The mayor of a global metropolis, elected to his first term in 2001, set out to reduce driving and promote greener modes of transportation in his city. Congestion pricing turned out to be unfeasible, because influential political forces in the suburbs believed, rightly or wrongly, that charging people to drive into the urban core was regressive. Undaunted, the mayor found other means to achieve his transportation agenda.

The mayor is Bertrand Delanoë, and the city is Paris, where private auto use has dropped 20 percent in a few short years.

As Mayor Bloomberg and the team at DOT chart a way forward without London-style congestion charging, it's worth noting that for all the differences between New York and Paris, Delanoë also confronted a vocal car culture while winning huge victories for pedestrians, bikes, and transit. To get a better sense of how New York can apply the lessons of Paris, Streetsblog spoke to Luc Nadal and Aimée Gauthier of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy about the hurdles faced by Delanoë and his deputy mayor for transportation, Denis Baupin.

To begin with, congestion pricing was considered completely untenable from a political point of view. Paris proper is not much larger than the proposed congestion zone in New York, and like Manhattan it is increasingly seen as the domain of the prosperous. Levying a fee perceived mainly to affect the working-class suburbs "would be very difficult to sell politically," said Nadal. "Mayor Delanoë put that solution aside from the beginning."

Delanoë and Baupin decided instead to rethink how the public right-of-way was divvied up on Paris streets. In 2002, they launched Quartiers Verts ("Green Neighborhoods"), an initiative to improve pedestrian space and reduce traffic in residential areas. The administration anticipated especially strong opposition to the parking policies in the plan -- higher rates, a reduction in the amount of on-street parking, and the elimination of free parking altogether. To counteract the expected outcry, the city tied those reforms to the introduction of residential parking permits, which are now available for a nominal yearly fee. With RPP still fresh in New Yorkers' minds following the congestion pricing debate, could permits be an effective carrot in a similar overhaul of parking policy here?

Delanoë's next major initiative -- Espaces Civilisés ("Civilized Spaces") -- took aim at Paris's most car-friendly boulevards. The first such project, on Boulevard de Magenta, trimmed a six-lane road down to two traffic lanes and two bus lanes, with the remainder going to sidewalks and street trees. This substantial redistribution of space did not happen overnight. Launched in 2002, Espaces Civilisés yielded its first finished boulevard in 2005. About half a dozen such transformations have been completed so far, with plans for another on the way.

Separate bus and bike lanes on Boulevard Rochechouart, one of Paris's new "civilized spaces."

As DOT embarks on a roughly similar project for 34th Street, Paris offers some insight about what to expect from the public and the press. "There’s been widespread satisfaction on the part of the public at large, and the local communities," said Nadal. "However, there’s been a lot of media activity around the congestion that some of these projects have caused during construction and after." The media fixation on slower traffic flows was picked up by Delanoë's political opposition, though Nadal notes it didn't find much traction. "They tried to use it as best they could," he said, but Delanoë was re-elected to a second six-year term last fall, garnering 58 percent of the vote.

The construction of physically separated lanes for buses and bikes also set off concerns about business deliveries. The great majority of new bus lanes are curbside, so the city identified places to reserve for delivery parking, Nadal said. A new type of permit was issued for store owners, contractors, and other businesses who need short-term parking for trucks and vans. Vehicles with the delivery permit can park in the special slots for up to 30 minutes at no charge.

A delivery zone set off from a separated bus lane. At four meters wide, the lanes are designed to allow buses to pass bicycles and half-parked delivery vehicles (photo: Luc Nadal).

The Quartiers Verts and Espaces Civilisés initiatives helped generate a 50 percent increase in bicycle modeshare, but the boost wasn't visible enough to justify the expense of the bike infrastructure. Then came Vélib, the city's ambitious bikeshare system. Part of the motivation behind Vélib, said Gauthier, was to make better use of existing bikeways. Providing public access to more than 10,000 bikes that anyone can ride for a pittance has doubled the number of bike trips made on Paris streets. Bicycle modeshare now stands at about three percent.

This transformative leap has come at a minimal perceived cost to the city, thanks to a deal with JCDecaux, the outdoor advertising giant. "The Vélib program was a really innovative way of packaging a deal so it didn't cost a lot of money," said Gauthier. "They worked with Decaux to implement the whole system. Total investment and operation costs are covered by Decaux. In return they get the right to do public advertising. That way it doesn't feel like it's taxpayer expense." While Decaux retains the revenue from billboards, bus shelters, and other advertising in public spaces, the city pockets the fares paid by Vélib customers, estimated to exceed 30 million euros per year (even though the first 30 minutes of bike rental are free). For more details on the Vélib contract, fee structure, and other aspects of the Paris mobility plan, see the 2007 edition [PDF] of ITDP's magazine, Sustainable Transport.

The Vélib station on Rue Louis Blanc. Most stations have replaced on-street parking spaces, adding up to thousands of fewer spaces for cars by the time of full implementation.

"Vélib has been a smashing success politically and in the media," said Nadal. After seeing Vélib in action, Paris's inner-ring suburbs -- the rough equivalent of New York's outer boroughs -- clamored for their own piece of it. Already, a few municipalities have partially implemented some form of bikeshare. The Paris experience suggests that, in New York, launching an intensive pilot program with stations clustered in a dense network in one part of the city -- the band between 14th and Houston, say -- could set the stage for an incremental but steady buy-in from other neighborhoods.

The expansion of Vélib has not come without challenges. For one, Paris's suburbs have their own contracts with outdoor advertising firms. To integrate with the Paris system, each would have to reach an agreement with JCDecaux, raising legal questions of unfair competition. Putting aside the vagaries of French anti-trust law, the pertinent issue for New York is that Paris and its metro region must also cope with problems of disjointed jurisdiction and bureaucratic silos. Nowhere is this more instructive than in the case of the Mobilien, the BRT-esque system launched by Delanoë and Baupin.

Paris has built dedicated busways for the Mobilien. Expanding enhanced bus service region-wide will require complex negotiations between the regional transportation authority and different municipalities.

Featuring dedicated bus corridors, signal priority, and raised stations, the Mobilien required the city to make significant changes to the infrastructure of Paris streets, including the conversion of on-street parking to bus right-of-way. At first, of course, there was an outcry. In the neighborhood of Montparnasse on the Left Bank, the locals held a funeral procession for the neighborhood and flew flags that read, "Le Mort de Montparnasse" ("The Death of Montparnasse"). The owner of the famous Café Select worried that the loss of parking space would kill his business. Now most of his employees have a reliable bus to get them to work, and it's nicer to sit at a sidewalk café on a street that isn't choked with traffic. "We've come to love it," he said.

Taking the Mobilien across city limits, however, is proving trickier than winning over public opinion. The bus network is planned by a regional authority that negotiates routes with each municipality. "Decisionmaking can be protracted and political," said Nadal, especially since some suburbs are much more car-oriented than Paris. In last year's local elections, candidates debated whether to streamline this process by creating a new municipal jurisdiction that would include the first ring of suburbs. By comparison, some of the inter-agency cooperation that would most benefit New York -- like having the MTA agree to let DOT's BRT routes cross East River bridges -- looks like a walk in the park.

Along with expanding Vélib, the Mobilien, and a new network of tramways ringing the city, Delanoë plans to use his second term to launch a system of car-sharing, or, to use the French term, "autopartage." Renting a public car will cost significantly more than a Vélib bike, though regular use would add up to much less, of course, than maintaining a car of one's own. While the network of car-sharing stations -- located mostly in existing garages -- is intended to actually reduce car ownership, the administration has cannily pitched it as proof that Delanoë is not out to get motorists. "He can say that he is not anti-car, but for a rational use of cars when there's really a need," said Nadal.

Appeasing and outfoxing the auto lobby in one fell swoop -- that's the kind of deft maneuver Delanoë has relied on more than any innate Parisian antipathy to the car. Something to keep in mind the next time someone says they can do it Paris but never in New York.

Photos: Top two - Ben Fried; Delivery space - Luc Nadal; Vélib station - xtof/Flickr; Mobilien - Aaron Naparstek.

When Transportation Alternatives, Project for Public Spaces and the Open Planning Project started the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign nearly three years ago, the plan was to build a movement that would work block-by-block and neighborhood-by-neighborhood to reclaim the city's streets from the automobile on behalf of pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders. With congestion pricing knocked off of the civic agenda, in a funny way, we're back to the original plan: Reclaim the streets.

If London was the model for congestion pricing then Paris is, probably, the best big city example of the kind of street space reclamation that now needs to happen in New York City. Here is a short piece I wrote on the topic for this week's New York Magazine:

With the death of Mayor Bloomberg’s London-style congestion-pricing proposal, New York's transportation advocates have turned to Paris for inspiration. Bertrand Delanoë was elected mayor of the French capital in 2001 on a platform of creating more "civilized space" and a promise to "fight with all the means at my disposal against the harmful, ever-increasing, and unacceptable hegemony of the automobile."

Shortly after taking office, he dumped 2,000 tons of sand on the Pompidou Expressway, which runs along the rive droite, and called it Paris Plage. Complete with volleyball nets, dance classes, a climbing wall, and a floating pool, the beach attracts 4 million visitors each summer and is paid for almost entirely by sponsors. Elsewhere, Delanoë eliminated on-street parking to create lanes for Le Mobilien, a citywide bus network with real-time electronic scheduling information at the stops, physically separated to keep cars out of the way. Bikes got their own protected lanes, too, and he doubled the size of the path network. His pièce de résistance? Last summer, Paris launched Vélib, the municipal bike-sharing system.

And while congestion opponents don’t understand the Francophilia -- "New York City is unique, and I don’t think such a plan would work here," says Brooklyn councilman Lew Fidler -- advocates see it as a road map. "Now, it’s all about taking pavement away from automobiles and reallocating it to more efficient modes," says Transportation Alternatives’ Paul Steely White.

Similar ideas are already in the works as part of city transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan’s implementation of Bloomberg's PlaNYC. Last summer, the city opened a separated bike lane on a nine-block stretch of Ninth Avenue. Another, on Williamsburg's Kent Street, got the nod last week. There are more to come, along with cordoned-off bus lanes (the rendering above shows a future Amsterdam Avenue). Also last week, work began on a new public plaza where Gansevoort Street, Ninth Avenue, and Little West 12th Street intersect; Sadik-Kahn promises more such projects, none of which requires Albany’s approval. There are no plans to turn the FDR into a beach, but the city is floating the idea of making some streets car-free this summer. The first attempt at car-free Sundays on Soho’s Prince Street died when neighbors feared it would make it too "mall-like." Alors!

The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy has chosen Paris for its 2008 Sustainable Transportation Award. In a letter from the ITDP Board of Directors to Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, the Institute praises the French capitol's recent transportation policies, most notably the Vélib project:

Under your leadership, Paris has implemented a range of innovative mobility solutions with vision, commitment and vigor. Vélib, the boldest bicycle share program to date, makes the city a leader in the implementation of a new form of individual mass transit. Programs such as Quartier verts, Espace civilisés, 'Réseau vert' shared streets, and the growing network of quality cycling facilities have made strides in reclaiming street space for people. The new 'Mobilien' Bus Rapid Transit, and 'Traverses' Microbus neighborhood loops have increased transportation service and scope. All these achievements stand as new symbols of the priority of walking, cycling, and riding public transportation over private cars in urban space.

It is because of these innovative efforts that we wish to award Paris the 2008 Sustainable Transport Award. London will also be receiving the Award in recognition of its expanded congestion charging zone, implementing a low emissions zone, and t2025, the city's 20 year transport plan.

Photo: Pascal Lemoine/Flickr

Serge Schemman has a great little essay on Parisian transportation and public space policy on the editorial page of today's New York Times. I was recently in Paris as well and was struck by the remarkable transformation currently underway in that city. London's congestion pricing system is held up as the model for New York City but the Parisian policy of re-allocating street space to buses, bikes, pedestrians and taxis could be done, for the most part, without going to Albany for permission. Schemman offers a nice summary:

Now that Michael Moore has broken a taboo by holding up France as a model for national health care, maybe it’s safe to point out other things France seems to do right. Like how Paris is trying to manage traffic and auto pollution. What Paris has done right is to make it awful to get around by car and awfully easy to get around by public transportation or by bike. Any tourist in a rent-a-car who’s circumnavigated the Arc de Triomphe most likely will never drive in Paris again. But there are plenty of Parisians who do it all the time — far too many, in fact. So Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, a Socialist, vowed in coming to office in 2001 to reduce car traffic by 40 percent by 2020. He’s serious about it. I live near the Boulevard St. Michel, and two years ago the city laid down a granite divider between the bus-only lane and the cars, squeezing private cars from three lanes to two. Taxis and bicycles may use the bus lane. At the same time, every bus stop was newly equipped with a screen that told you how long the wait was for the bus. During rush hour, when the cars stand still along Boul’ Mich, there’s nothing better than zooming past them in a bus.

If it turns out that New Yorkers are not yet prepared to embrace congestion pricing, and if Albany remains its intransigent self, Mr. Bloomberg should get over his fascination with London — and look instead at what’s happening in Paris.

Last week, Bertrand Delanoë, Paris’s maverick and popular mayor, introduced the world’s largest and most ambitious bike-share program: 10,600 bikes (scaling up to 20,600 by the end of the year) available at 750 “docking stations” situated every 1,000 feet. With a swipe of a credit card and a modest fee, Parisians (and tourists) can now pick up or drop off a bike in any neighborhood in the city. Riders no longer need to worry about storing their bikes in tiny apartments. The program’s high-tech stations make theft virtually impossible. And with about twice as many bike stations as Métro stops, a free bike is pretty much always within reach.

New York’s subways and buses are already at capacity, and as we prepare to add one million new residents by 2030, our existing mass transit will require improvements that will take years (if not generations) to put in place. Mr. Bloomberg has fewer than 1,000 days left as mayor. His best chance at securing an environmentalist legacy is to embrace bike-sharing.

Vélib is the brainchild of Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, a Socialist and longtime green campaigner who has set a target for the city to reduce car traffic by 40 percent by 2020. Since he took office in 2001, his administration has added about 125 miles of bicycle paths, at the expense of lanes for cars, prompting accusations from drivers that it has aggravated congestion in the city.

Still, only about 40,000 of the 2.5 million Parisians say they use their bicycles regularly. Mr. Delanoë would like to raise that number to 250,000 by the end of the year.

City Hall is hoping to draw on the experience of smaller-scale rental programs in other cities like Berlin and Stockholm to address concerns about theft and financial viability that ended an experimental program in Amsterdam in the 1960s.

The key, Mr. Aidenbaum said, is to make it easy. "What this initiative does is to take away some of the inconveniences of owning a bike in Paris," he said, "the lack of storage space in Paris buildings, the issue of theft and the hassle of maintenance."

First indications are positive. Even before the docking stations opened, 13,000 people had bought annual subscriptions online. On Sunday, some docking stations were so popular that they temporarily ran out of bikes.

Denis Bocquet, 37, an urban planner who divides his time between Paris and Berlin, had to wait in line before renting a bike with his partner, Nora Lafi. From now on, he said, he would use the Vélib to go to work during his stints in Paris.

"It used to be stressful and dangerous to cycle in Paris, but the city has changed, and this could change it even more," Mr. Bocquet said.

Photo: Alastair Miller/Bloomberg News

The Velo'v public bicycle system in Lyon, France. By the end of 2007 the city of Paris will have 1,450 bike stations offering 20,000 bicycles.

The Washington Post reports:

On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city's image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place.

The program was meant "not just to modify the equilibrium between the modes of transportation and reduce air pollution, but also to modify the image of the city and to have a city where humans occupy a larger space."

The Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, has the same aim, said his aide, Jean-Luc Dumesnil: "We think it could change Paris's image -- make it quieter, less polluted, with a nicer atmosphere, a better way of life."

But there is a practical side, too, Dumesnil said. A recent study analyzed different trips in the city "with a car, bike, taxi and walking, and the bikes were always the fastest."

"It's faster than the bus or metro, it's good exercise, and it's almost free," said Vianney Paquet, 19, who is studying law in Lyon. Paquet said that he uses the rental bikes four or five times a day and pays 10 euros (about $13) a year, half for an annual membership fee and half for rental credit that he never actually spends because his rides typically last just a few minutes.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë has unveiled his plans to cut traffic in the capital by 40%. The plans, which also aim to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases by 60%, has met serious opposition with both drivers and right-wing parties.

Despite this opposition, the Mayor's detailed plans were adopted by the town council. The plans cannot go into effect until local elections in 2008, which Bertrand is expected to win.

The plan includes the extension of the recently terminated tramway all the way to the Porte d'Asnières in the north-west of the city by 2013. The addition of "civilised thoroughfares" will give priority to buses and bicycles, while the troubled line 13 will see further trains and a new signal system. A sixth RER (express suburban metro) line has also been proposed which will link Saint Lazare and Montparnasse stations in the north-west and the south-west of the city respectively.

Transport will be free for those living under the poverty threshold, while the banks of the Seine will become fully pedestrianised. Indeed, a number of areas may become pedestrianised throughout the city, while speed limits will be reduced in areas such as Beaubourg.

The boulevard Peripherique, the motorway the circles the city, will be forced to include a lane that allows the quick passage of buses, taxes and emergency vehicles.

Le Monde offers more details on the traffic plan (in French).

Photo: ArnoldPouteau/Flickr

During the launch of Paris's new streetcar system last month, a Times of London wrote that Parisians are beginning to turn against Mayor Bertrand Delanoe's aggressive traffic reduction measures:

Paris residents, most of whom do not drive much, were until recently happy with the anti-car policies of Delanoe's Socialist-Greens administration. The mayor put a brake on the "all-car" policies that reached their peak in the 1970s when Presidents Pompidou and Giscard d'Estaing drove free-ways into and around the city and turned the Seine embankment and boulevards into traffic arteries.

Now Parisians dislike the unintended consequences of Delanoe's crusade: an invasion of noisy scooters and motorcycles and a rise in accidents involving pedestrian and motorcyclists. A big factor in the death toll are the wide bus lanes that run in the opposite direction to traffic. People walk into them without looking and they are often used by motorcycles and other traffic. An Ipsos poll by the conservative le Figaro today found that while 52 percent of the city approves of Delanoe's mayoralty, 68 percent are now opposed to his traffic policy.

Photo: Suskela/Flickr 

With New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall heading to Paris for a summer vacation we wanted to make sure that she was aware of some recently-released results of these reforms.

A gridlocked Parisian street in 2000, before Mayor Bertrand Delanoë's transportation reforms.

According to newly released statistics from the City of Paris:

• Vehicle Miles Traveled by car in Paris fell 5% in 2005, 15% since 2001.
• Bicycle use has increased 5% since 2004.
• The number of vehicle crashes has decreased 21% since 2001.

Le Mobilien in Monmartre. To discourage driving in the city center, many Parisian streets now have lanes set aside for the exclusive use of buses, bikes and taxis.

• Subway use increased 2.8% and commuter rail increased 2.9% in 2005.
• The speed and regularity of buses on dedicated routes improved 10% to 13% in 2005.
• The city is expanding the number of bus lines that run all night, as well as those buses' frequency.

Physical separation allows buses, taxis and bikes to have faster, safer more reliable travel. If you want to drive an automobile into town, you can, but you have to deal with more congestion.

You can find more on Paris's creative, effective and politically successful transportation reform at New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign and Project for Public Spaces:

Reporting (and translation) by PPS's french speaking Paris native Juliette Michaelson.