Comment by Earw0rm
2 days ago
Even where public transport and cycling infra is more than adequate, you still have to restrict cars.
Otherwise some people will choose driving to an extent that it screws up the public transport for everyone else.
At least that's the lesson from London's buses. Paris built a more extensive metro system (London's tube is equivalent in the areas where it operates, but less than half the city is within 15 minutes walk of a Tube stop) so that part is deconflicted at least.
But Paris is running into the same issue as they try to build out their cycle network. It can't be done without restricting cars, much to the annoyance of those who've built lifestyles around driving.
Which really isn't at all necessary in a city like London or Paris, but that doesn't mean people don't do it.
I'm not ideologically against people driving, especially EVs, but on a practical level it seems to be very difficult to accommodate demand for driving in a dense-enough-to-be-interesting city without screwing everything else up: pedestrian and cycling safety, bus reliability, street space usage, noise and air quality.
What do you mean by "Paris"? If it's the City of Paris (Paris intra-muros), then it's not comparable to London in terms of size or density. IMO, for the purposes of this discussion, Paris should mean the whole Paris region, since most of the people live outside the actual city limits. And in those areas, access to public transportation is hit or miss. Some people are close to suburban trains, but many are not.
Then, another consideration, which is also very important, is what the available transportation actually looks like. By that I mean how often are there trains, how reliable are they? And, in Paris and probably Central London, too, are you actually able to get on board, or do you need to wait 3 trains packed to the brim?
I don't know about London, but in Paris, the suburban trains have quite poor punctuality.
Note that most car traffic in Paris is actually people from outside the city proper, so those who are most affected by these transit issues.
Additionally, a lot of traffic also goes from suburb to suburb, which, currently, is a terribly bad joke transport-wise. When I was in college, the drive from my parents' house was around 20-30 minutes. Public transit was over one hour with multiple changes, one of which had around one minute of leeway before a 30 minute wait. They are building new circular lines around Paris, but they won't be ready for a few years.
As someone who ever only walks or takes public transit I'm all for limiting car noise and pollution. But what I'd love to see is some form of improvement of the offer (a carrot). Riding around packed like sardines in trains with questionable reliability is a tough sell. I'm lucky enough I can modulate my commute hours to avoid peak times, but not everyone is so lucky. Right now, the city is mostly spending money on making driving hell (all stick).
And bikes are fine, I guess, if you have where to store them. I wouldn't leave any kind of bike unattended around my office. There's also a bike sharing scheme which used to be nice, but for a few months now it's basically impossible to find a usable bike. And I tend to avoid peak times for those, too.
London is mostly ok for overcrowding since the pandemic and remote working. Before that it was a big problem.
The main problem with the buses isn't a lack of them, but that they get held up by endless car traffic. When the roads are quiet, they're efficient.
Suburb to suburb is a challenge for most cities, but I'm not convinced people need to do that as much as they say, it's more they do it because they can. There's some journeys here that are awkward without driving, but in a city of ten million people you're pretty spoilt for choice either way.
I've only visited Paris for work and tourism, but the rail network seems denser there and better set up for short trips - London's trains are fast but they rely on buses to fill the gaps and for short trips: the Deep Tube stations take you quite a long time to get to the platform, so if you're going less than about 2km it's often quicker to walk.
And in the centre of town, walking is as quick as the bus, hire bikes are the quickest way of getting around, but when I've used them I've found they can be in poor condition.