Paris didn't improve its public transportation system, as it made it impossible to own a car. It ends up as pure sadism for the inhabitants who are not childless, affluent 20/30 years old, and who have no alternative than having to take the piss-smelling cattle trains with no access the disabled people, or strollers.
> it's the people who can't afford to live in the city who need them to get there.
What are you talking about. Paris's public transport reaches out 60km away from the city, and that's not including mainline trains (including high speed). The people who can't afford to live in the city have taken public transport to get there for 50 years.
A lot of economic activity requires cars. Delivery, workers coming with equipment, waste management, and so on. Every construction worker in Paris will tell you that it's very difficult to work there, and that they have doubled their prices as a result.
These people are HELPED by anti-car legislation because it clears the congestion for them to run their business.
Most small, and large, businesses would happily pay a small fee if it means half the transportation time. And it does, because traffic isn’t linear. Just a few more cars can be the difference between coasting at 30 or not moving at all.
If it's really only a difference of a few cars then there should be a dozen other ways to get a similar effect without enacting a regressive tax.
Meanwhile doing it through financial deterrence requires that someone is actually deterred. And then is that going to be poor people and small businesses or rich people and major companies?
It's a compulsory fee charged by the government not based on income/consumption. That's the most regressive tax. Even sales tax is less regressive than that.
> it primarily assists commuters and small businesses
Relative to any alternative that reduces congestion without charging fees, it doesn't. Even relative to doing nothing, the people being deterred are the ones paying the cost, and the people being deterred are the most price sensitive ones, i.e. the poor.
> Relative to any alternative that reduces congestion without charging fees, it doesn't.
These? Don't exist. We're not going to sit here and argue against hypothetical, made-up solutions.
> and the people being deterred are the most price sensitive ones, i.e. the poor.
Sigh. No, the most price sensitive people are riding the subway, because the subway is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper and faster than owning and operating a car. This is targeting the people right above those people, who, because they have a bit more money, think they need to drive. They don't. They should be riding the subway. And now, they are. They might complain - but really, they're saving money.
The infrastructure changes required to get cars out meant to reduce the flow speed of cars. As a result, even buses, who have dedicated lanes, are much slower.
[EDIT]: since I'm being answered that it isn't true, here is a chart made by the city hall about the decreasing speed on Paris' roads:
EDIT: Okay, to expand, it's true that speed limits in progressive cities have been falling for a while. This is meant reduce the number of pedestrain fatalities and overall make the cities safer and more pleasant.
HOWEVER, this does not mean that traveling by car is worse. These, in combination with anti-congestion legislation, make driving faster. The thing about driving is that broad roads and clear visibility encourage bad behavior, like speeding and tailgating. This actually increases traffic. It's counter-productive, but reducing speed can improve flow.
Paris has an ever increasing congestion caused by those measures, as most of the drivers are professionals linked to the city's economic activity who need to get there. Deliveries, constructions vehicules and workers, and so on. It is so bad that surface public transports are being shunned and see usage decrease because they are too slow.
That's not what they were talking about. Sure, some people need cars to transport things, but most of the people who complain about this kind of thing just wanna commute in their car.
The ones who live directly adjacent to a rail line weren't generally the ones in cars to begin with, unless they were the ones using a vehicle to actually transport something.
You clearly have a non-existent knowledge of French political life. This referendum had a participation rate of 4%, and only 62% of the voters voted yes. So around 2% of the total voters.
By the way, the French metro's air is highly polluted, due to tire degradation and brake dust, making it unfit for children or pregnant women.
So yeah, it's manageable for young people. But when a baby arrives, it's hell. Same if you are old. Or disabled.
Dutch people seem to do just fine with baby seats on their bikes, or bakfiets if you have lots of kids.
Anecdotally, kids are also much happier when they can just bike to school/sports/activities with their friends instead of having their parents drive then everywhere on the back of the family SUV.
Dutch people using bikes for everything is a meme, they have as many cars per inhabitants as most of the developed nations. Anecdotically, they are a small, dense, flat country, with an oceanic weather.
But those cars, as has been explained to you, don’t do nearly as many trips per year.
Mobility in families is actually higher, since each individual has sturdy legs, and highly likely, a bike after they’re about 5 years old. Kids often travel to school, after school events etc on foot, bike or public transport, not dependent as in many car-centric places on parents and their cars.
Grandma is as likely to bike over for dinner with the grandkids as drive.
Even the Dutch haven't invested nearly as much money into bike infrastructure as car infrastructure.
It's funny how much the car-dominance folks do their best to ignore that countries invariably have spent at least an order of magnitude more on cars than bikes, and typically more like two orders of magnitude.
The bike infrastructure the Dutch do have is very cool, but let's be real, one of those fancy "bike interchanges" is absolutely dwarfed by the cost of a highway interchange, and there are far more of the latter than the former.
We have cars here, but you're not dependent on them to get everywhere unless you live in the countryside (and even then, I knew plenty of kids who lived up in the North who biked 10+ km 1 way to school) or one of the super small cities where the sprinters are sparse. And isn't that the point most people make? It's not about complete eradication of cars, it's about having viable transport alternatives and the infrastructure to support those. It's just that we live in such a world where it's unthinkable to not have half our countries paved in asphalt to make sure cars can get places, so things like these always end up falling into a 2-sided extremist camp.
But...you still have cars fr when you need one. What many commenters argue here, and what the Paris administration is arguing is that you shouldn't own one.
You should be able to comfortably not own one, without it being a real problem.
We lived in Munich for five years as a family of three with no car and it was fine. There were definitely some times where a car would be more convenient (going to Ikea or the mountains) but overall getting around with our electric cargo bike or public transit was fine.
I mean if you live in a city like Paris, then yeah I'd say that's legitimate. I see nothing wrong with making such dense urban centers car-free other than what's necessary like deliveries or ambulances and such, but for the former these days you've got tiny electric trucks that even fit on bike paths without causing a ruckus, usually you'll see those grocery delivery services use them.
Yes, people outside of urban cities like that (which, basically by definition means the majority of people in the country) still need cars to get around most likely, but at least we can ensure that inside the cities themselves, there are good alternatives for people to get around that benefits every single person who finds themselves in the city not inside a car, which will be the overwhelming majority of people.
I live in Utrecht in the Netherlands, and the single best thing the gov't did a few years ago is rip out the highway that was in the city center and instead turned it back into a canal surrounded by parks [1]. Literally nobody who has ever been to Utrecht would argue we were better off with the highway.
No, the vote was pure communication by the mayor, it didn't have a budget, nor a list of the streets, nor any details. Paris' administration is rife with corruption and mismanagement, so voters weren't very mobilized for another PR coup.
I would suggest to look into the various whimsical subsidies of the city hall, the very expensive procurement of useless products or the ruinous public housing policy, that all serve to help the friends of the mayor and the constellation of fake associations that support her. All has been also documented, and has been mentioned repeatedly by the press.
