Streetfilms: Paris Kicks New York’s Ass as a Biking Capital

Here's the Rue de Rivoli that everyone is talking about, which was widened by Mayor Anne Hidalgo (inset). Photo: Gersh Kuntzman
Here's the Rue de Rivoli that everyone is talking about, which was widened by Mayor Anne Hidalgo (inset). Photo: Gersh Kuntzman

People have been visiting Paris for centuries for the food, the wine, the museums, the cheese and even the snails, but when New Yorkers head to the City of Light these days, all they see are the bike lanes.

That’s what a half-dozen envious Gothamites told Streetfilms upon their return from the French capital for his new movie, “Paris vs NYC: What It’s Like to Bike”

Double-wide bike lanes! Contra-flow bike lanes! Bikes lanes on car-free streets! Bike lanes bike lanes bike lanes.

But when you see great bike lanes in Paris, you’re not just looking at good transport policy. You’re seeing the future.

“They are building the city they want to see, not the city as it is now,” Kate Fillin-Yeh, a Harlem resident, told Clarence Eckerson in the viral video below. (Fillin-Yeh knows something about cities: She’s director of strategy at NACTO, the National Association of City Transportation Officials.)

But Fillin-Yeh is hardly alone in wishing New York would stop designing the city to accommodate existing road users — 75 percent of all space for car drivers, for example, rather than the majority of space for bus riders, pedestrians and cyclists — rather than the mode share the city claims it is trying to achieve for its non-car-using majority.

Also appearing in the film is like a Streetsblog Hall of Fame of talking heads: Mike Lydon of Street Plans, New Third Avenue advocate Paul Krikler, Queens bike advocate (and Queen of Twitter) CJ Wojtkowski, and, Streetsblog Editor Gersh Kuntzman.

Check it out below, and share it with Mayor Adams.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCFKCfdXHJA]

 

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

STREETFILMS

Streetfilms: Contraflow Bike Lanes — A Capital Idea

|
While we were down in Washington, DC for the National Bike Summit, Streetfilms got the chance to check out some of the capital’s innovative new bike infrastructure. Tops on our list: the city’s first protected, contraflow lane for bicyclists. The district DOT has redesigned 15th Street NW between U Street and Massachusetts Avenue to accommodate […]

The Third Most Influential Streetfilm of All Time

|
With the 10-year benefit for Streetsblog and Streetfilms coming up on November 14 (get your tickets here!), we are counting down the 12 most influential Streetfilms of all time, as determined by Clarence Eckerson Jr. The Case for Physically Separated Bike Lanes Number of plays: 123,500 Publish date: February 17, 2007 Why is it here? Ten […]