Paris moves from the tyranny of taxis to a City of Bicycles

Three years after launching a widely copied bike rental scheme, Paris is stepping up efforts to turn itself into a bicycle-friendly capital on a par with cycling havens like Amsterdam and Berlin.

Hundreds of kilometres of bike lanes are being rolled out on the streets of the City of Light, cyclists are winning new road rights and the public bicycle service launched by Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe in 2007 is expanding to encourage more Parisians to ditch their cars and pedal.

The aim is to double the number of bikes on the capital’s boulevards within a decade.

“We’ve entered a new era,” said Cecile Chartier, a member of the cycling association Velo 15et7.                                          

“Five years ago, people were scandalised when bike lanes were introduced, as if they were nuclear power plants. They said they would never be used. Now they are accepted without question.”

With the exception of the Tour de France, which ends each year with a symbolic roll down the Champs Elysees, bicycles used to be a rare sight on Paris streets.

Cyclists had few rights and pedalling through the capital was a high-risk adventure of hair-raising near-misses with the city’s notoriously bad-tempered taxi drivers.

That began to change in late 1995 when crippling public transport strikes gripped Paris, forcing many of its inhabitants onto bikes.