Financial incentives do not make sense: having a car in Paris is already crazy expensive.<p>During the 20 years I lived there, I cycled everywhere, and I had an almost weekly accident, always at the same three intersections -- cars running into stationary bikes, half the time openly on purpose (there is a bolo for a taxi driver for attempted manslaughter under my name: his plaque was unlegible on the camera, but him accelerating twice into my bike was clear).<p>The local police knows those intersections, there are camera monitoring those. Those are on large axis, and have the largest concentration of tourists (about 50 people waiting at the light at any time of the day).<p>If you want to make Paris a biking city, no need to spend millions; all the protected lanes become useless ever 50 m when an intersection shows up and dozens of car just want to run you over no matter what.<p>Just ask Police to enforce laws on attempting to kill people and make clear that a car can be used as a weapon. You do not even need to budget their presence: they are already there, watching and helpless.
When it comes to cycling, a network is only as good as its weakest link. Seville had an eleven fold increase in cycling by 'simply' installing protected cycle lanes. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/28/seville-cycling-capital-southern-europe-bike-lanes" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/28/seville-cyclin...</a><p>The golden rule is to segregate. Give cars, bicycles, and feet their own space. DO NOT mix. If somebody can make a choice to put their 6 year old child on a bike and cycle around a city, you've got it right.
> Paris has a pollution problem. Instead of the smoke from Gauloise cigarettes and the aroma of freshly baked bread, the air is packed with smog, an issue that got so bad one day last month, the city forcibly halved traffic by allowing only cars with odd-number plates to drive.<p>Of course this could have nothing do to with Germany phasing out its nuclear power plants and having to reopen coal power plants instead.<p>They massively increased the share of solar and wind in their energy production, but still need more traditional methods of power generation to cover when those 2 are not providing energy, hence more coal [1].<p>And coal is incredibly polluting. See [2] for example for CO2 emissions :<p>> In July 2014, a group of NGOs published a study on the EU’s 30 worst CO2-emitting thermal power plants. German power stations featured six times among the 10 dirtiest.<p>CO2 is not the problem for city pollution of course, it's the rest of the small particulate matter that is.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germanys-energy-transition-explained-in-6-charts" rel="nofollow">https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germanys-energy...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/01/24/coal-casts-cloud-over-germany-s-energy-revolution" rel="nofollow">http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/01/24/coal-casts-cloud-over-g...</a>
Most of the big avenues in Paris already have separated bike lanes on either the sidewalk or the bus lane but the road (for regular cars) still takes 80% of the space. The goal here is to leave more space to pedestrians (like on the river front) and reduce the "car space" in the city.<p>The cost of public biking in Paris (3$/month) is very very very small when you consider the cost of having a car (at least 200$/month) or taking the subway (around 70$ / month).<p>One problem though, Paris has some hills and people tend to avoid these areas. Using your legs is great yes, healthy etc... but hey, we'd like electric bikes :)
It's good to be ambitious, but the Paris goal of increasing share of trips from 5 % to 15 % in five years sounds somewhat unrealistic. I'd be surprised if you can double the numbers in five years.<p>In Helsinki, the share of trips made by bike is 11 % and the goal is to reach 17 % by 2025, in ten years time. I think even that is ambitious but not entirely unfeasible.<p>(However, it must be said that there seem to be vary many different ways to calculate the share of trips done on bike vs. other ways, and if you change the way you make statistics, you can of course indicate huge progress...)
Sounds like a utopian dream compared to here in Sydney where the roads minister is ripping up our miniscule cycle network and replacing it with "part time" cycle ways and loading bays.
The bikeshare should refund money from your annual fee as you use it.<p>Bikes on local trains is huge.<p><a href="http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/07/if-an-electric-bike-is-ever-going-to-hit-it-big-in-the-us-its-this-one/375167/" rel="nofollow">http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/07/if-an-electric-bike-i...</a>
The weather is too poor here to make this a realistic solution. We try to velib as much as we can, but you can only reliably bike maybe 4 months out of the year if you're lucky. The remaining days are either too wet or too cold or both. No amount of bike lanes or police enforcement can change the generally miserable weather of Paris.
I asked how much of cell phone that can be recycled, no one has answered the question yet. Thats a bit scary, don't look under that stone and ask that question kind of feeling.<p>How much of electronics is recycled, how much can be recycled?