Greening' of Paris Rough on Motorists (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6667718)


xoxoxoxoxox

To say that this is an absolutely awsome plan is the understatement of the year. Cheers to Paris, now even more so, "the worlds most beautiful city"!

Back here is crap hole North America I'm thinking of bying a 2X exposure crude oil fund as we are so car addicted it makes me ill.

W00T! Now I just have to learn to speak french... ahem: "common tapel tu?..."

And mercy buckets to the mayor of Paris!

Wow! I see a trip to Paris in my future :)

Paris is not the only city doing something. London introduced a traffic congestion tax in 2003 whereby cars using the roads in the center of the city have to pay £8. Rome has closed car traffic in the center, but only on Sundays.
http://www.cclondon.com/

Its nice to see them do that. Maybe more people on bikes will get them to get all the dog poop cleaned up (of course that was quite few years back). Its a shame a city the size of Paris can embrace a plan like that and a place like Seattle cannot, when I lived there I can't count the number of times I got buzzed by impatient cars and sent into a ditch. I just stopped riding my bike until I moved north.

My new home Bellingham is more bike friendly and has a number of bike trails for those people like me that still remember being clipped by a frantic motorist blasting to Starbuck for their morning buzz.

I hope the mayor of Paris wins the election because the world is watching. If he loses and the new mayor starts widening streets and getting rid of bike lanes, it will turn back the clock for the car free movement. I can assure you the pro-motoring public is going to be hard to defeat.

I hope the mayor of Paris wins the election because the world is watching. If he loses and the new mayor starts widening streets and getting rid of bike lanes, it will turn back the clock for the car free movement. I can assure you the pro-motoring public is going to be hard to defeat.

The solution is to locate the voting booths deep inside the city, where only pedestrians and bicycles can reach. The motorists who are against the plan won't be able to vote against it! Brilliant! ;)