It keeps repeating how the cleaner air is so good for tourists.
But tourists visiting Paris for a week don’t get the majority of the benefit from cleaner air.
The Parisian residents living there throughout the year do.
Maybe because it’s CNN, an American outlet, they’re focused on the “tourist”, but these benefits have mostly accrued to Parisians.
Also, the 4% increase in traffic jams is minuscule when compared to other large cities across the world (outside of maybe NYC, since it implemented congestion pricing over that period). Paris has not escaped the wrath of the SUV, and a large part of the congestion cities across the world are seeing is solely down to cars becoming bigger.
The new large cycling strips that appeared in the last 5-6 years are so good. At commute time there are frequently jammed with /cyclists/, but let's face it it's miles better than being stuck in a car. I shudder to think about the alternative where each cyclist was instead alone in a small car, this wouldn't even fit on the roads.
You haven't been in a bicycle-jam until you've been before an open bridge just before the university colleges start in the Netherlands. Hundreds of cyclists trying to squeeze through a tiny bottleneck. Still costs less time than by going in a car.
I would love to be on what amounts to a group ride to and from work safely. That has to do wonders for all kinds of things both physical and mental. If it were safe I would do it year round.
I do wonder how many cyclists in Paris are really replacing cars versus replacing metro usage. Obviously, it's still good for people to cycle as well since the metro can be insanely crowded at times, but living in Paris, my impression is that the people who cycle are the kinds who would have been unlikely to own a car in any case.
That's a really good point, I hope at the very least it enables a "car -> public transport -> bikes" flow. So even if these people were taking the metro, all that extra metro space can accomodate car-owners who wish to switch.
On a nice day it's fantastic to be out, but Paris can be cold and rainy. They really need to have a plan for those days, too.
Paris Metro is pretty nice, and reaches most of the car free area. But I'm not sure if it can handle all of the cyclists if they're all trying to avoid a déluge.
I live in the Netherlands where the weather is arguably tougher than in Paris (rain, cold and wind for large portion of the year) yet everyone bikes year in year out.
And not just young active people, it's a habit found across all age groups, parents bike their children to school (or with them if old enough, etc.)
All that to say I wouldn't worry too much about the feasibility issue, it's really more of a mindset to adopt, and it's happening more and more in France.
Paris has one thing that Amsterdam does not that makes cycling more challenging: elevation. (Ok, Amsterdam has bridges but those are for the most part really short and momentum is enough to carry you across).
I cycled to work every day in Southern Germany, which had even more elevation, it was not a huge problem, you get fit enough in now time. Older people just use e-bikes.
I cycle in Paris every week, and the only annoying experience climate-wise is the extreme heat you can get some days in july and august. If it's cold or wet, you can just wear appropriate clothes and be comfortable. But if it's sunny and 35°C, you are going to be drenched in sweat no matter what! Of course, being in the metro those days is even worse...
This is overblown. I visited Tokyo recently and a friend of mine was constantly riding his bike around in the middle of a cold and snowy winter. He wasn't the only one, either.
I have cycled every working day in The Netherlands and in Germany for years (in Germany it was 22km per day) and I would often cycle a bit recreationally in the weekends. It really isn't an issue at all. I just have a waterproof jacket (one of those that circulate air as well), water resistant shoes, and rain pants. On very rainy days, I would put on the rain pants and would arrive mostly dry.
It is not really an issue.
The only thing that was slightly meh was the yearly ~two weeks of thick snow in Southern Germany. It increases effort a bit, but still not a huge issue and the cycling roads got cleared pretty quickly.
This “nobody cycles in bad weather” is a tired myth. Yes, there’s some truth in it but cycling numbers past the traffic counters in my city in the UK (very similar climate) dip by 10-30% in winter months, and the higher end of those is mostly leisure routes not commuting ones. The Netherlands has a lot of rain and much more cycling than most other places.
I think it’s no easy task to reform a city away from being car-centric. In my home town of Ghent (in Belgium), we’ve had several iterations of a traffic plan that gradually reduces the number of parking spaces, rises taxes and car related costs, makes streets one way or deprioritises cars (e.g. a car doesn’t have priority over a bike anymore) etc. It’s not easy but the city today is a lot more liveable than it was when all this started.
It certainly helps the buses move more efficiently, but it can't do much about things like bus stop placement, or just generally sense of place as you start or end your trip.
No, it's worse than that. The city council very much implemented an anti-car (harassment) policy, to the point that car owners felt hounded by their own council's policies. It seriously wasn't a matter of "marginally less privileged".
It's a good illustration of why solving climate change isn't just a matter of individual actions. We need to reconsider the whole infrastructure, and you can't do that from the bottom up.
Honest question: What is the hard part? If you took all of that stuff and did it as quickly as you could somewhere else, what's would be the biggest issue? People + resistance to change of any kind?
The outcome seems so obviously good. I have never heard of anyone complaining about a city becoming less car centric, but maybe somehow it's an under-represented story?
When did the fad for compact cars end? Where did all these SUVs come from? Why do drivers want to lug all this extra weight and space around with them all the time?
Paris is consistently somewhere in the top 10 cities worldwide by number of tourists per year and this is an extremely important factor to the city. Even if if Le Monde was writing this in French the impacts to/from tourism would be relevant to the article.
One of the major problems with cars is the terrible lack of density. Per-occupant, a car occupies more space on the roadway than any other form of passenger transport. And as cars get larger, that lack of density gets even worse. There's only so much space on the road, so something has to give.
Here the large SUVs make everyone else drive slower in the city, because they're so big the driver has poor visibility and thinks they need several feet more than they do in clearance, and so drive almost in the middle of the road. Others then have to go real slow to not get dinged up on either side.
Additionally, driving a small sedan myself, if there is a parking spot (not parallel, normal lot spot) in between two SUVs, there is a good chance that spot is useless, even in my small car.
Just last night, I was parked perfectly (I had to stop and admire my work because what follows), but still had to squeeze out with my door undoubtedly touching the SUV, and it wasn't even a large size SUV.
I really hope waymo takes of and makes it economical to stop owning a car, and reduce the necessity of parking lots
That's an amazing website; thanks for linking it. Apparently, lengthwise, my car easily fits between the wheels of a Ford F-150 without even touching them. My car's full height is substantially below where the F-150's windows begin. That car could probably drive over my car and barely even notice it.
You have a fixed amount of space to put stuff. If the stuff gets larger, can you put more or less stuff in that space?
So now we have at least the same number of people trying to put their stuff in that fixed size space, but their stuff got bigger, does that make it easier or harder for them to put their stuff in that space? Will they have to compete more or less for that space?
fewer cars per foot, less visibility, etc? If there's a sedan in front of me I can see whats going on, if there's a UPS box truck, i cannot even see the light 150 feet away.
> Paris has not escaped the wrath of the SUV, and a large part of the congestion cities across the world are seeing is solely down to cars becoming bigger.
Europeans don't drive Suburbans. They drive crossovers that are, if anything, shorter than the equivalent sedan or wagon.
I agree, CNN has always had a weird angle to its bias. I am by no means a FOX news nut . I really think a lot of american "news" now is similar to How The WWF ( World Wide Wrestling Federation/ World Wrestling Entertainment) isn't a Sport. CNN , FOX, MSNBC/MSNOW , Newsmax etc aren't news but unfunny entertainment.
I was more comfortable living in Paris than living in a Dutch city because I was able to live in a banlieue. Biking here is more developed, and that's a plus. But having my job, my living space, my friends and my favorite weekend activities spread across Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague does take a bit of a toll. I wish The Netherlands did have a much less restrictive housing policy.
Interesting ! My comparison was indeed limited, I only lived in center of Den Haag as a foreigner. Decentralization has its pros and cons, but Paris is way too centralized around Chatelet sometimes.
I live in Paris and bike nearly every day, with my electric bike, or sometimes the city's velib rental bikes, sometimes private rental bikes (Uber, Dott, Voi). I love the drastic push to add more bike lanes, and reduce car lanes. I don't own a car in this city. Don't need one.
There is some clear bias and green agenda in the way this has been written, which to be fair it's very common in Europe. As the EU continues its course to ban the sale of ICE cars by 2035, the argument of "fewer cars make for cleaner air" is gradually losing weight. As more and more EVs hit the streets, the argument against cars is more ideological, about lifestyle. It's about collectivism, about giving up individual transport in favour of public alternatives. It's happened in London, where a clear anti-car agenda is being disguised as a pro-clean air agenda. Almost the entire city now has a 20 mph speed limit "to reduce emissions" but, if that was the truly the objective, then I should be able to drive faster with an EV.
Or maybe the angle they're trying to go for is another very European problem: cities are no longer designed for the people who live there, but for the people who visit them. Barcelona in particular has become a theme park, Venice has been one for decades. Entire neighbourhoods looks their soul so we can have more Airbnbs and drunk tourists. Sad times.
>As more and more EVs hit the streets, the argument against cars is more ideological, about lifestyle. It's about collectivism, about giving up individual transport in favour of public alternatives.
Making the city safer and more pleasant to be in is now communist?
>Or maybe the angle they're trying to go for is another very European problem: cities are no longer designed for the people who live there, but for the people who visit them.
It seems a reasonable conclusion that the people who elect the people putting these policies in place live in these cities.
Looking at TfL’s infographic about the speed limits [1], it is all about safety. In fact, it mentions “no net increase” to emissions. I think there is no such thing as an anti-car agenda, but perhaps there is an anti-death one.
Your point about banning cars being ideological makes somewhat sense, but must be contrasted in regards to actual numbers.
- EV share in greater Paris area is only 3%, far from being high enough to impact air quality. Overall, the effect of removing cars on air quality has been noticed and celebrated.
- parisians are overwhelmingly in favor of banning cars. Unlike big american cities, car has never been a dominant transportation tool. Paris subway was already built when the first massed produced cars made their way in the capital. Cars have never been part of the soul of any neighbourhood people wanted to live in.
- paris has one of the highest population density in the world: 20k hab/km^2, ranking 31th in the workd. As consequence, parking space has always been crazy expensive, on top of high rents. Similarly for travel time between two locations: I can’t imagine a car being faster (except late at night, for night club and bars), and I try to avoid Uber/taxis intra-muros. Furthermore, a single noisy vehicle is estimated to be able to wake-up up to 150k (!!) people at night.
- a large part of vehicles are actually… taxis and uber for wealthy tourists than don’t want to bother with public transportation. In that regard, pushing away cars frees space for housing, parcs, shops, making the city easier to live in.
As a resident of this city. The clean air is one thing.
EV could give us that and offset the pollution where the batteries are made and recycle.
But the main gain, as someone paying taxes there: is the reclaim of public space for human to enjoy.
Its a cliché to say that Paris is pretty and its so much more enjoyable on a stroll along the bank of the seine that on a freeway at 20 miles/h. ( that freeway was permajamed )
Yes it is ideological: cars kill cities, kill communities and are bad for everyone involved. They are dangerous to drivers and non drivers alike and are deeply anti social. We need less cars everywhere period.
Putting cars in cities was also deeply ideological. It was about segregation and as a way to extract as much resources from people as possible. The imposition of cars was about turning people into consumers who only point was to purchase goods and services.
We didn’t choose cars- they were pushed on societies through a decades long propaganda campaign.
>Yes it is ideological: cars kill cities, kill communities and are bad for everyone involved. They are dangerous to drivers and non drivers alike and are deeply anti social. We need less cars everywhere period.
You lost me at"We need less cars everywhere period." Not everywhere is a dense city.
It's about the many other objective problems caused by cars besides the fuel use. Most obviously: they cause terribly inefficient land use (demand for parking + the roads themselves being congested), and are a physical threat to pedestrians and cyclists.
> but, if that was the truly the objective, then I should be able to drive faster with an EV.
That would be fundamentally incompatible with how traffic works and a nightmare to enforce.
> It's happened in London, where a clear anti-car agenda is being disguised as a pro-clean air agenda.
I don't know about London, but in Spain there is no disguise: you can find pro-clean air and pro-human strategies. Pro-clean limits, or straight ban, the access of ICE vehicles to some zones. Pro-human/anti-car limit or ban circulation or park for any car in certain zones.
> the argument of "fewer cars make for cleaner air" is gradually losing weight.
Particles from tyre wear are a big contributor to local air pollution from cars - while they don't travel as far as CO2 to cause the larger scale problems, it's still going to be a local problem from electric cars, and since electric cars are generally heavier than equivalent petrol cars does mean they give off more tyre dust.
Large car thoroughfares also didn't do much for the soul of cities and neighbourhoods.
Yep, CO2 is a problem but pm2.5 pollution made many cities hell to live in - and much (not all, of course) of that comes from rubber tyres and asphalt roads.
The speed limit in London is at 20mph primarily due to safety, not emissions concerns. It takes approx 2x the distance to come to a complete stop from 30mph than it does from 20mph.
For the majority of journeys in London, you're sitting at a red light, or transitioning to the next red light. Not a lot of opportunity for sustained 30mph travel. Accelerating up to 30mph so that you can travel the 300 meters, and then stop for 3 minutes serves no benefit to you (because your journey is still predominantly waiting at traffic lights), but reduces safety for you & everyone around you.
Yeah, if there is any agenda, that's the pro-car agenda... It's absurd to call people wanting to get rid of cars taking space, polluting with noise, dust and emissions, and killing their children part of a 'green agenda'...
Electric cars tend to be heavier than ICE cars. This means their tyres wear out faster, which is plastic dust being thrown up in the air. (We're still not sure of the health impacts of microplastics, but we do know they accumulate in various organs, including the brain.) They also throw up road dust, and we know that rock dust is really bad to breathe in. Air pollution is still present. Compared to ICE cars fitted with catalytic converters, electric cars are probably better, but just because you can't smell their emissions doesn't mean they aren't still reducing the air quality.
They're also still tonnes of metal hurtling along the streets of a city shared by pedestrians, which is inherently dangerous. (Less so than a bus, but there are also more cars than buses: you'd have to check the statistics to see how that evens out.) As for actually damaging the road (producing road dust, potholes, etc, requiring a resurface that off-gases for weeks afterwards): cars damage the road more than bikes, though that's not significant compared to lorries, since the wear is something ludicrous like the fourth power of the weight-per-axle.
Well a big reason for speed limits in cities is safety, that doesn't change with EVs. Another thing you mention is collectivism but cars are a very inefficient private use of public space, both roads and parking, so when such space is scarce it makes sense to restrict them.
> “She is constantly criticized, but still reelected: I’ve never understood it,” says Lionel Pradal, a bistro owner on the bustling Rue des Martyrs. “Parisians never go out and vote, and then after they complain. This is the problem with French people, it’s always the same.”
This is somewhat of a public secret, but few people ever stay in Paris for longer than say 10 years and thus aren't that attached to the city. It's noticeable in how few people voted in Hidalgo's referendums.
The city has been losing citizens in favour of its suburbs for close to two decades now (if not much longer really) and this is a trend which shows no clear signs of reversing.
This article omits so many negatives from the "cyclist's paradise" vision of Hidalgo's 2 terms that I don't know where to start. Families are the first casualties: the Paris metro is nowhere near accessible to strollers except if you are willing to go to the chiropractor after each week end, and using your car - hell, even parking your family car - is a no go as soon as there is some kind of hipster sports event or just as soon as you are after 10am on week end mornings. Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside. And I'm not even talking about used seringes and broken glass in certain parts of the city. I'm actually so ashamed of my city at this point.
About the accessibility issue in the Paris metro: this can be mitigated by using the buses (that's not the best experience but it works fine), and in some parts of Paris (in my experience, east and suburbs) people usually help you in the stairs with your stroller (it's not convenient or comfortable to rely on others but in practice it seems to work). Anyway this is not like Paris mayor has any power on that, the transport authority though announced a few years that the main priority after the Grand Paris Express will be accessibility in the historical Paris network. And fortunately after two years hopefully your kid can walk and you can carry it without a stroller.
> Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside.
Maybe it is a newborn and you do not bring the stroller nor any clothes on rainy days it is that bad. Don't get me wrong, Paris is not a clean city, there are empty nitrogen tanks, puffs and cigarettes lying on the ground pretty much in every arrondissement, but syringes, even on the colline du crack I can hardly remember having seen even one (but it is very dirty there! with packaging, paper, cardboard, bottles).
I still think there should be a higher priority on sanitation but I also think you are exaggerating a bit.
Slightly off-topic but NYC went through a similar process when congestion pricing met legal battle after legal battle. Long to short, there was a calculated effort to make midtown less and less vehicle-friendly. The "hack" was to take streets / aves and repurpose those for pedestrians. Special walking lanes, more "park cafes", bike lanes, etc. None were stated as being anti-vehicle - as that would open up legal challenges - but that was obviously the intention.
And it worked, there's multiple studies showing that retail business in the neighborhoods that limited car accessibility is up while pollution and noise is down and for those who choose to drive into the city, parking is easier.
Complete tangent, but I met my equally nerdy brother in Paris last month.
It was my first time, and his fourth. We stayed by the Republique metro station.
After the literal 30th indie Manga [0] shop that we walked by, I asked him: "how are all these shops financially feasible?" He said: "look inside."
Holy crap, they all had customers inside! I had no idea that Japanese culture has such a strong presence in the heart of Paris, in the middle of Europe.
[0] I should be clear, this was not just Manga. There were so many cool indie retro video game shops that it blew my little mind.
I have to say, I look forward to visiting Paris again as soon as I can find an excuse. I know there are things people could say negatively, as one could say about any large city, but the energy and diversity really drew me in.
I also really like French food, especially when mixed with the crazy chefs in that area that we stayed.
Edit: just so everyone knows, this is what an airport terminal could be, according to Air France: https://postimg.cc/ZCww5xFs - So cool that I had to take photo.
This was the least customer-hostile area that I have ever seen at an airport. Oh, you have to wait for a flight? Just lay back and chill.
This is a tired and unhelpful refrain. Only rich people fill their cars with gasoline without wincing at the price. Only rich people get to own 7 houses. Only rich people get to fill their pools in the middle of a drought.
There are a lot of things that “only rich people get to do”. Reducing the number of people who engage in destructive activities is a good thing, even if it means only rich people can still do it.
I go to Berkeley Ca often on weekends. As a kid we'd go to SF too because why not. But now it's another $8+ for the bridge, and even if you find street parking it's another $2 an hour anywhere you might want to jump out for a few minutes.
Basically it's an extra $20 to get the opportunity to spend your money in SF.
So now I haven't been to my favorite coffee shop or pizza place in years. Oh well.
No. Rich people zoom in to work and take a stroll to the market on Saturday morning, and they enjoy tapas a the quaint Bistro on the bank of the seine.
I don’t know how you’re defining “rich” but the wealthiest folks I know all go to work physically. They get in their cars, or in one case on their bike, and commute to work like everyone else.
The housing market is a bit broken: either expensive private housing or affordable publicly managed one, but very hard to get. People often cannot relocate.
Big debt.
Security, with addicted errands in some districts.
Many cities in the world have many thousands of far commuters arriving by train every day. And many of those people even live in single family homes and own cars.
Pedestrian and cyclist friendly cities have more vibrant street life, and are more attractive places to live. I've never heard of car restrictions leading to more suburbanization.
In an American city I would bet on the mobility impaired people to win the cage match against the fewer cars people. They are tougher than they look.
Edit: The responses reasonably talk about the officially mobility impaired people. I was thinking more about the unofficially mobility impaired people by obesity, like me. French obesity rates are ~16% compared to ~42% in the US. That contributes to a fierce US constituency for cars.
A city with less cars is a net positive for mobility impaired people.
It frees space for people (wider sidewalks...), reduce the risks of navigating the streets, and for the ones that have to use a car, there's less traffic and less people stealing dedicated parking spots.
Less cars also means less mobility impaired people. Cars create them through crashes and a lifetime of sedentariness.
Finally, it should be noted that most of the time when someone says "what about mobility impaired people?", when debating reallocating public space to people instead of cars, they are not mobility impaired themselves and don't actually care about them. They just try to guilt shame their opponents to win.
> they are not mobility impaired themselves and don't actually care about them.
That's a baseless and false slur. My first thought was that visiting Paris would be difficult because of all of the walking. I fall in the large gap between disabled and fit. On the one hand I would benefit from more walking, on the other I would not get much enjoyment out of a city that way, and would tend to drive far to services where I could park nearby.
I think you’d have a fairly miserable time navigating any major European city _by car_, even before these policies. They’re largely not designed for it. For a start, where are you parking? It’s not like parking was particularly plentiful or conveniently located before this change.
These sorts of reforms are generally aimed at discouraging people from commuting in by car. People who _regularly drive around central Paris_ (except for delivery drivers etc) would be a fairly small constituency.
Maybe it's my European bias talking, but "visiting a city" with a car seems like the worst idea possible.
Basically a city is either small enough to be crossed walking, or big enough to have public transportation.
And after walking or cycling, public transportation is the best way to visit the city.
In Paris, there's bus stops or metro (subway) stations everywhere.
A bus or metro puts the passenger at a higher level than walkers/cyclists/car passengers and with huge windows, allowing to enjoy a unique view of the city.
The view of the Eiffel Tower you get when crossing the Seine on the Bir-Hakeim bridge is an experience that can ONLY be enjoyed by riding the metro.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cqIJVzkLD4c
> and for the ones that have to use a car, there's less traffic and less people stealing dedicated parking spots.
The article mentions there's now constant traffic jams for city buses in Paris. It seems best for people who can cycle, walk, or people who already live in the city and don't need to travel much.
I think you're selling cars short. For one thing, sofas don't have a plethora of cupholders that can accommodate any size sugary beverage within arm's reach.
Fewer cars overall should increase the availability for those who need it. Same for drivers overall but most can’t see past the first step which is reducing lanes and parking.
My buddy with no arms or legs would beg to differ. He can't afford taxis because he can't work a real job. His friends/family can't drive him around because you need a custom vehicle for his chair. But he can use bike lanes and sidewalks independently without too muuch trouble.
Car-dependent sprawl creates mobility impaired people where there were previously none. Many people are too old, too young, too intoxicated, too vision impaired or too poor to drive. Lack of viable transportation options is the greatest barrier to upward economic mobility for Americans today.
This article has such a weird framing.
It keeps repeating how the cleaner air is so good for tourists.
But tourists visiting Paris for a week don’t get the majority of the benefit from cleaner air.
The Parisian residents living there throughout the year do.
Maybe because it’s CNN, an American outlet, they’re focused on the “tourist”, but these benefits have mostly accrued to Parisians.
Also, the 4% increase in traffic jams is minuscule when compared to other large cities across the world (outside of maybe NYC, since it implemented congestion pricing over that period). Paris has not escaped the wrath of the SUV, and a large part of the congestion cities across the world are seeing is solely down to cars becoming bigger.
The new large cycling strips that appeared in the last 5-6 years are so good. At commute time there are frequently jammed with /cyclists/, but let's face it it's miles better than being stuck in a car. I shudder to think about the alternative where each cyclist was instead alone in a small car, this wouldn't even fit on the roads.
You haven't been in a bicycle-jam until you've been before an open bridge just before the university colleges start in the Netherlands. Hundreds of cyclists trying to squeeze through a tiny bottleneck. Still costs less time than by going in a car.
I would love to be on what amounts to a group ride to and from work safely. That has to do wonders for all kinds of things both physical and mental. If it were safe I would do it year round.
I would rather float to work like the Swiss.
https://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-workers-commute-...
I do wonder how many cyclists in Paris are really replacing cars versus replacing metro usage. Obviously, it's still good for people to cycle as well since the metro can be insanely crowded at times, but living in Paris, my impression is that the people who cycle are the kinds who would have been unlikely to own a car in any case.
> I do wonder how many cyclists in Paris are really replacing cars versus replacing metro usage.
That’s not necessarily a problem, particularly for saturated lines like the 13.
That's a really good point, I hope at the very least it enables a "car -> public transport -> bikes" flow. So even if these people were taking the metro, all that extra metro space can accomodate car-owners who wish to switch.
Exactly.
On a nice day it's fantastic to be out, but Paris can be cold and rainy. They really need to have a plan for those days, too.
Paris Metro is pretty nice, and reaches most of the car free area. But I'm not sure if it can handle all of the cyclists if they're all trying to avoid a déluge.
I live in the Netherlands where the weather is arguably tougher than in Paris (rain, cold and wind for large portion of the year) yet everyone bikes year in year out.
And not just young active people, it's a habit found across all age groups, parents bike their children to school (or with them if old enough, etc.)
All that to say I wouldn't worry too much about the feasibility issue, it's really more of a mindset to adopt, and it's happening more and more in France.
Paris has one thing that Amsterdam does not that makes cycling more challenging: elevation. (Ok, Amsterdam has bridges but those are for the most part really short and momentum is enough to carry you across).
I cycled to work every day in Southern Germany, which had even more elevation, it was not a huge problem, you get fit enough in now time. Older people just use e-bikes.
I seriously consider 6-7bft headwind far worse than any hill. Won't get that in large cities but a bit out that's normal cycling weather.
That's true, we can have some serious wind here.
Oh I agree. When I lived in Lyon, who is also quite bike-friendly, it was a lot more challenging than Amsterdam.
But with electric bikes becoming more affordable, hopefully the gap can eventually close.
In amsterdam, few people wear modern/synthetic rain coats as well. Just riding around in the rain with what I assume must be waxed duck out something
> Paris can be cold and rainy
I cycle in Paris every week, and the only annoying experience climate-wise is the extreme heat you can get some days in july and august. If it's cold or wet, you can just wear appropriate clothes and be comfortable. But if it's sunny and 35°C, you are going to be drenched in sweat no matter what! Of course, being in the metro those days is even worse...
This is overblown. I visited Tokyo recently and a friend of mine was constantly riding his bike around in the middle of a cold and snowy winter. He wasn't the only one, either.
I have cycled every working day in The Netherlands and in Germany for years (in Germany it was 22km per day) and I would often cycle a bit recreationally in the weekends. It really isn't an issue at all. I just have a waterproof jacket (one of those that circulate air as well), water resistant shoes, and rain pants. On very rainy days, I would put on the rain pants and would arrive mostly dry.
It is not really an issue.
The only thing that was slightly meh was the yearly ~two weeks of thick snow in Southern Germany. It increases effort a bit, but still not a huge issue and the cycling roads got cleared pretty quickly.
This “nobody cycles in bad weather” is a tired myth. Yes, there’s some truth in it but cycling numbers past the traffic counters in my city in the UK (very similar climate) dip by 10-30% in winter months, and the higher end of those is mostly leisure routes not commuting ones. The Netherlands has a lot of rain and much more cycling than most other places.
Summer here is on Tuesday. The rest of the year it is rain, alternating with fog, snow & ice.
Nah, jk, it's a beautiful day today and I'm thinking of going for a ride.
I think it’s no easy task to reform a city away from being car-centric. In my home town of Ghent (in Belgium), we’ve had several iterations of a traffic plan that gradually reduces the number of parking spaces, rises taxes and car related costs, makes streets one way or deprioritises cars (e.g. a car doesn’t have priority over a bike anymore) etc. It’s not easy but the city today is a lot more liveable than it was when all this started.
But then public transport has to improve also. You cant make owning a car impossible without offering alternatives.
Generally, restrictions on cars make public transport better automatically, as they make buses work better.
It certainly helps the buses move more efficiently, but it can't do much about things like bus stop placement, or just generally sense of place as you start or end your trip.
None of the changes in the comment make owning a car impossible, they just make driving marginally less privileged over walking and biking.
No, it's worse than that. The city council very much implemented an anti-car (harassment) policy, to the point that car owners felt hounded by their own council's policies. It seriously wasn't a matter of "marginally less privileged".
Imagine how "hounded" everyone else feels by driver friendly polies in other cities.
Motorists are incredibly fragile. I'm glad Paris has had a mayor who could stand up to their entitled whinging.
Interesting how correctly naming them motorists sharpens how "the default" is often to be presumed drivers and pedestrians and cyclists are marginal
It's a good illustration of why solving climate change isn't just a matter of individual actions. We need to reconsider the whole infrastructure, and you can't do that from the bottom up.
Honest question: What is the hard part? If you took all of that stuff and did it as quickly as you could somewhere else, what's would be the biggest issue? People + resistance to change of any kind?
The outcome seems so obviously good. I have never heard of anyone complaining about a city becoming less car centric, but maybe somehow it's an under-represented story?
Effectively NIMBYism, but for cars. The political backlash would stop all progress. People don’t like change, even for the better.
When did the fad for compact cars end? Where did all these SUVs come from? Why do drivers want to lug all this extra weight and space around with them all the time?
Paris is consistently somewhere in the top 10 cities worldwide by number of tourists per year and this is an extremely important factor to the city. Even if if Le Monde was writing this in French the impacts to/from tourism would be relevant to the article.
Travelers are more sensitive to sudden changes. I got sick in Sicily on day one of my vacation because of how bad the air was.
How does an SUV cause more congestion than a sedan? That seems untrue to me.
One of the major problems with cars is the terrible lack of density. Per-occupant, a car occupies more space on the roadway than any other form of passenger transport. And as cars get larger, that lack of density gets even worse. There's only so much space on the road, so something has to give.
When I look at traffic in my city, I rarely see it caused by full packing. Rather throughout seems to be the issue.
Here the large SUVs make everyone else drive slower in the city, because they're so big the driver has poor visibility and thinks they need several feet more than they do in clearance, and so drive almost in the middle of the road. Others then have to go real slow to not get dinged up on either side.
Have you ever tried to park an SUV versus parking a sedan?
Great point.
Additionally, driving a small sedan myself, if there is a parking spot (not parallel, normal lot spot) in between two SUVs, there is a good chance that spot is useless, even in my small car.
Just last night, I was parked perfectly (I had to stop and admire my work because what follows), but still had to squeeze out with my door undoubtedly touching the SUV, and it wasn't even a large size SUV.
I really hope waymo takes of and makes it economical to stop owning a car, and reduce the necessity of parking lots
Here's a helpful comparison https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/opel-astra-1998-cou...
That's an amazing website; thanks for linking it. Apparently, lengthwise, my car easily fits between the wheels of a Ford F-150 without even touching them. My car's full height is substantially below where the F-150's windows begin. That car could probably drive over my car and barely even notice it.
Not so helpful; the cars are from two different generations at two different price points. Try https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/bentley-flying-spur...
Because old and new cars never have to interact on the road?
Also why are front and rear not overlays
You're calling out different price points while then choosing a $200k car. Which, you picked that car because it's an exceptionally long sedan.
How about we choose a different SUV?
https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/bentley-flying-spur...
I see far more suburbans on the road than all models of Bentley.
People aren't choosing SUVs because they're smaller than sedans. They're choosing them because they're bigger.
You have a fixed amount of space to put stuff. If the stuff gets larger, can you put more or less stuff in that space?
So now we have at least the same number of people trying to put their stuff in that fixed size space, but their stuff got bigger, does that make it easier or harder for them to put their stuff in that space? Will they have to compete more or less for that space?
Seems like a pretty obvious one to me.
fewer cars per foot, less visibility, etc? If there's a sedan in front of me I can see whats going on, if there's a UPS box truck, i cannot even see the light 150 feet away.
Cleaner air is still good for tourists & the article is part of the Travel section of this publication.
I mean it’s a “CNN Travel” article…of course it’s going to focus on Paris as a travel destination.
> Paris has not escaped the wrath of the SUV, and a large part of the congestion cities across the world are seeing is solely down to cars becoming bigger.
Europeans don't drive Suburbans. They drive crossovers that are, if anything, shorter than the equivalent sedan or wagon.
> But tourists visiting Paris for a week don’t get the majority of the benefit from cleaner air.
You’re missing the point: tourists are good for the city. If Paris gets a reputation of being polluted, tourism will decline.
I agree, CNN has always had a weird angle to its bias. I am by no means a FOX news nut . I really think a lot of american "news" now is similar to How The WWF ( World Wide Wrestling Federation/ World Wrestling Entertainment) isn't a Sport. CNN , FOX, MSNBC/MSNOW , Newsmax etc aren't news but unfunny entertainment.
I moved from LA to Paris, my mental and physical health improved dramatically.
I don't even take the subway, walking and biking are enough where I live. Hopefully we can reach the comfort of dutch cities within a decade.
I was more comfortable living in Paris than living in a Dutch city because I was able to live in a banlieue. Biking here is more developed, and that's a plus. But having my job, my living space, my friends and my favorite weekend activities spread across Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague does take a bit of a toll. I wish The Netherlands did have a much less restrictive housing policy.
Interesting ! My comparison was indeed limited, I only lived in center of Den Haag as a foreigner. Decentralization has its pros and cons, but Paris is way too centralized around Chatelet sometimes.
I live in Paris and bike nearly every day, with my electric bike, or sometimes the city's velib rental bikes, sometimes private rental bikes (Uber, Dott, Voi). I love the drastic push to add more bike lanes, and reduce car lanes. I don't own a car in this city. Don't need one.
There is some clear bias and green agenda in the way this has been written, which to be fair it's very common in Europe. As the EU continues its course to ban the sale of ICE cars by 2035, the argument of "fewer cars make for cleaner air" is gradually losing weight. As more and more EVs hit the streets, the argument against cars is more ideological, about lifestyle. It's about collectivism, about giving up individual transport in favour of public alternatives. It's happened in London, where a clear anti-car agenda is being disguised as a pro-clean air agenda. Almost the entire city now has a 20 mph speed limit "to reduce emissions" but, if that was the truly the objective, then I should be able to drive faster with an EV.
Or maybe the angle they're trying to go for is another very European problem: cities are no longer designed for the people who live there, but for the people who visit them. Barcelona in particular has become a theme park, Venice has been one for decades. Entire neighbourhoods looks their soul so we can have more Airbnbs and drunk tourists. Sad times.
>As more and more EVs hit the streets, the argument against cars is more ideological, about lifestyle. It's about collectivism, about giving up individual transport in favour of public alternatives.
Making the city safer and more pleasant to be in is now communist?
>Or maybe the angle they're trying to go for is another very European problem: cities are no longer designed for the people who live there, but for the people who visit them.
It seems a reasonable conclusion that the people who elect the people putting these policies in place live in these cities.
Looking at TfL’s infographic about the speed limits [1], it is all about safety. In fact, it mentions “no net increase” to emissions. I think there is no such thing as an anti-car agenda, but perhaps there is an anti-death one.
1. https://content.tfl.gov.uk/the-impact-20mph-limits-and-zones...
Your point about banning cars being ideological makes somewhat sense, but must be contrasted in regards to actual numbers.
- EV share in greater Paris area is only 3%, far from being high enough to impact air quality. Overall, the effect of removing cars on air quality has been noticed and celebrated.
- parisians are overwhelmingly in favor of banning cars. Unlike big american cities, car has never been a dominant transportation tool. Paris subway was already built when the first massed produced cars made their way in the capital. Cars have never been part of the soul of any neighbourhood people wanted to live in.
- paris has one of the highest population density in the world: 20k hab/km^2, ranking 31th in the workd. As consequence, parking space has always been crazy expensive, on top of high rents. Similarly for travel time between two locations: I can’t imagine a car being faster (except late at night, for night club and bars), and I try to avoid Uber/taxis intra-muros. Furthermore, a single noisy vehicle is estimated to be able to wake-up up to 150k (!!) people at night.
- a large part of vehicles are actually… taxis and uber for wealthy tourists than don’t want to bother with public transportation. In that regard, pushing away cars frees space for housing, parcs, shops, making the city easier to live in.
As a resident of this city. The clean air is one thing. EV could give us that and offset the pollution where the batteries are made and recycle.
But the main gain, as someone paying taxes there: is the reclaim of public space for human to enjoy.
Its a cliché to say that Paris is pretty and its so much more enjoyable on a stroll along the bank of the seine that on a freeway at 20 miles/h. ( that freeway was permajamed )
Yes it is ideological: cars kill cities, kill communities and are bad for everyone involved. They are dangerous to drivers and non drivers alike and are deeply anti social. We need less cars everywhere period.
Putting cars in cities was also deeply ideological. It was about segregation and as a way to extract as much resources from people as possible. The imposition of cars was about turning people into consumers who only point was to purchase goods and services.
We didn’t choose cars- they were pushed on societies through a decades long propaganda campaign.
>Yes it is ideological: cars kill cities, kill communities and are bad for everyone involved. They are dangerous to drivers and non drivers alike and are deeply anti social. We need less cars everywhere period.
You lost me at"We need less cars everywhere period." Not everywhere is a dense city.
> It's about collectivism
It's about the many other objective problems caused by cars besides the fuel use. Most obviously: they cause terribly inefficient land use (demand for parking + the roads themselves being congested), and are a physical threat to pedestrians and cyclists.
> but, if that was the truly the objective, then I should be able to drive faster with an EV.
That would be fundamentally incompatible with how traffic works and a nightmare to enforce.
> It's happened in London, where a clear anti-car agenda is being disguised as a pro-clean air agenda.
I don't know about London, but in Spain there is no disguise: you can find pro-clean air and pro-human strategies. Pro-clean limits, or straight ban, the access of ICE vehicles to some zones. Pro-human/anti-car limit or ban circulation or park for any car in certain zones.
> the argument of "fewer cars make for cleaner air" is gradually losing weight.
Particles from tyre wear are a big contributor to local air pollution from cars - while they don't travel as far as CO2 to cause the larger scale problems, it's still going to be a local problem from electric cars, and since electric cars are generally heavier than equivalent petrol cars does mean they give off more tyre dust.
Large car thoroughfares also didn't do much for the soul of cities and neighbourhoods.
Yep, CO2 is a problem but pm2.5 pollution made many cities hell to live in - and much (not all, of course) of that comes from rubber tyres and asphalt roads.
The speed limit in London is at 20mph primarily due to safety, not emissions concerns. It takes approx 2x the distance to come to a complete stop from 30mph than it does from 20mph.
For the majority of journeys in London, you're sitting at a red light, or transitioning to the next red light. Not a lot of opportunity for sustained 30mph travel. Accelerating up to 30mph so that you can travel the 300 meters, and then stop for 3 minutes serves no benefit to you (because your journey is still predominantly waiting at traffic lights), but reduces safety for you & everyone around you.
Why reclaiming city space is biased but covering the thing in parking lots is not?
Yeah, if there is any agenda, that's the pro-car agenda... It's absurd to call people wanting to get rid of cars taking space, polluting with noise, dust and emissions, and killing their children part of a 'green agenda'...
The amount of brain farting someone can do the associated less cars, more bikes to cities being full of drunk tourists is truly something
Electric cars tend to be heavier than ICE cars. This means their tyres wear out faster, which is plastic dust being thrown up in the air. (We're still not sure of the health impacts of microplastics, but we do know they accumulate in various organs, including the brain.) They also throw up road dust, and we know that rock dust is really bad to breathe in. Air pollution is still present. Compared to ICE cars fitted with catalytic converters, electric cars are probably better, but just because you can't smell their emissions doesn't mean they aren't still reducing the air quality.
They're also still tonnes of metal hurtling along the streets of a city shared by pedestrians, which is inherently dangerous. (Less so than a bus, but there are also more cars than buses: you'd have to check the statistics to see how that evens out.) As for actually damaging the road (producing road dust, potholes, etc, requiring a resurface that off-gases for weeks afterwards): cars damage the road more than bikes, though that's not significant compared to lorries, since the wear is something ludicrous like the fourth power of the weight-per-axle.
We don’t really know if eating microplastics is particularly bad, but we do know breathing any pm2.5 and below dust is.
Well a big reason for speed limits in cities is safety, that doesn't change with EVs. Another thing you mention is collectivism but cars are a very inefficient private use of public space, both roads and parking, so when such space is scarce it makes sense to restrict them.
> “She is constantly criticized, but still reelected: I’ve never understood it,” says Lionel Pradal, a bistro owner on the bustling Rue des Martyrs. “Parisians never go out and vote, and then after they complain. This is the problem with French people, it’s always the same.”
This is somewhat of a public secret, but few people ever stay in Paris for longer than say 10 years and thus aren't that attached to the city. It's noticeable in how few people voted in Hidalgo's referendums.
The city has been losing citizens in favour of its suburbs for close to two decades now (if not much longer really) and this is a trend which shows no clear signs of reversing.
This article omits so many negatives from the "cyclist's paradise" vision of Hidalgo's 2 terms that I don't know where to start. Families are the first casualties: the Paris metro is nowhere near accessible to strollers except if you are willing to go to the chiropractor after each week end, and using your car - hell, even parking your family car - is a no go as soon as there is some kind of hipster sports event or just as soon as you are after 10am on week end mornings. Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside. And I'm not even talking about used seringes and broken glass in certain parts of the city. I'm actually so ashamed of my city at this point.
About the accessibility issue in the Paris metro: this can be mitigated by using the buses (that's not the best experience but it works fine), and in some parts of Paris (in my experience, east and suburbs) people usually help you in the stairs with your stroller (it's not convenient or comfortable to rely on others but in practice it seems to work). Anyway this is not like Paris mayor has any power on that, the transport authority though announced a few years that the main priority after the Grand Paris Express will be accessibility in the historical Paris network. And fortunately after two years hopefully your kid can walk and you can carry it without a stroller.
> Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside.
Maybe it is a newborn and you do not bring the stroller nor any clothes on rainy days it is that bad. Don't get me wrong, Paris is not a clean city, there are empty nitrogen tanks, puffs and cigarettes lying on the ground pretty much in every arrondissement, but syringes, even on the colline du crack I can hardly remember having seen even one (but it is very dirty there! with packaging, paper, cardboard, bottles).
I still think there should be a higher priority on sanitation but I also think you are exaggerating a bit.
Slightly off-topic but NYC went through a similar process when congestion pricing met legal battle after legal battle. Long to short, there was a calculated effort to make midtown less and less vehicle-friendly. The "hack" was to take streets / aves and repurpose those for pedestrians. Special walking lanes, more "park cafes", bike lanes, etc. None were stated as being anti-vehicle - as that would open up legal challenges - but that was obviously the intention.
And it worked, there's multiple studies showing that retail business in the neighborhoods that limited car accessibility is up while pollution and noise is down and for those who choose to drive into the city, parking is easier.
Complete tangent, but I met my equally nerdy brother in Paris last month.
It was my first time, and his fourth. We stayed by the Republique metro station.
After the literal 30th indie Manga [0] shop that we walked by, I asked him: "how are all these shops financially feasible?" He said: "look inside."
Holy crap, they all had customers inside! I had no idea that Japanese culture has such a strong presence in the heart of Paris, in the middle of Europe.
[0] I should be clear, this was not just Manga. There were so many cool indie retro video game shops that it blew my little mind.
Pedestrianization of neighborhoods like Rivoli did decrease shopping at first, but ended up exploding again once people got used to it.
I have to say, I look forward to visiting Paris again as soon as I can find an excuse. I know there are things people could say negatively, as one could say about any large city, but the energy and diversity really drew me in.
I also really like French food, especially when mixed with the crazy chefs in that area that we stayed.
Edit: just so everyone knows, this is what an airport terminal could be, according to Air France: https://postimg.cc/ZCww5xFs - So cool that I had to take photo.
This was the least customer-hostile area that I have ever seen at an airport. Oh, you have to wait for a flight? Just lay back and chill.
france has a really strong tradition of comics, it's not just manga
I learned about la nouvelle manga recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_nouvelle_manga
"There was a rise in hospitalizations of pedestrians and cyclists"
looks at the reason
CARS.
Cyclists hitting pedestrians.
Only rich people get to drive now
This is a tired and unhelpful refrain. Only rich people fill their cars with gasoline without wincing at the price. Only rich people get to own 7 houses. Only rich people get to fill their pools in the middle of a drought.
There are a lot of things that “only rich people get to do”. Reducing the number of people who engage in destructive activities is a good thing, even if it means only rich people can still do it.
I've lived in Paris for 20 years without even having the driver's license.
How many working class people would be happier and less stressed if they had high-quality transit to replace their car bills?
Correct. Rich people can easily afford the congestion charges and higher parking fees. These policies impact working class people more.
> An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.
- Enrique Peñalosa Londoño
I go to Berkeley Ca often on weekends. As a kid we'd go to SF too because why not. But now it's another $8+ for the bridge, and even if you find street parking it's another $2 an hour anywhere you might want to jump out for a few minutes. Basically it's an extra $20 to get the opportunity to spend your money in SF. So now I haven't been to my favorite coffee shop or pizza place in years. Oh well.
Why not take the train...?
No. Rich people zoom in to work and take a stroll to the market on Saturday morning, and they enjoy tapas a the quaint Bistro on the bank of the seine.
Driving is for plebes
I don’t know how you’re defining “rich” but the wealthiest folks I know all go to work physically. They get in their cars, or in one case on their bike, and commute to work like everyone else.
I think Paris has bigger problems to worry about.
> I think Paris has bigger problems to worry about.
Say what you mean to say.
The housing market is a bit broken: either expensive private housing or affordable publicly managed one, but very hard to get. People often cannot relocate. Big debt. Security, with addicted errands in some districts.
Of course you can reduce highways and infrastructure and reduce traffic. But you also choked access to the city.
And no public transportation does not fix the problem. It helps a bit, but at the end of the day biggest part of far commuters are gradually cut off.
If decentralization is the target, then just state it.
I would assume that if you’re commuting to Paris from far away, the train is generally _quicker_, tbh. AIUI the RER is mostly 140km/h quality lines.
Many cities in the world have many thousands of far commuters arriving by train every day. And many of those people even live in single family homes and own cars.
> choked access to the city
Citation needed.
Pedestrian and cyclist friendly cities have more vibrant street life, and are more attractive places to live. I've never heard of car restrictions leading to more suburbanization.
In an American city I would bet on the mobility impaired people to win the cage match against the fewer cars people. They are tougher than they look.
Edit: The responses reasonably talk about the officially mobility impaired people. I was thinking more about the unofficially mobility impaired people by obesity, like me. French obesity rates are ~16% compared to ~42% in the US. That contributes to a fierce US constituency for cars.
A city with less cars is a net positive for mobility impaired people.
It frees space for people (wider sidewalks...), reduce the risks of navigating the streets, and for the ones that have to use a car, there's less traffic and less people stealing dedicated parking spots.
Less cars also means less mobility impaired people. Cars create them through crashes and a lifetime of sedentariness.
Finally, it should be noted that most of the time when someone says "what about mobility impaired people?", when debating reallocating public space to people instead of cars, they are not mobility impaired themselves and don't actually care about them. They just try to guilt shame their opponents to win.
> they are not mobility impaired themselves and don't actually care about them.
That's a baseless and false slur. My first thought was that visiting Paris would be difficult because of all of the walking. I fall in the large gap between disabled and fit. On the one hand I would benefit from more walking, on the other I would not get much enjoyment out of a city that way, and would tend to drive far to services where I could park nearby.
I think you’d have a fairly miserable time navigating any major European city _by car_, even before these policies. They’re largely not designed for it. For a start, where are you parking? It’s not like parking was particularly plentiful or conveniently located before this change.
These sorts of reforms are generally aimed at discouraging people from commuting in by car. People who _regularly drive around central Paris_ (except for delivery drivers etc) would be a fairly small constituency.
Maybe it's my European bias talking, but "visiting a city" with a car seems like the worst idea possible.
Basically a city is either small enough to be crossed walking, or big enough to have public transportation.
And after walking or cycling, public transportation is the best way to visit the city. In Paris, there's bus stops or metro (subway) stations everywhere. A bus or metro puts the passenger at a higher level than walkers/cyclists/car passengers and with huge windows, allowing to enjoy a unique view of the city.
The view of the Eiffel Tower you get when crossing the Seine on the Bir-Hakeim bridge is an experience that can ONLY be enjoyed by riding the metro. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cqIJVzkLD4c
> and for the ones that have to use a car, there's less traffic and less people stealing dedicated parking spots.
The article mentions there's now constant traffic jams for city buses in Paris. It seems best for people who can cycle, walk, or people who already live in the city and don't need to travel much.
> constant traffic jams
Well, no, the article says that
> traffic jams in Paris have risen 4% [in 11 years]
That's just a weird way of saying that the reforms didn't go far enough.
> I was thinking more about the unofficially mobility impaired people by obesity, like me
The vast majority of obese people are not meaningfully mobility impaired.
Cars are enclosed sofas that move around. Could car dominance be contributing to obesity?
I think you're selling cars short. For one thing, sofas don't have a plethora of cupholders that can accommodate any size sugary beverage within arm's reach.
Fewer cars overall should increase the availability for those who need it. Same for drivers overall but most can’t see past the first step which is reducing lanes and parking.
My buddy with no arms or legs would beg to differ. He can't afford taxis because he can't work a real job. His friends/family can't drive him around because you need a custom vehicle for his chair. But he can use bike lanes and sidewalks independently without too muuch trouble.
Car-dependent sprawl creates mobility impaired people where there were previously none. Many people are too old, too young, too intoxicated, too vision impaired or too poor to drive. Lack of viable transportation options is the greatest barrier to upward economic mobility for Americans today.
Huh? Fewer cars seems like a win to those who really rely on them. Could probably wind up with more accessible spots if done right.