{"id":161091,"date":"2025-09-22T09:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T09:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/161091\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T09:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T09:18:09","slug":"paris-paved-the-parking-lot-and-put-up-the-pyramids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/161091\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris paved the parking lot, and put up the pyramids"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to imagine, standing in front of the massive glass pyramid that dominates the inner courtyard of Paris\u2019s Mus\u00e9e du Louvre, that just a generation ago it was a parking lot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Old pictures<\/a> from the time of I.M. Pei\u2019s pyramids\u2019 construction show cars lining the central 16th-century building and its later additions. Cars also jam up the roads leading past the courtyard \u2014 five lanes in all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The parking and the traffic are all gone now. Early in the morning when I visited on a recent vacation, the courtyard was silent and peaceful, before the crowds of tourists arrived, but even once they\u2019re there, there\u2019s no din of engine noise and tires, no cars to dodge, no exhaust to breathe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a human-oriented place, befitting of the intensely human nature of the collection of some of history\u2019s greatest artistic works contained within the museum. Or at least, I think they\u2019re in there. I didn\u2019t go inside. I wasn\u2019t there to see works of art \u2014 I was there to ride my bike. The city\u2019s efforts to transform its downtown into an active-transportation Mecca had attracted me on a pilgrimage across the world to see what it looks and feels like.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ People cycle, walk and jog along the Seine, on what was formerly a road for cars. Photo by: Jimmy Thomson \/ Canada’s National Observer<\/p>\n

From the Louvre, we took off across the Seine and turned east, quickly encountering another example of human-oriented infrastructure wrested from the clutches of car-centric design. Roads that once hemmed in the river were liberated during the pandemic as temporary bike roads. Once people saw how great it can feel, they never went back. The paths became part of\u00a0Le Plan v\u00e9lo de Paris,\u00a0Mayor Anne Hidalgo\u2019s $650 million two-part plan over 10 years to increase bike infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To say Hidalgo\u2019s plans have been a wild success would be an understatement. During rush hour, there are more bikes than cars on Parisian streets for the first time ever. In 2001, Paris had 200 kilometres of bike paths. By 2021, it had 1,094 kilometres. The\u00a0plan through to 2026<\/a> adds yet another several hundred, plus more infrastructure like bike racks. According to French newspaper\u00a0Le Monde,\u00a0bike trips doubled<\/a> between 2022 and 2023 as the plan\u2019s second phase was taking effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Louvre’s iconic glass pyramids stand where there was once a parking lot. Amsterdam’s streets were once clogged with cars. Those cities made hard choices to prioritize bikes, and those choices are now paying huge dividends. <\/p>\n

Continuing down the Seine toward the Eiffel Tower, we cycle through a crowd on bikes, walking and running along the river. It feels like everyone in Paris is outside and active. People sit on the walls of the built-up river, enjoying a coffee with a friend. Kids ride on the backs of e-bikes on their way to school. No one seems stressed by the \u201ctraffic\u201d of active transportation; the entire time I\u2019m in Paris, I see one confrontation between cyclists, and it\u2019s over in seconds after a few angry words.<\/p>\n

It seems so fitting, as though bikes and walking have always dominated the European cities that are today known for their scenic, quiet walkways, treed streets, fast transit and safe cycling. But they were once just as jammed with cars as the worst day on downtown Toronto\u2019s Gardiner Expressway. The transformation of the Louvre courtyard and the Seine bikeway weren\u2019t just part of the inevitable arc of history \u2014 they were choices, and it doesn\u2019t take much imagination to picture the outrage that must have arisen in response. One has only to look at\u00a0what happens any time<\/a> a single lane of road is removed to make space for a bike lane, or\u00a0a parking lot is reduced<\/a> to allow more space for people: at least in Canada and the US, the response is that drivers lose their minds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\/ Bicycle demonstration against car traffic, on the Weteringschans in Amsterdam. A large group of cyclists ride with the slogan: “Amsterdam Car-Free.” Photo by: Rob Mieremet \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

And yet it\u2019s outrage that drove things in the opposite direction in Europe. Historic pictures of Amsterdam from the 1970s show the now idyllic canal-side streets falling prey to\u00a0bigger and bigger highways<\/a>, setting off soul-searching about what the city wanted to be and who it was for. Ditto for Vienna, where the demolition of a beloved historic church\u00a0for \u201ctraffic reasons\u201d<\/a> inspired a wave of anti-car sentiment that eventually led to a revolution in transportation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The cities that enacted those changes were led by populations and leaders who had the vision and courage to imagine a future that didn\u2019t depend on an ever-increasing commitment to more cars and more roads for them and them alone. We\u2019ve seen where that approach has gotten us in our sprawling and traffic-choked cities. Now, Canadian leaders can choose: the pyramid or the parking lot.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to imagine, standing in front of the massive glass pyramid that dominates the inner courtyard of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-161091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}