Resumption of work in certain offices and authorization to travel for leisure, social distancing difficult to respect in public transport and fitted cycle paths ... These are all elements linked to deconfinement, which undoubtedly signify the resumption of cycling in the capital. If bicycle traffic had dropped by 85% on March 17, due to the ban on non-professional or non-essential trips, there has been a sharp recovery in bicycle trips since May 6.
According to the calculations of the Parisian Data cell, based on the figures from the meters of the City of Paris measuring the attendance of cycle paths from 6 am to 11 pm, since Wednesday May 6, the number of trips made by bicycle is equivalent to 60% of the volume of those observed the week of March 4 to 10, ie just before confinement. And this, while many employees and self-employed are still teleworking. For comparison: the first week of May, these journeys only corresponded to 30% of the frequentation in early March.
More passages on the Georges-Pompidou road
We can also note an impressive increase in trips among two-wheelers on the day of Tuesday, May 12: 115,000 bikes were identified between 6 am and 11 pm, while there were only 278,870, between Wednesday May 6 and Monday May 11. This is still less than the 660,000 weekly bicycle crossings, counted in March, before confinement.
In certain sectors, the cycling traffic is even more provided this last week, than that preceding our setting in bell. If there were 2744 passages on the Georges-Pompidou route, from north to south, between March 4 and 10, there are 3050 between May 5 and May 12, an increase of 11%. In the other direction, the proportion is almost the same, with almost 5,600 passages this past week, compared to 5,367 just before confinement, an increase of 6% in journeys. Are these bike-taffers, these active people who get back to work by pedaling, or Parisians relieved to be able to stroll again in the streets of the capital? Too early to say.
Another lesson from these data: on most major routes, bicycle traffic remains 20 to 30% less important than the week before confinement, but remember, professional recovery is only in its infancy in the capital.
This trend may well intensify in the coming weeks: according to a study released last week by Le Parisien, the French aspire to change their mode of travel and to focus more on cycling. Will the arrangements made by the city of Paris to leave more room for two-wheelers and the 50 euros check allocated by the government to repair his bicycle contribute to this?