Yesterday night the BBC was announcing the start of a new 8km tram line in Paris. With green grass surrounding the trains, this seems like a great move towards making the city more environment friendly, but it is actually the latest in a move by the city to curb downtown traffic by making it a hell to drive around. All roads now include bus lanes or other tricks that reduced by half the number of lanes available for common drivers. The city seems to hope that by making driving the most frustrating experience ever, people will use alternative means of transportation.

What a terrible way to treat its own population!

Public transportation in Paris is very far from perfect when compared with cities like Hong Kong. The metro is dirty and plagued by strikes and delays. Buses are unsafe. Is the city really providing an equally convenient alternative to the car? Not really… It also fails to realize the importance of the car for French people in general. Driving a car in France is a statement of freedom and independence. A forced removal of this can only angry people more. It will not make them abandon their car.

So apart from increased traffic jams, Paris now also has way more motorcycles speeding between cars and leading to more crashes, as more and more less-experienced two-wheel drivers get on the road. Looking at solutions like London implementation of a toll fee could lead to better results. Unfortunately, a fee, as I was discussing with a French friend, is not an egalitarian solution as it will affect poorer people more… Isn’t France quest to be the most egalitarian country in the world affecting its own relevance to the world in the end?

Back in Hong Kong after two weeks in my home country, France, I can start blogging again. And for a short while I will blog about differences; differences between France and Hong Kong.

As a first post, I will focus on traffic lights. It is the first time that it struck me, but traffic lights are rather different in some aspects between France and Hong Kong. The main difference I found is that the French green is not as “green” as the Hong Kong green… Let me explain…

Say you are pedestrian in Hong Kong waiting to cross the road. When the light turns green, you can cross without any worry. No car can come at you as all traffic lights for cars are red. Not so in France. When the same pedestrian crosses the road, cars will be coming from other sides of the crossroad and will be patiently waiting, or most probably trying to find a way through the pedestrians, while you are crossing. This makes crossing the road a much more stressful experience. A very small difference you would say…

Well if we believe what Malcolm Gladwell writes in “The Tipping Point”, small environment cues are very important and can greatly affect people’s behavior. In his book, he goes on explaining how removing graffiti in the New York subway helped decrease crime. Well, could it be that in Paris, making green lights “greener” could help decrease the stress and frustration the population faces everyday there? Everybody who visits me in Hong Kong finds that despite the crowd the place seems more relaxing than others… maybe European cities could learn from these small things that can make a city nicer to live in.