Paris just announced plans to become a "100% cycling city." A follow-up to plan vélo 2015-2020, which saw a doubling of the city's bike lanes, plan vélo 2021-2026 includes 130 km of new bike lanes and 52 km of pandemic bike lanes that will now be made permanent.
In addition to cycling lanes, the plans include new bike parking, new transit integrations, and a bunch of other things that are meant to strengthen the overall ecosystem in the city. The total budget for this second plan is about €100 million, which will bring the total cycling investment over the last 10-11 years to about €250 million. This is a serious commitment to cycling.
It's also a good example of one of the things that we have been talking about on this blog. This pandemic forced us to rethink how we allocate urban space -- everything from outdoor restaurant patios to bike lanes. And as we can see here, many of the positive changes are not surprisingly starting to stick.
