On 26 July, the Olympic games started in Paris. Mobility expert Geert Kloppenburg has been visiting the French capital since he was a little boy and made several videos and podcasts about mobility in this city. In his view, what are the things to be highlighted when talking about mobility in Paris, or more specifically, in the Paris Metropolitan Area?
‘When it comes to mobility in Paris, the traditional view is to highlight the rail network,’ says Kloppenburg. ‘”Just look at the fantastic RER network and beautiful metro network they have, and look at how many stations there are and how the system is high-frequent.” And then, upon our return from a visit to Paris, we say: “We should invest billions of euros more in the expansion of metro, tram and train as well. And look, they have the Grand Paris Express (an gigantic project of new lines, expansion of existing tunnels, new stations), costs: 35 billion.” But if you look at the grand scheme of things, the biggest change in Paris in recent years has been the bicycle.” So what should be highlighted?
- The bicycle and more importantly, the fact that cars have been pushed out
‘To me, the story of the bicycle in Paris deserves prime position, that story is massive. The transformation in the past ten years within the Périférique, from ‘unthinkable’ and ‘does not stand a chance’ to the truly gigantic steps forward that have been made on all levels. No, of course it’s not perfect yet and it’s certainly not as well-organised as in the Netherlands, but if you look at it with the former Parisian situation in mind, then it is mega. I made two videos with Christophe Najdovski, former deputy mayor. The first steps forward they took in Paris were enormous, by transforming car infrastructure into cycle paths. Like along the Canal Saint-Martin, where you can now find many cyclists each day. And along the river Seine they transformed a car tunnel with a daily passage of 40,000 cars into a bicycle tunnel.
Another impressive feat is what they have done with the streets surrounding schools. Car traffic in areas around schools has been made physically impossible. Not just during the drop-off and pick-up times, like we have in Amsterdam, but all the time, day and night. And not in just a few of those areas: there are lots of them and the effect is truly amazing.
Ok, they have not yet managed to change the Périférique – which is comparable to the A10 ring road around Amsterdam – into a city road, but they are looking into it, to dynamically close lanes for individual car traffic and open them for buses and taxis. That could be very relevant for the A10 around Amsterdam and the ring road around Rotterdam as well, and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management is currently researching this, as an alternative to expansion and constructing tunnels.’
- The logistics
‘The logistics and the consequences of the order economy, that is something they have really understood in Paris. I made a podcast with Philip Christ, an expert of the ITF (International Transport Forum) about the logistics of Paris. That is a topic which receives far too little attention. In Paris they say: “If we can’t get a handle on that order economy within the Périférique, with the thousands of different delivery drivers of internet parcels and all those suppliers of shops, restaurants and offices, then traffic in this city will become simply impossible.” They already saw that coming in 2018.
And now you can see that they made all sorts of changes: hubs next to the city centre, bus terminals which are also used by freight traffic during the day, new logistics complexes and a logistics hotel such as Chapelle international, where freight trains enter the hotel for the containers to be unloaded or transferred (see https://www.managementsite.nl/de-laatste-meter/stadslogistieke-lessen-uit-parijs-logistieke-hotels in dutch).
When I visited Paris with the chairwoman of the mobility executive committee of Amsterdam, I pointed this out to her. Due to the enormous scale and volume in Paris, they can’t just leave things be, because that will inevitably end in chaos. More attention should be paid to this. Don’t forget that in the Netherlands we already have a million delivery vans on the roads as well, and in terms of movements and time, they are mostly in the urban areas. 10 years ago, there were only about 600,000. That’s how quickly it goes.
- Automation of metro lines
‘I have to give a railway example after all. But I think that the automation of two metro lines (lines 1 and 14), which has been operational since 1997, is a story that needs to be told.
Why? Firstly, because when there are strikes, line 1 and line 14 always continue their service as usual. And secondly, because it’s more flexible. You can deploy more carriages when it is busy and when it is quiet, you can easily remove some carriages – you’re not bound by the work schedules of the staff. And the last reason is of course the big pressure on the labour market due to the ageing population, which causes a shortage of staff in all lines of work.’
- The bus
‘My mother always used to say: “If you go to Paris, take the bus because you will see much more like that. Don’t spend your whole day underground.” And that’s when I noticed how nice the bus network actually is. And also, how important it is, also in a city like Paris. Not everyone is able to cycle and for a local errand and distances within the Périférique, you don’t always feel like descending 20 sets of stairs.
You could say: “We need to make everything accessible and wheelchair-friendly, and all the lifts need to work,” but we also understand that for a distance of 800 metres, or just going up or down the hill, many elderly will take the bus.’
- The connections between suburbs, ten million people outside the Périférique
Part of the Olympic Games took place in the suburbs, like in Saint-Denis where the Stade the France is located and where they built the Olympic village. Not far from there they have now built the Gare Pleyel, which is part of the Grand Paris Express project. One of the explicit goals of the Olympics in Paris was to also let the banlieu benefit.
And there are also big investments being made in other Parisian suburbs, which are known for poverty, disadvantaged neighbourhoods and criminality – investments in housing, in education, in employment and also in transport. In recent years, Kloppenburg regularly visited these suburbs, often together with urban planner Rob van der Bijl, and once he even dragged an entire delegation of the municipality of Amsterdam to Grigny, an infamous suburb in the southern part of the Paris Metropolitan Area.
Why? Kloppenburg: ‘I’m all about investing in public transport for social reasons. And about the multi-core structure of the Paris Metropolitan Area and the choice to strengthen what we call the tangential connections, the connections from suburb to suburb. Because they are heavily investing in those connections.
You have to really take into account the scale of Paris: Paris within the Périférique has 2 million inhabitants. But in the Paris Metropolitan Area live approximately 12.5 million people. What they usually give you as a tourist is the Plan Metro, which only goes as far as the Périférique and just beyond. Then there is the RER network, which are the suburban trains, and there is also a tram network in Paris (which many people don’t know about, I didn’t either) and there are buses: fast buses and slow buses.
And if you put all those different networks on top of each other and look at the places Paris is investing in, where those 35 million are going, then you can see what they are doing. It’s much more about creating connections between the suburbs, which also serves to relieve the network in the city centre. They are creating fast bus connections from suburb to suburb, and expanding the tram network, such as with the T1, T2 and T3. And all of this is outside the Périférique.’
Why is this relevant for Amsterdam?
‘It is relevant for the greater Amsterdam area, so Amsterdam plus the suburbs – Geuzenveld, Osdorp, but also Zaandam, Almere, Weesp, Diemen, Amstelveen. Approximately 150,000 people live in the Nieuw-West district, and new houses are still being built. We increase the density, but not in the city centre; we are increasing the density on the other side of the A10 ring road.
And if you then take a look at our public transport network, you immediately see that in a district such as Nieuw-West, or Amsterdam Noord or Rotterdam-Zuid (with 220,000 inhabitants!) there is very little public transport, and that the public transport network is concentrated in the city centre. The tram network in Amsterdam is concentrated in the city centre, which makes sense as it dates from as early as 1875. And the Noord-Zuid metro line takes you from Amsterdam Noord to the city centre, but not to Zaandam and there are no connections from east to west within the Amsterdam Noord district.
In the Netherlands, a lot of money destined for public transport is used to improve the mobility of students and pupils, and much less that of people living in the suburbs. So how do you get from Nieuw-West to an industrial estate at night in the rain in November? And how do people from the suburbs get to work at Schiphol airport early in the morning? Or how do people from Rotterdam-Zuid get to the greenhouses in the Westland?
But, things are starting to change – in Paris but also in the Netherlands. Policymakers now say: “We need to start doing more in those districts.” That’s a positive development. But views differ on how to do this. For me, the solution does not have to be a 19th-century tram. In cities like Paris and Istanbul, the volumes are so high that you can’t really go without strong collective systems such as buses or trams. But that’s not the case in the Netherlands.
Although when I’m in Paris, I also often think: why is the asphalt so little used by public transport? And with that I mean the motorways, so the A86 and the Périférique, in particular. In Paris, the public transport mainly consists of railway lines. Expanding those old systems costs an incredible amount of money. While a lot more can be done by, for example, dynamically reserving lanes for public transport – for buses, sharing systems and/or dolmuş vans. With the emphasis on dynamic, so not rigid and exclusively for a scheduled GVB bus service once every 15 minutes.
Look at how they created the streets around schools in Paris – by pushing out the cars. Look at how they made space for the bicycle – by removing the cars. That is possible, and that does not cost 35 billion.’