The episode in detail
Michel Barnier and cycling: when a minister’s speech changed everything
In 1993, Michel Barnier was appointed Minister of the Environment. His first public appearance, at the general assembly of France Nature Environnement, included a statement on cycling. Isabelle Lesens, then a campaigner and former Datar official, seized the moment. She put a question in a professional environmental journal: “Monsieur Barnier, will you be the minister who launches a cycling policy?” The question was picked first. Barnier answered yes. Armed with this public promise, Isabelle began what she calls “the siege” of the minister’s cabinet: every interesting piece of cycling news was sent to the minister, every opportunity used. She ended up being recruited as a policy adviser to the Minister of the Environment’s cabinet.
Bike racks and cycle boxes: the ministry’s first symbolic moves
The minister had asked for a cycle track between his ministry and offices 300 metres away. Isabelle refused and negotiated something else: the first bike racks installed outside a ministry in France. Three ministers had to be convinced to give up parking spaces. The operation took time, but it succeeded. Those racks are still there today.
“The day after the installation, the minister was in Le Monde, on the front page: I’m very proud of my ministry’s bike garages. Won.”
The same day, she secured Paris’s first cycle boxes, installed outside the ministry. A location with no practical use, but a strategic one: the MDB association had been asking for cycle boxes at a dangerous junction, and the city had refused. By showing that the feature worked without any trouble, Isabelle unblocked the situation for the whole capital.
The idea for the riverbanks: an angel passing through a corridor
One evening, Isabelle was about to leave the ministry when cabinet staff stopped her. They were looking for an idea for the Environment festival, something different from what Ségolène Royal had done (closing Boulevard Saint-Germain for a Sunday, seen as having no educational value). Isabelle shot back straight away: close the Seine’s riverside roads for a Sunday.
“I promise you, an angel passed behind me with its wings. And they said to me: are you sure? Let’s do it. And that was that, it was won.”
Convincing the police prefect before the mayor
Two people needed convincing: the Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, and the police prefect. The cabinet chose to start with the prefect: if he said no, that was the end of it whatever the mayor said. If he said yes, the mayor could not refuse. Isabelle was received by the deputy chief of staff to the prefect.
“I saw it cross her mind, she pictured herself holding her two grandchildren by the hand on the banks of the Seine. And that was won.”
The deputy chief of staff even suggested extending the operation from the Bois de Boulogne to the Bois de Vincennes. Isabelle refused: too complex, too many orders, too many roadblocks. She wanted something simple and repeatable. All it took was lowering six or seven barriers in the morning. The exits did not even need to be blocked, since no cars were coming in.
10 July 1994: the extraordinary silence of the Seine riverbanks
The operation was meant to take place in June, but a diplomatic summit tied up the police. It was pushed back to 10 July. The team feared an empty riverbank: Parisians were supposed to have already left on holiday. By 9am, the opposite happened: a crowd of cyclists appeared, even though everyone assumed Parisians did not own bikes.
“All of it in an unbelievable silence. A silence beyond words. The journalists did not know what to say, it was so extraordinary. Everyone had a huge smile.”
Michel Barnier came in person and publicly thanked Isabelle: “All of this is thanks to you.”
30 years without a counter-order: how a temporary operation became permanent
After this first success, the formula was repeated: by Tibéri at All Saints’ (a weather failure), then every summer from 14 July to 15 August, then every Sunday. When Bertrand Delanoë arrived in 2001, nobody officially gave the order to continue. City departments, which had got into the habit of lowering and raising the barriers every Sunday, simply kept going. No counter-order, no stop.
Isabelle tried to get the scheme improved by proposing cycle lanes on the central bridge, where cyclists have to switch banks in unlawful conditions. Her proposal went nowhere. But the main point stands: an operation designed to be simple to run survived four mayoral terms and led, thirty years later, to the riverbanks being fully pedestrianised.
“Today, the riverbanks are fully pedestrianised. Is that thanks to me? Yes, absolutely, it’s thanks to me. There’s no doubt about it.”
