11.2 percent of trips in Paris are made by bike, compared with 5 percent in early 2020, David Belliard, the deputy mayor of Paris, told me in a text message. Just 4.3 percent of trips are made by car

That's amazing!

Can we get that mayor to come to the US? Or whoever is in charge of city infrastructure? Some of those changes won't work here (e.g. painted "no parking" areas will just get ignored in NYC), but I'd really like to see more impediments to crossing through major cities, because pushing cars to go around is the best way to reduce traffic.

Unfortunately, the culture here is to prioritize control for the individual instead of prioritizing overall flow. I sincerely hope that changes, because traffic even in my small-ish suburban area kind of sucks and could with a change in transit philosophy. We should be maximizing traffic flow and minimizing conflict, but we seem to do neither here.

The common argument against building cycling infrastructure is that "nobody is using them!".

Of course, when you look at REAL WORLD examples from Paris, Amsterdam, or even Montreal, you can clearly see that pretty much any and everyone will ride bikes when the infrastructure supports them.

The increase in cyclists in Paris directly correlates to the efforts made by their leadership to make cycling more common (and cars of a necessity).

Meanwhile... Ontario, Canada has just announced that they'll be widening the 401 highway (again), just so you can cram more people in gridlocked traffic! What better way to burn away hundreds of millions of dollars! /s