Paris

Spent a week here. I've not seen some many beautiful vintage bicycles in quite some time- Peugeot, Concorde, etc, etc. Fantastic to see so many bicycles around a city. Made for great fun each time I tried to get across busy streets!!! :)

I guess that the massive increase in cycling recently has encouraged many people to get their classic steeds back on the road.

Was like that when I was there.

A colleague of mine attended a walking and cycling conference last week. One of the speakers was the deputy mayor of Paris. An interesting statistic he brought back was that apparently only 4% of journeys made in Paris use cars. An article by the BBC in 2023 suggests that 38% of journeys in outer London and 19% in inner London are made by car.
I'm sure that there's more to dissect there, there seem to be a lot more mopeds/scooters etc in Paris than in London for example (the source for this being my anecdotal, personal experience) but it seems that they're doing something right over there.

Too right they are. British local councils just haven't got the balls and are too afraid of the car lobby to do anything too radical. And the last government didn't exactly help. Its too early to say what labour will do but the transport minister's appearance on the Streets Ahead podcast was a hopeful sign that things can change.

The bit they're calling "Paris" is tiny... about a third the size of Inner London.

There isn't really an equivalent area of London you can draw a line around of the same size and density.

Interesting! I guess the 4% quote is more of a nice headline than anything then.

Though Paris is about the size of zone 1 and 2.

Exactly this, London could and should be at the same standard. Paris has, arguably, overtaken cities like Berlin too. It goes to show what's possible in a short amount of time.

Part of the problem is that the U.K. has never had a consistent transport policy. Cycling infrastructure is basically down to local councils and one doesn’t agree (eg Kensington and Chelsea) then that causes problems.