Photo credit: Kadir Avşar
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
As I’ve written many times on this blog, I am a big fan of NPR. I heard this wonderful report about Paris going pedestrian the other day while running an errand in my hybrid electric vehicle. Reporter Rebecca Rosman explained that Parisians voted to close some 500 streets to cars, making the city more pedestrian-friendly. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, elected eight years ago, promised to make cars vanish. This is the latest step.
The NPR story quotes urban planner and mayoral advisor Carlos Moreno, who said that Paris learned from cities like Amsterdam about making the city more bike-friendly. He said that he told friends in Los Angeles that maybe we will be the next Amsterdam. I doubt that. Several years ago, when I considered riding my bike to work instead of driving, two colleagues at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center who rode bikes routinely advised against it. Both had recently been hit by cars, one breaking his clavicle and the other his leg. Most people won’t use bikes to commute or run errands unless they feel safe doing so, and I don’t foresee separate bike lanes on the major east-west and north-south boulevards here any time soon.
But maybe I’m wrong. If Amsterdam and Paris can make streets bike-friendly, so can other cities. Rosman conclude her report with a sentence about another street being dug up as “a sign that Paris isn’t just cutting cars, it’s making the City of Lights into the City of Bikes.” Transportation noise isn’t just an annoyance. It’s a health issue. A city of bikes will be a quieter city, a better and healthier city for all.
