Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Mass Bike Rides in Paris – Vive la différence

We were talking bikes a bit back with Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives in New York City (“Our mission is to reclaim New York City's streets from the automobile, and to advocate for bicycling, walking and public transit as the best transportation alternatives”) about a problem they face when an open conflict flares up occasionally between the organizers of the Critical Mass bike rides (who want to do it freely, i.e., when and where they want, i.e., their way) and the city authorities and the police (Oops!). Paul was asking,” Is there another way?”


Americans often think of the French as being individualists, hot tempered and unruly. Hey, that can happen, but at a time when you in New York are simmering in June, not only from the your local warming but also and far more permanently, consider the story of the mega bike rides in Paris. A bit of a cautionary tale.

If you come to Paris . . .

If you come to Paris with your bike or skates, you will be able to join a mass ride once or twice a week and make a grand swing of the city lasting a couple of hours, and all that in safety and harmony with the city, the police and the public (other than some drivers who can get a bit excited if they have the chance, but we have them under control). You will not be stopped, you will not be warned, you will not be arrested, and you will not be struck or manhandled. But if you are from New York City you may be a bit disoriented and surprised by the way it works here, police and all.

The Paris Friday Night Skate organized by http://www.pari-roller.com is the big event, with up to fifty thousand on line skaters joining the ride, but this note will look at its little brother the mass bicycle rides in this beautiful city. They have a lot in common.

While there is also several weekly bicycle mass rides, the main one is a regular Friday night ride organized by a public group "Paris Rando Vélo". The ride starts at City Hall at 10:00 pm and takes about two and a half hours to cover 20-25 km. An average of 500, 600 cyclists participate in the summer, half that number in the winter months.

How it all started

The bike mass first took shape in 2000 after a major transport strike which had the effect of bringing a lot more cyclists onto the streets. An organizing group – which later formed an “Association” (a main form of organizing and registering community and public interests activities in France) took shape and their first step was to meet with the Prefect of Police to report on their intentions and to ensure that they were in full compliance with the law.

The police said OK, but you have to organize and police yourselves (having run into some problems and manpower requirements with the much bigger Friday night skating mass ride for which after a rough start beginning in 1995, eventually came to be have good police, emergency and city services support. But such support ties up resources so the Prefect insisted that the cyclists would have to do their own policing (We can do the skaters in another letter from Paris for you.)

So the event is entirely self-organized , with the Association providing a couple of dozen staff members as monitors, with a handful leading to way to stop traffic at all intersections and the rest simply keeping an eye on and herding and when needed lending a hand to anyone who may get into a bit of trouble. Paris Rando Vélo also organizes private rides, so if you come to Paris with a bunch of friend and want to do a bike tour of your own, you will find their full coordinate at the end of this short piece.

Both mass events are encouraged by City Hall and the elected officials, who see them as good for Paris and good for Parisians. The police are apparently having a second look about possibly providing further backup, but with or without it the Paris bike mass works.

Cycling in cities: It is, in fact, “One more Convenient Truth”.

Lessons for New York from the Paris experience over these last years? Hard to say what these might be Paul because the basic cultures are so different, but here are a few thoughts that come to mind:

1. Transportation professionalism. If you want to change something in the transport sector, you better be a pro. While French cyclists can be as self-centered and aggressive as anywhere in the world, their success has come through taking off the hard edge and coming in as a responsible community group that can perform -- they have found that it is more effective to organize, prepare, contact and negotiate than to engage in street warfare with the authorities.

2. Iron discipline: Given the complexity, the delicacy of the transportation metabolism of a city – even at 10:00 on Friday nights – there must be absolute discipline for both the route and the timing. Nobody likes surprises, including those who will have to carry the ball if you drop it.

3. Be there or be square: Numbers count and so does regularity. Everyone should be accustomed to you being out there when announced and start to see you and the event as part of the normal city landscape. And of course if you ever find yourselves at odds with the authorities it certainly helps to have fifty thousand voters smiling and riding right behind you. Numbers talk

4. Have your man in City Hall: It really helps to have your man in City Hall (In Paris it’s Denis Baupin, who is vice-mayor, a Green and a cyclist himself. And he is committed). And there is no doubt that a great key is to have the mayor on your side as well (which is the case with Mayor Delanoë here). If your guy is just there for the odd photo op, get rid of him and find yourself someone with real commitment, day after day after day.

5. Be your own good cop: The ability to do the monitoring and self-policing work yourselves is a big plus. Perform with discipline and the authorities come around. They may have to bite their lip, but they will become part of the solution

6. Communicate like a winner: Reaching out to the press and the media, and in the process getting your main message across. That being about winning, not about either fighting, losing or raw deals (even if that is also true for now).

A final thought from this side of the Atlantic has to do with self confidence and steadfast determination. (Am I starting to sound like your grandmother?) Cycling – and mass cycling events, well organized, without a chip on your shoulder and coordinated with the community as a whole – is a part of the process of solution to the pressing problems of transport, the economy and quality of life in all our cities, New York included. Cycling can show the way for the rest.

* * *
More on Paris Rando Vélo

The website for Paris Rando Vélo, the organizers, is here, complete with photos and videos (and of course in French). If you click here you can follow along with a typical Friday night ride . You will not see a great deal of violence.

Here is the plan for next Friday's ride: 21 kilimoeters for a leisurely two hour ride with a water brreak in one of Paris's parks. Coming?


Paris Rando Vélo
09 rue Lavandiere St Opportune
Paris, 75001 France
Christophe Dupasquier, Secretary General
Tel. +336.60.64.20.20


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4 comments:

  1. Zvi Lever, Montreal CanadaWednesday, 24 June, 2009

    Thank you for the information Eric.

    Some years ago I read a brilliant article about the 'pari-roller' event (sadly the magazine has gone under and I have never been able to find an electronic version of it). The author, who was living in London at the time, was shocked at the choice of route (cobble-stone streets and stairs!) and the number of accidents that he witnessed. When there was no media coverage of this "mayhem", he concluded that there were fundamental differences between the French and British attitudes toward personal responsibility and public safety: no one forced the participants to ride in the event. If someone got hurt, it was solely their responsibility and not the fault of the "authorities".

    I too noticed a more 'laissez-faire' attitude toward safety and security in France. I saw people doing things which would have been completely unthinkable on the 'other side of the Atlantic' (because they were so blatantly dangerous) and no one seemed to care. I even witnessed a number of people get injured - broken-bone type injuries - and this too was taken in stride.

    Until that article I had not really thought about this before, but I do agree that we should not expect the state to control every aspect of our safety (mandatory bike helmets for example). There certainly are areas where the state does have responsibility - providing safe infrastructure for example - but it is also our personal responsiblity how we choose to behave.

    BTW: on the Pari-Roller site, I did notice that they were actively looking for first-aid specialists to help out:

    Vous êtes titulaires de l'Attestation de Formation aux Premiers Secours ou plus (CFA-PSE, ...) ? Nous recherchons activement de nouveaux staffeurs secouristes pour travailler en coopération avec la Protection Civile et intervenir pour sécuriser les blessés dans le cortège.

    Zvi Lever, Montreal Canada

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  2. Theo Schmidt, SwitzerlandFriday, 26 June, 2009

    Zvi Leve wrote:
    > ... he concluded that there were fundamental differences between the French and British attitudes toward personal responsibility and public safety: no one forced the participants to ride in the event. If someone got hurt, it was solely their responsibility and not the fault of the "authorities".
    I too noticed a more 'laissez-faire' attitude toward safety and security in France. ...

    > Until that article I had not really thought about this before, but I do agree that we should not expect the state to control every aspect
    of our safety (mandatory bike helmets for example). There certainly are areas where the state does have responsibility - providing safe
    infrastructure for example - but it is also our personal responsiblity how we choose to behave.
    ---------------
    I would go even further and say that "providing safe infrastructure" is often counterproductive. The Swiss government is spending millions on "improving" railway crossings even though the statistics show that the "improved" crossings do not improve safety (they do however shift responsibility).

    It is common knowledge that wide straight roads encourage speeding - at least in Europe - and so authorities first spend millions widening and straightening roads "for saftey" and then do the same again for introducing artificle hinderances in order to combat speeding. This shows what complete failures most motor vehicle designs are from a human factor perspective: they cannot be sensibly used without coercive regulation.

    The fact is that humans act so as to maintain a desired level of "percieved safety" which has little to do with "actual" safety. This is also shown by the differences between countries such as France and Italy in contrast to the United States and it seems increasingly Great Britain. This may have to do with the US legal system which encourages people to sue others in an attempt to shift responsibilty from themselves to others when things go wrong.

    I think that people and organisations should be held responsible for their actions, but that actions which have a direct effect on others should be treated differently than actions which effect mainly the people or organisations themselves. Society does apply this principle to some extent, but there is an unfortunate trend to go the other way.

    Another unfortunate trend is to weight potential damage to property higher than actual damage to people. E.g. people uploading music files or driving a vehicle safely but unlawfully are punished more severely than people damaging others in accidents or statistically, i.e. through the waste and pollution they cause.

    Indeed, the latter are not punished at all, even thought the damage to society driving an overweight car excessively is greater than that of a cyclist not carrying a bell, lock, light, or insurance, all of which cost a fine of approx. 40 CHF (44$) if caught.

    Theo Schmidt, Switzerland

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  3. Ian Wingrove, London UKFriday, 26 June, 2009

    Some valid points about the health and safety culture, but it is worth pointing out that UK road deaths have reached a record low - so the UK must be doing some things right. The highest recorded post-war annual total was nearly 8,000 in 1966 and it is now down at 2,538 people killed on Britain's roads. The over all numbers have been falling rapidly in the last ten years and the fastest rate of decline has been in London. Britain now jointly has the safest roads of any major nation in the world.

    The French may have a tradition of being more 'laissez-faire' attitude toward safety and Security, but I do remember that a few years back the casaulty rate was so bad that the Government made road safety one of its three top priorities. There followed a series of less 'laissez-faire' measures which have seen casaulty rates fall rapidly as well.

    The British approach to safety can be over done and there is a big problem with the relative safety of pedestrians and cyclists, but I hope that people are keeping one eye on the casaulty reduction success rate of the signs, lights, fines and rules which they want to replace.

    Ian Wingrove, London UK
    GREATER LONDON AUTHORITY

    ReplyDelete
  4. In Athens we are doing Friday night bike rides starting at 10 pm from Thission station, going till 2 or 3 am and covering about 50 km. The latest rides have seen crowds of about 1-2000. There is some police assistance but the route is not made known - just the destination the day before - and we follow the cyclists in the lead. The atmosphere is fantastic - the cyclists range in age from little kids to very... mature cyclists and from alternative to establishment types. There is usually music, sometimes dancing, and at least 2 or 3 dogs from little ones in baskets to Athens city dogs running alongside. And often souvlakia on the break. Take a look at our facebook page (great event banners too): https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/group.php?gid=49283986544 (in Greek) and for English see here: https://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=49283986544&topic=35188

    ReplyDelete

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