Paris cycle routes are recent.
The first cycle routes had been built in 1970 : simple green strips drawn on the pavement, they were called "courtesy corridors"
and they were renamed "death corridors" by cyclist. Badly built and not maintained, they were very few used.
In 1996, Paris mayor, Jean Tibéri, decided to build more serious cycle routes. Between 1996 and 1998, 100 km of routes
were built.
In 2000, a new law constrained any town of more than 100 000 inhabitants (not only Paris) to have a program for
locomotion inside the city ("PDU : Plan de Déplacement Urbain"). The Paris "PDU" wanted to reduce the car usage by 5%,
and promoting bicycle could help that.
The new Paris mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, wants to continue the reduction of cars circulation inside Paris : 40 km of
separated corridors have been built. These corridors are reserved for bus, taxis and bicycle (at least they should !).
Since a few years, some streets of Paris are forbidden to cars on Sunday, and it has been decided to make of some
districts of Paris "green district", where cars are forbidden.
In 2006, there were about 350 km of cycle routes inside Paris and 23 km in Boulogne and Vincennes parks. It is not a
lot compared to the 1400 km of Paris streets.
During the 1995 strike, when public transports were paralyzed, many people have discovered or rediscovered the bicycle.
Since then, the sales and the use of bicycles has continually grown : +12% between 1997 and 2000, +4% between 2001
and 2002, and +2% in 2007 (before Vélib was launched).
Only about 1% of Paris inhabitant use bicycles. The fear of a crash with a car is probably the major reason.
However, bicycles represent only 3% of traffic's accidents.
Despite the 20800 parkings for two wheels vehicules, it is always diffuclt to find a place to park your bicycle and it is
easy to make it stole.