Seriously, the Paris sewer museum is a must-see for any urbanist visitor. Sure, you should go up in the Eiffel Tower, visit the Vieux Louvre, ride the trams, stroll the boulevards and rent a Vélib. But the sewer museum is where it’s at. And it’s much less crowded than the Eiffel Tower.

Sadly, the official web page is only in French. The English list of museums doesn’t even mention it, but there’s a Wikipedia page.

http://www.paris.fr/portail/Culture/Portal.lut?page_id=5885&document_type_id=5&document_id=5943&portlet_id=13165
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Sewer_Museum

I also recommend the canal tours.

http://www.canauxrama.com/saint-martin.htm

Commenter 21 is correct in that Paris does house many of its utility lines in the relatively cavernous sewers that Haussmann installed in Paris in the 1850s. These sewers actually have little street signs in them, and you can walk through them and know exactly where you are. You can see the pipes and cables that handle water, electricity, phone lines, etc. neatly housed in the upper part of the curved ceilings. I talk about this in my book Beneath the Metropolis, as paulb said.

The thing is, as I see it, alongside the physical infrastructure there’s also a figurative infrastructure of systems for training, apprenticeship, promotions, career paths, organization of departments…. Traditions. That’s what really makes those glassy streets and hissing, smooth trains possible. The DOT and the subway people have state of the art equipment. It just doesn’t produce state of the art results.

Still, I’m not sure I really want a European system here and I wonder when somebody makes a speech about turning New York into some kind of a “Copenhagen on the Hudson.”

I’m veering off topic ain’t I? The city could do a better job of paving.

Most of the transportation infrastructure in Europe is funded by the very high gas taxes. Choices abound. But since they trust each other and their governments enough to actually tax and spend together for the civic good they have both better roads and better mass transit (and better bike lanes) than we do.

What is third world about us is our primitive, atavistic, distrust of each other and our political leaders.

Also when they build a city street in Germany the foundation starts about 3 feet below the final road surface which puts it BELOW THE FROST LINE. What a concept! Put the base of the road below the frost line then you’ll never have to worry about frost heaving. This is civil engineering 101. Build it right the first time and then you can forget about it for the next 50 years.

Besides, if there were more trolleys, they might provide a sometime alternative to cycling.

Says repaving is up and includes a “know your enemy” recognition feature for potholes, cuts etc.

I used to live in the West Village, on a cobblestone street that was degenerating into a dirt road. This was when they were putting in cable TV and the guys who put the cobbles back would have no idea what they were doing. 3 months after they left the stones were like Shane McGowan’s teeth. The parts of the cobblestone pavement that had never been torn up were so smooth you could bike comfortably on them.

Of course, we’ve had 70 years to catch up.

ha ha ha hoo hee ha ha!

oh, jeez, inter agency communication?! now THAT is a laugh!

>Comment by Jonathan

Are a lot of bikers riding in the middle of the streets these days? At least you know when/where to expect rails in the street.

Maybe Jonathan just needs to take a chill pill.

I mean, okay, you probably don’t want electric lines catching on fire next to natural gas and steam pipes, but other than that, why not just run a single tunnel? There must be cities that do this. You could even run freight trains through them.

How about all the agencies actually talking to each other and fixing the infastructure when they repave the street? On our block, it took about 2 weeks after repaving the street before some private company tore a hole in it to fix something or other then paved it over badly

And of course it takes forever or never to repaint the bike lane.

OUCH! Must we be so abrasive?

When I see tracks in the street, I see, in your words this week, “surfaces that can only be described as poor and frankly dangerous for someone on a bike.”

Is it too much to ask for a little consistency in your posts? You are starting to sound like a senile aunt who just likes to complain and has her hearing aid turned down too far to hear any cogent responses.