The episode in detail
From civil engineering to Paris’s cycling mission
Charlotte Guth trained as an engineer, specialising in civil engineering. After six months in the Netherlands, where she discovered cycling as an ordinary mode of transport, she spent seven years designing urban development projects in France: roads, tramways, green spaces. In 2018, she joined the City of Paris’s roads and transport department to lead the cycling plan. The context was tense: despite Anne Hidalgo’s promise to make Paris the “world cycling capital”, few concrete results had appeared by the halfway point of her term. Advocacy groups, Paris en Selle chief among them, criticised the slow pace and poor quality of the schemes.
“It’s as if we spent a lot of money building a metro, and at the end, people tell us: you’ve built a three-station metro, and on top of that the metro is rubbish.”
The push to speed things up paid off towards the end of the first term. Then two events followed one another: the November 2019 transport strike, which pushed thousands of Parisians onto bikes by default, and the Covid crisis in 2020.
Temporary cycle tracks: concrete blocks and an emergency cycling plan
Covid triggered a massive rollout. The mayor’s target: build the maximum number of cycle tracks in the minimum amount of time. The strategy rested on two principles. The first: align the lanes with a network modelled on the Paris metro map, an idea proposed by advocacy groups during the municipal campaign. As the Paris metro was built in open trenches under the streets, not with tunnel boring machines, its routes follow the street layout. The cycle tracks follow the same pattern.
The second principle: quality. Paris chose large concrete blocks to separate the tracks from car traffic, rather than simple plastic bollards or paint on the road. The aim was to convince people who don’t yet cycle, not to satisfy cyclists already won over.
“We went straight for large concrete blocks. Small plastic bollards don’t stop any car, let alone an SUV, from parking in the cycle track.”
Around fifty temporary cycle tracks were rolled out during this period. Images of Paris’s temporary cycle tracks travelled around the world.
Rue de Rivoli: 25,000 cyclists a day
Of all the schemes, Rue de Rivoli became the emblem of the Paris cycling plan. A first lane 4 metres wide was created there in 2019. Less than six months later, the mayor decided to remove through traffic: residents, deliveries and medical vehicles kept access, but passing cars were banned. The lane is now between 6 and 9 metres wide.
The result is striking: 25,000 cyclists a day at peak, a continuous flow of around 2,000 bikes an hour during rush hour. One cyclist every six seconds in each direction. The latest usage records were set in September 2025. Noise levels on the street have dropped considerably.
All the count data is available as open data on opendata.paris.fr, which lets journalists and advocacy groups track the trend objectively.
The cycling plan against Paris’s heritage constraints
Paris is not like other cities when it comes to cycling infrastructure. Protecting the architectural heritage imposes heavy constraints. Coloured lanes, common in other European cities, are not yet allowed. Some lanes had to keep their cobblestones. On the Champs-Élysées, the 3-kilometre cobbled lane, uphill and downhill, pushes the limits of acceptable comfort.
“A cobbled lane more than 50 metres long is extremely unpleasant. Why would people do something uncomfortable?”
Boulevard de Sébastopol illustrates another challenge: saturation. With 25,000 cyclists a day on a lane that has become too narrow, Paris is working on doubling the infrastructure. It’s the first time the city has had to manage cycle congestion, a “rich person’s problem” that Amsterdam and Copenhagen already know.
Cyclist safety and co-management with the police prefecture
Paris’s streets are co-managed between the city and the state, through the préfecture de police. This body has oversight of scheme designs on major roads. Getting approval can take a considerable amount of time, even when working relations are cordial. This administration, which is not elected by Parisians, forms a structural obstacle to the fast rollout of lanes.
On the ground, safety rests on two levers: infrastructure (width, physical separation, junction design) and policing. Paris has strengthened its municipal police to enforce respect for cycle tracks, pedestrian crossings, red lights and the 30 km/h speed limit. Video enforcement also allows fines for vehicles driving in bus lanes or cycle tracks.
Charlotte acknowledges that cyclists breaking traffic rules, red lights in particular, remains an issue. She recommends that cities experiencing a cycling boom invest in enforcement from the start, before bad habits take hold.
“What was fine when there were three of us cycling doesn’t fly any more when there are many of us. New riders need to be steered towards the right kind of behaviour as soon as they arrive.”
Convincing elected officials and mobilising citizens
The first obstacle to cycling growth in a city is often political will. Taking space away from the car remains a hard fight, even though car use is more varied than the cliché of the executive alone in an SUV: tradespeople, home care workers, people with disabilities.
Charlotte stresses the power of citizens. Writing to your local representative, speaking up at public meetings, taking part in public consultations on road projects. Positive comments count as much as complaints: elected officials need to feel support behind their decisions.
“A successful lane is one that doesn’t get complaints. It’s not one that gets praise, because that doesn’t happen.”
For small-budget towns, Charlotte recommends cycle streets, traffic-calmed streets where bikes outnumber cars, and pedestrianising town centres. These projects cost little and bring immediate gains for residents: less noise, less pollution, windows you can open at night. Her advice: never present these projects as “pro-cycling”, but as public health and quality-of-life measures.
Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen: exchanges between cycling cities
Since Covid, Paris has gained worldwide visibility on cycling. Charlotte has exchanged views with European, American (notably Los Angeles, ahead of the 2028 Olympics) and Mexican cities. The finding is the same everywhere: the main obstacles are universal. Resistance to removing car space, the difficulty of convincing elected officials, insufficient lane quality.
To give her team a sense of what Paris could become, Charlotte took them to Amsterdam: five hours of cycling to physically feel what a cycling city means. Utrecht, Amsterdam and Copenhagen remain the world references. Paris isn’t there yet, but the 25,000 daily cyclists on Rivoli show the trajectory is right.
Cycling as the third mode of transport
Paris isn’t aiming to make cycling the top mode of transport. Walking remains the priority, followed by public transport, essential for absorbing the density of the metropolis (the RER A carries a million passengers a day). Cycling comes third, but growing fast.
The main obstacle to adoption remains fear of cars. Charlotte hears it every time she talks about her job. The answer lies in infrastructure: wide, physically separated lanes that reassure new cyclists. Her recommendation for starting to bike-commute? Find a colleague who already cycles, ask about their route, and do the first few journeys together.
