The New York Times recently ran an editorial outlining how Paris, France has aimed to cut car traffic within the city by 40% by 2020. Here’s some of their tactics, some of which should be considered by Richmond in our effort to re-create our downtown:
- Improve transit:
- Increase and improve routes
- Make transit cheaper
- Make transit easier to use
- public posting of bus routes
- electronic signs at bus stops with the wait times for the next bus
- make payment easier
- Reduce available travel lanes for cars
- Create special bus lanes (in Paris and London these lanes can be used by taxis & bikes)
- Make cheap rental bikes available all over the city ($1.50 a day or $43.50 a year)
- Raise fuel taxes
Maybe instead of 2-way streets downtown, we should keep them 1-way and dedicate one lane for buses and bikes. That would calm traffic, provide access for emergency vehicles, and make transit faster and biking safer.
And I’d love to see inexpensive rental bikes all over the city- I don’t know the specifics of the Paris system, but in Amsterdam you can pay your rental fee and get a key which works for a generic lock on all the bikes. Then you can pick up a bike anywhere you find one, and leave it at approved destinations. This kind of program works only with a very high volume of bikes (Paris is starting with 10,000 at 750 locations and hopes to double the number of bikes by the end of the year). It also requires housing density to ensure that bikes are available where people live.
In Lyon, your pre-paid bus/metro card will unlock rental bikes. How’s that for convenient?
The point is, when you declare war on cars there has to be viable, affordable, convenient alternatives for folks to get around. If we want to make downtown less of a traffic paradise and more pedestrian oriented, what transportation alternatives are we providing? Otherwise we risk running everyone out of downtown and killing it off entirely, don’t we?
August 6, 2007 at 7:16 am
Man, the thought of biking in a lane of traffic with only buses and taxis is scary to me. In my head that is *not* a safer option… but maybe it is in reality.
I like the other ideas though. And I would push to have buses(and other transit) be tax supported and free at ride time. If you really want to go to war on cars then remove the subsidy that is given to cars and use it on transit instead. Here is a good series of articles on that option:
http://thetyee.ca/Series/2007/07/05/NoFares/
August 6, 2007 at 9:21 am
I thought biking in a bus lane would be scary too- but I watched it last spring in London and it works really well- & they’ve got those enournous double decker buses too.
I mean, when you think about it, we’re biking in bus lanes as it is- every time I bike down Main St. I’ve got to dodge buses. Like you said in an earlier comment, we need to change drivers’ expectations about bikers, and having a lane designated for buses & bikes *might* do that. I’ll have to research this one some more…
August 6, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I forget the name of it – but there’s a city in Brazil which took this option – they got it to the point where bussing is as much as 80% faster than driving, and 40% faster than driving would have been before the revised their road system.
There’s no way public transit isn’t the way of the future. There are simply too many people in too small a space with too few lanes for everyone to drive their own car all the time.
Thanks for writing this up, bringing it to within my circle of attention.
August 7, 2007 at 9:53 am
Sounds good!! But I certainly have appreciated my air conditioner in the car this week
August 7, 2007 at 12:45 pm
GRTC buses are nicely air-conditioned, just FYI.
January 22, 2009 at 5:47 am
Here in Stuttgart bike rental works through cell phones, and it’s very succesful even though we have very steep hills.
I still think though that keeping bikes and busses seperate works best, but having bus/bike lanes is a good start.
BTW earthmanxosharosp: The city is called Bobota, and it’s the capital of Colombia
January 23, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Bobota? Wow, thank you. I’ve been trying to track the name down for ages; I keep referring to it, but being unable to recall the name makes it hard for me to tell people to go look it up.
January 28, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Bogota is the capital of Colombia. Bobota is the name of several towns in eastern europe (at least one in croatia, one in romania). None of these options is Brazil.
But I would believe that Bogota Columbia has done what Earthman has suggested.