Tweeted about this earlier but it’s a great and high profile example of other cities also getting strong opposition to changes:
Paris also answers the often asked “where will all the traffic go” — as other cities have proven, it “evaporates”... in other words, there’s modal change and pollution goes down.
It’s again worth saying that Paris didn’t stop with removing traffic along sections of its river bank, it then added cycle paths and this reduced the space for cars on a parallel street:
One of the reasons I think this is such a great example is there’s such parallels to the #liffeycycle route Option 7 which includes traffic diversions. The fear which even some progression councillors and cyclists baught into was all traffic would be diverted into Smithfield, but
...that’s just not what happens in real life. Humans adapt. Some will kept driving and switch to other routes but then others on those routes will switch to sustainable travel modes, you get an overall reduction and then the next project will reduce car dominance even further.
But because of that fear — a fear which was partly sold by people which are above average pro-cars in the city centre — we now might get a much poorer Liffey Cycle Route that might have some opposite effects with a route which is somewhat compromised and keeps more cars in place.
...and keeping more cars in place might sound like a good kind of compromise but in a city centre with less and less space for such more local space for cars can cause more localised issues like cars more idling needlessly.
This is an excellent point and well describes traffic evaporation and modal change
When people accept traffic reduction, some say “but public transport is still too poor”, but a mix of the Luas network effect, buses, coaches, Hueston Station, the direct Kildare Route services via the Phoenix Park, the Maynooth Line, and DublinBikes is not as bad as is made out.
More on the traffic in Paris showing the traffic didn’t just transfer to the nearest road (yes, some of it did)
