Yep, but you still live or work in Paris.
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
663 points (99.0% liked)
Uplifting News
11865 readers
2001 users here now
Welcome to /c/UpliftingNews, a dedicated space where optimism and positivity converge to bring you the most heartening and inspiring stories from around the world. We strive to curate and share content that lights up your day, invigorates your spirit, and inspires you to spread positivity in your own way. This is a sanctuary for those seeking a break from the incessant negativity often found in today's news cycle. From acts of everyday kindness to large-scale philanthropic efforts, from individual achievements to community triumphs, we bring you news that gives hope, fosters empathy, and strengthens the belief in humanity's capacity for good.
Here in /c/UpliftingNews, we uphold the values of respect, empathy, and inclusivity, fostering a supportive and vibrant community. We encourage you to share your positive news, comment, engage in uplifting conversations, and find solace in the goodness that exists around us. We are more than a news-sharing platform; we are a community built on the power of positivity and the collective desire for a more hopeful world. Remember, your small acts of kindness can be someone else's big ray of hope. Be part of the positivity revolution; share, uplift, inspire!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Only so much you can do
Anyone else bothered by the sudden change in scale in the last image? It's way zoomed in compared to the first 3.
Looks similar to this 
https://www.airparif.fr/sites/default/files/document_publication/Bilan_QA_75_2023_1.pdf
I don't love it either but the scale does look the same across the four.
If you look at the vein(?) on the north side of the loop, there's a part that goes straight north and then east, with a break in the north leg. Makes it a lot more clear that it was zoomed in.
Two different scales at play. The geographic scale clearly changes in the last image, but thankfully the measurement scale (as indicated by the color bar below each picture) stays constant, which would be much more egregious in terms of making the image misleading if it did not.
Oh. Yeah, definitely. That would be way worse.
Anecdata. I lived there for much of that period. The change in air quality itself was real but too subtle to be noticeable. But the change in the amount of car traffic in Paris has been very noticeable, and very impressive.
Some context. The municipal setup gives residents of Paris proper (the 2 million people within the ring road in the image) a lot of influence over the whole Paris region. And 2/3 of those central residents do not own cars! Meanwhile, as in any city, much of the car traffic is generated by suburban drivers. Some of these drivers don't have good transit options, but most of them do. Paris has one of the world's densest transit systems, and that includes the suburbs. Moreover, the suburbanites have always denied the trade-off between housing space and convenience. Yes, the people in central Paris tend to be a bit richer, but they've also accepted the sacrifice of living in small apartments and foregoing private transport. One study found that the average resident of central Paris walks around 2km per day.
So those central Paris residents voted, again and again, to take space away from cars and to give it to bike lanes and sidewalks and parks instead. The local green party has been instrumental, it attracts 10 or 15% of the vote and is a part of the city's coalition government. I was one of those voters. This is the result. It's been positive for the whole city and it's a genuine good news story.
IIRC, paris put into play car taxes similar to what NYC just put in along with outright bans in some areas.
Every city of moderate size should do the same. Having so much space allocated for cars is just insane and provides nothing but cancer to the general citizenry.
Same in Oslo.
The people who live in the city, does not want cars in the city.
And the same small parties have been getting though their agenda because the larger parties does not have majority votes. So they have to include these small green parties.
I am new to Copenhagen and have heard that it's been a pretty consistent growth in that direction. As someone who lived in the US for years, it feels really refreshing here because of it
How popular are ebikes? I think they can solve a lot.
There are lots of bikes of all kinds. All this has happened in the last decade or so. There have been cycle lanes for decades but they were mostly empty. Then the pace of building picked up, and then the pandemic seemed to be a tipping point.
You will notice the change in air quality when the number of asthmatics and people with other respiratory issues suddenly dramatically drops
The way it works is that inside the ring is Paris and outside isn't Paris. So only some have a say in how the city is run.
Eventually, Paris will probably grow again. But for now, that's how it is.
That's a bit of a simplification. There is also an elected government for the Paris region. It just has fewer powers than most big-city governments. So yes, suburbanites get an unusually small say in what happens in the city center. But the inverse is true too - central residents get less of a say in what happens in the suburbs. The issue is that, like in any city, much of car traffic across the center comes from the suburban periphery, where people own cars and use them. That is clearly an injustice for the central residents, who have to suffer the externalities of those cars. In this case the quirky institutional setup allowed those residents to put their foot down and say no, so that is unsurprisingly what they did.
In a world that is burning it is refreshing to see things like this!
The burning is still happening. Just not inside Paris
Car lovers: but my emissions :'(
I wonder whether they have noise pollution meters. that would be interesting to see the difference.
Edit: there is! https://carto.bruitparif.fr/ But only until 2022?
2017
2022
2022 was much quieter, but that was also during COVID. I wish they had something for 2023 and 2024
Fuck cars.
80% of the noise over 75dB in a French city is two stroke petrol scooters going "baaaaaaababababbaaaaaaa" at 3 in the morning.
Ugh those need to be banned and replaced with electric scooters. Some place in Asia did that and the air quality went up dramatically.
My eyes are burned into my head due to someone using a pie chart on these data...
Car lover here. Fortunately we have things like DEF injection nowdays to keep NOx emissions down while still enjoying our cars! It is however unfortunate that many people remove those systems because of perceived unreliability.
Still, soon as I can afford it, I'll be moving to electric myself. Electric cars do cause more noise at any real speed though, as tire noise overtakes engine noise at 30-40 km/h in my experience, and EVs are a fair bit heavier. But the grid is a lot cleaner nowadays than burning diesel fuel.
Taking inspiration from a demonic sigil, in this case odegra, to cause a circle of low-level evil to be produced around Paris by the motorists, and making it incredibly frustrating to drive on, seems hardly something to be happy about