Mariane THÉBERT, LVMT / Université Gustave Eiffel, France
Manon ESKENAZI, LVMT / Ecole des Ponts, France
“Corona cycle lanes” are emergency bike lanes, rapidly deployed at a cheap cost with minimum infrastructure. In the Paris region, 167,76km of corona cycle lanes were created, and cycling use had a 67% rise in Paris.
Nonetheless corona cycle lanes had a mitigate success, sometimes creating vivid criticisms from car drivers and bus operators which led to their dismantling. These contrasting results raise questions about whether the COVID crisis has been an accelerator for cycling transition, and its lasting effects on cycling policies and practices. Was the dynamic of cycling infrastructure construction enhanced by the COVID-19 only “a spur of the moment”, or is it representative of a transition trend? And how can the introduction of this new planning tool affect the cycling policy process and its stakeholders’ play?
We studied the case of Paris region, with a focus on three cities: Paris, one city in the first-ring suburbs and one city in the outer ring, both connected to Paris by the public transit. 12 semi-directive interviews were conducted with technical departments, local urban communities’ representatives, counties’ representative, and local cycling associations.
This study shows that COVID-19 crisis acted as an accelerator for cycling policies, but also reinforced the contrasting dynamics of cycling policies implementation between central areas and the outer suburbs of the Paris Region. Even though there was a consensus about the need for cycling pop-up lanes the implementation of pop up lanes generated debates among stakeholders, especially in cities in the outer rings. Nonetheless, the particular moment of the COVID-19 crisis helped testing new forms of cycling infrastructures that were hard to implement beforehand. The COVID-19 crisis was thus an accelerator for the implementation of cycling policies, but with contrasted effects depending on the pre-existing cycling policies in the territories.
Mots clés : Cycling policy|pop-up lanes|Paris region|transition|COVID-19
A105369ME