What a joy to take your bicycle to go for a drink in Paris!
“Except that the last time, we turned to find a place to hang it, growls Mélissa, a suburbanite.
No hoop was free.
"This Tuesday, during the presentation of the results of the first three years of the bicycle plan, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, the Minister for Transport, recognized that the flight and security were" big brakes "for the use of the small Queen.
Since the end of 2017, cycle paths and greenways have increased by a third, reaching a total of 53,000 km.
But only 15,000 parking spaces have been created.
"To develop the bicycle, it is not enough to have a vehicle in working order, you need a whole system: dedicated lanes in which to drive, repairers, secure places to attach it ...", points out Frédéric Héran, economist of transport and urban planner at the University of Lille.
To read also Bicycle parking in the stations of Ile-de-France: the RATP and the SNCF too lagging behind
At this point, therefore, the poor relation is the parking lot.
"Or rather the parking lots: short, medium or long term", adds Frédéric Héran.
The country lacks hoops in the street for a few hours, but also daytime places in buildings, or very safe options, with camera or guards, to leave your two-wheeler for several days for a train trip. for example.
Some cities better off than others
“In France, Strasbourg is a good student,” notes the town planner.
Around the station, more than 3,000 spaces are available on the surface, but especially in the basement where, in particular, a floor of the car park has been transformed to accommodate bicycles.
It is still a long way from the largest bicycle garage, with 12,500 spaces, in Utrecht in the Netherlands, the bicycle nation.
VIDEO.
Top 3 of the best cycling facilities in Amsterdam
Aware of this "bottleneck", in the words of the Federation of Bicycle Users (FUB), this Tuesday Jean-Baptiste Djebbari and his counterpart to the Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili, announced an "Alvéole +" program 35 million euros to subsidize new places. “The first target is secure parking, in public spaces, but above all in condominiums, at stations, in front of stadiums or theaters,” greets Olivier Schneider, president of the FUB.
If the covered and supervised garages cost several hundred euros per vehicle, the simple "bike installation" outdoors cost a few tens of euros each. “But outdoors, the challenge is to free up space,” explains Olivier Schneider. One of the possibilities is to recover surfaces close to pedestrian crossings, because by 2026, cities will have to remove car spaces 5 m upstream and downstream of the nails to ensure better visibility. Bicycles, they will be able to take their ease there.
