Treating COVID with Bike Lanes: Design, Spatial, and Network Analysis of ‘Pop-Up’ Bike Lanes in Paris

Abstract

Paris bypassed standard-construction processes to rapidly expand its bike-lane network amidst COVID-19. This study analyses these new lanes in terms of their design, spatial footprint, and relationship to the pre-COVID network. Municipal data, street imagery, and in-person observations demonstrate that Paris’s new ‘pop-up’ lanes are a higher share bi-directional than the pre-COVID network (49% vs. 39%), a higher share more protected (77% vs. 73%), and average a higher number of interconnections. These 47 kilometers connect the city’s peripheral ring to its inner core, primarily represent new lanes as opposed to upgrades of existing lanes (66% vs. 33%), and replace both traffic lanes and on-street parking.