Studie zeigt, wie Paris seine Fahrradkultur entwickelte | Wie man den Fahrradverkehr nachhaltig wachsen lässt: Der Fall Paris

From the magazine article:

>Not long ago, Paris was known for its traffic jams, not its bike culture. The city’s grand boulevards were lined with honking taxis, delivery vans, and inching commuters. Cycling through central Paris meant weaving between buses and scooters—a bold choice reserved for the fearless few.
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>Fast forward to today, and the transformation is astonishing. The French capital has quietly—and quickly—become one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. What started as a series of emergency “coronapistes,” or pop-up bike lanes, built during the pandemic has evolved into a permanent cycling network spanning hundreds of kilometres. Paris is now a place where parents ferry kids to school by cargo bike, where commuters glide past the Seine on protected lanes, and where the sound of gears clicking often replaces the blare of horns.
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>And the numbers prove it’s more than a passing trend. A new study reveals that cycling traffic in Paris has increased by 240% between 2018 and 2023, while car traffic has steadily declined. In central districts, more than one in ten trips are now made by bike—a remarkable shift for a metropolis once synonymous with gridlock.
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>“Paris is an incredible example of how a city can transform when political will meets smart data,” says one of the report’s lead authors. “We wanted to understand exactly which factors made this happen.”
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>The study’s findings show that targeted cycling policies, such as building dedicated lanes and improving bike parking, were major contributors to the rise in ridership. But equally important were measures that discouraged car use—like low-emission zones, traffic restrictions, and fuel price changes. The two forces worked hand-in-hand: making biking easier and driving less convenient.
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>In other words, it wasn’t just about infrastructure. It was about changing the city’s DNA.
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>When streets became calmer and safer, more people felt comfortable trying a bike commute for the first time. Families who might have once stuck to sidewalks began pedaling to the park. Local businesses saw new life as streets opened up to foot and bike traffic. And over time, cycling stopped feeling like a niche activity—it became part of everyday Parisian life.
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>The researchers also found that “livability” policies—like adding trees, pedestrian zones, and public plazas—had a measurable indirect impact. When people enjoy being outside, they’re more likely to move through the city under their own power.
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>The Paris study offers more than just a success story—it’s a blueprint for transformation. For cities that still believe “people here won’t bike,” the data says otherwise.
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>The lesson is clear: change is possible when policy, infrastructure, and public space all point in the same direction. It’s not enough to paint a few bike lanes and hope people come. Cities need to design environments where cycling feels natural—where the fastest, safest, and most enjoyable way to get across town happens to be by bike.
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>It also requires persistence. Paris didn’t achieve this overnight, and not without pushback. Critics warned that removing car lanes would create chaos. Yet, traffic didn’t collapse—it simply adjusted. Commuters shifted to bikes, transit, and walking. The air got cleaner, noise levels dropped, and neighborhoods came alive.
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>For decades, cities around the world have said they’re too spread out, too cold, too hilly, too car-dependent to make cycling mainstream. Paris proves that narrative wrong. Change the street, and people will change with it.
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>In the end, the French capital didn’t just build bike lanes—it built belief.
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>And that, more than anything, is what other cities should take from this study: not just a roadmap, but the confidence that transformation can happen anywhere, if you’re brave enough to start pedaling.

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Research link: [How to create a sustainable growth in bicycle traffic? The case of Paris](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950105925000257)

Abstract:

>In recent years, cycling has received notable investments in response to the urge to decarbonize the transportation sector, leading to an increase in its modal share in many territories. The present article presents a longitudinal study that evaluates the impact of various public policies on bicycle growth in Paris over the period 2018–2023. Variables of interest can be classified according to five themes: targeted cycling policies, restrictions imposed on motorized vehicles, disruptions on other modes of transport, livability policies, and economic conditions. The methodology is based on dependence-aware sensitivity analysis techniques to assess the separate contributions of each of these variables on bicycle traffic, aggregated at the city scale, and extracted from ground counter data. In order to be exhaustive, variations due to weather and calendar dynamics are also controlled for. Results indicate that local authorities should primarily focus on the development of bicycle infrastructure, including bicycle lanes, parking slots, and effective bicycle-sharing systems. While these measures are instrumental, sustainable growth relies on the implementation of a diverse range of policies. Bicycle usage can be further expanded by making it more attractive, specifically through the creation of pedestrian zones and green spaces, or the promotion of e-bikes. Additionally, cycling tends to increase as car usage becomes more difficult, although this finding calls for equity considerations.