# The great Parisian bike boom

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly), 2026-10-03

mobility, urbanism, cycling, cycling vs driving, le monde, mobility, paris, urbanism

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Okay, so [this dataset](https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2023/11/11/a-paris-la-frequentation-des-pistes-cyclables-a-double-en-un-an_6199510_4355770.html?srsltid=AU7gw4Wv1JICw4I9CTQ-6RuLYZrA_OY5HgcRxbgscgiugKY2es09RHJD) isn’t the most recent, but it’s interesting nonetheless. At the end of 2023, _Le Monde_ reported that Paris had seen a doubling of cycling traffic compared to the year before. For a typical week and based on 128 sensor locations across the city, this is what that increase looked like between October 2022 and 2023:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/d03528df872e6b7b12da4f16bc32ef99beac08e8a60d9584830cf75e25a63a7e.png)

But the data gets even more interesting when you compare it to vehicular traffic. Here’s vehicular traffic vs. cycling traffic for three principal boulevards in the city, namely l’avenue de Flandre, le boulevard Voltaire and le boulevard Magenta:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/93778b41961081fcb6f2fdefe42b508f4c7fd640035c27a773c9123ad4e6761a.png)

These three boulevards were chosen because they all have bi-directional lanes for both cars and bikes, meaning they roughly privilege both forms of mobility equally. And what you are seeing in the above chart is that bike traffic exceeds car traffic by fairly large margins during peak weekday periods.

This is a mobility accomplishment that benefits both cyclists and drivers.

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_Charts via_ [_Le Monde_](https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2023/11/11/a-paris-la-frequentation-des-pistes-cyclables-a-double-en-un-an_6199510_4355770.html?srsltid=AU7gw4Wv1JICw4I9CTQ-6RuLYZrA_OY5HgcRxbgscgiugKY2es09RHJD)

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/the-great-parisian-bike-boom)*