I would rather float to work like the Swiss.

https://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-workers-commute-...

Yeah, unless you’re a pedestrian. Cyclists in NL in cities like Utrecht or Amsterdam are worse than car drivers.

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.

> 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.

Exactly.

Get a rain coat, a warm coat, take it off, and make sure you've got a big crate on your bike.

Wind does suck. I can't help you there.

I often say that when cycling I don't mind the cold, the rain or the wind, only when you get all three at once it gets bad.

God I hate this argument so much - it's just such an obviously incorrect statement which is always hard to win against because then the other side will always say "well what if you live in Novosibirsk and it's -60C outside, WHAT THEN CYCLISTS" - well nothing, if you live there then yeah I guess it doesn't work. But if you live in London, Paris, Warsaw, Barcelona, Talin or Stockholm it just doesn't hold water , and these are places that get very hot, very cold, get plenty of rain, snow and wind. It's like that old thing about beetles being too heavy to fly but also they can't read so they don't care - somehow cyclists in these places just get on their bikes and get to work and carry stuff and stay dry or cold or warm and it's fine, despite what the internet thinks.

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.

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.

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.

> 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...

Put on a jacket.

One of the saddest effects of car-dependency is people forgetting how to dress themselves for the weather.

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.

Alternatives naturally become more viable over time as more and more people find car use impossible, but its kind of hard to tell in advance which lanes of public transport are most necessary to improve. So imo the best solution is just to do it, and then see what happens and adapt. It's too hard to plan out everything in advance, and if you try you get deadlocked politically and nothing ends up happening. So you just find the best lever you can to reduce traffic immediately, and just start pressing it. But you warn everyone that you're pressing it, and when you do so you do it slowly.

The reality is that a lot of traffic is simply unnecessary, and dissipates once you add some friction. The most extreme example of that is the rise of remote work during and after Covid. As it turns out, none of these people actually needed to go anywhere.

And more generally, cars induce their own demand simply by virtue of being the fastest and most comfortable option, and they shape the environment around them to depend on them. Small local shops get outcompeted by distant behemoths due it being more convenient to drive. People move to a large house in a distant suburb rather than a small apartment because they know it's just thirty minutes away from work by car anyways. The easier it is to drive, the more entrenched driving becomes. And any way you slice it, undoing that process will cause pain, so you might as well go ahead and start, because you're never going to find a way to prevent the consequences anyway.

Generally, restrictions on cars make public transport better automatically, as they make buses work better.

None of the changes in the comment make owning a car impossible, they just make driving marginally less privileged over walking and biking.

Well I sold off my car after realizing I enjoyed the bike ride to work. Then a year later an older family member had a health crisis requiring hospital visits at all possible times of the day and night for many months. Couldnt always rely on cabs and that was the only time I regretted selling the car. But we got through it with friends and fam sharing transport duties. Quite a crazy period so I could imagine it becoming real complicated for certain issues.

Effectively NIMBYism, but for cars. The political backlash would stop all progress. People don’t like change, even for the better.

There are places where car is simply the mean of transport - to the point where using the car is preferred to literally a five minutes walk.

In contexts like this, using a car is perceived as a right - restricting usage doesn't make people think "I'll take the chance to use the bike", rather "How the f*ck do I get there now?".

You have not heard people complaining about cities impeding traffic, likely, because of the bubble you live in. That is the thing that makes regular people to run for the city offices. A whole lot of recent "urbanization" is not going to survive for long because of this IMHO.

In some places it is

https://adventure.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Hero-Gettin...

That's a pure negative sum game though. The elevation gives you only a relative improvement in visibility if other vehicles don't increase in elevation in response, at the cost of sightlines for other road users and especially pedestrians, unless they wear platform shoes.

The same of course goes with mass.

Usually this kind of negative-sum-prisoner's-dilemma incentive matrix is resolved by government intervention which changes the payoff structure.

Fair. When I'm in Canada I do see enough big trucks and SUVs though, versus Paris or Prague (the two places in Europe where I regularly visit/live) where the number is basically zero.

When I look at traffic in my city, I rarely see it caused by full packing. Rather throughout seems to be the issue.

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

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...