Parisians Are Choosing Bikes Over Cars. Will New Yorkers Do That, Too?

The transformation of cycling access in Paris over the past few years may have lessons for New York and its car-clogged streets.

This is Street Wars, a weekly series on the battle for space on New York’s streets and sidewalks.

This is going to make some New Yorkers mad, but we need to look at what Paris is doing with its streets.

I was sent to Paris last month as part of the team covering the Olympic Games, and I kept noticing different ways — some huge, some small — that the streets in Paris were superior to those in my beloved New York. It wasn’t just the magnificent Beaux-Arts architecture.

For starters, Paris has quite a few mid-block crosswalks. As a pedestrian, it feels safer: Drivers can actually see you. New York’s corner-oriented intersections are dangerous. City data shows that crashes at intersections typically lead to 50 percent of all traffic fatalities and 70 percent of all injuries in a year.

Last year, Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to improve visibility at intersections — a practice called “daylighting,” which the city says has been completed at hundreds of intersections so far. New York is also installing raised crosswalks, in hopes of making pedestrians more conspicuous and prompting drivers passing over the incline to slow down.

Change can’t come soon enough, seeing as how 127 people, including 61 pedestrians, were killed by drivers during the first six months of this year.