Car Free Megacities Leaderboard

London, New York and Paris have introduced various measures that contribute towards our Car Free Megacities vision. We’re reviewing these measures and are awarding each city a bronze, silver or gold medal on each one. Who will come out on top at the end of 2022?

Cargo bikes

As the demand for home deliveries in cities increases, cargo bikes can provide a clean, faster, more efficient alternative than dirty delivery vans.

1st - Paris: The e-cargo market is one of the fastest growing segments in Paris, and speaks to the ‘15-minute city’ concept. SMEs can access up to €2,500 via the Agency for Ecological Transition’s "energy springboard" programme. Individuals can use the French government’s ‘bike bonus’ to cover up to 40% of the cost of purchasing a cargo bike, up to a limit of €1,000.

2nd - London: Bikes for Business is an initiative by the London Bridge business improvement district that aims to get 15% of businesses to switch central London deliveries to cargo bikes, and provides up to £700 in subsidies. TfL also has a Freight and Servicing Action Plan and has recently launched the London Freight Lab to explore solutions. About 2,000 cargo bikes were sold in the UK for commercial use last year, according to the Bicycle Association, and a similar number were sold for use by families and individuals.

3rd - New York: New York launched a commercial cargo bike pilot programme in December 2019 with three companies and 100 bikes. As of the beginning of 2021, six companies and 350 bikes were involved. For the most part, the private sector has been adding cargo bikes and e-bikes to their delivery fleets.

Action during COVID

During COVID, cities are faced with the challenge of adapting the way people live and move in order to keep everyone safe. Many of these measures also created cleaner, greener, people-first cities.

1st - London: During March-September 2020, new low traffic neighbourhoods were built across various London boroughs, including the City of London, which was 48.5% covered by LTNs in September 2020. London’s Streetspace plan aimed to create more space for walking and cycling.

2nd - Paris: Hidalgo pushed her “Paris Respire” programme even further during lockdown, turning 52km of traffic lanes into cyclist-friendly “corona pistes”. The provisional cycle paths appeared in May 2020 in the capital with one objective: to allow as many users as possible to travel safely by bicycle to desaturate public transport during the Covid-19 pandemic. Cycling trips increased from 5% to 7%, and the temporary cycle lanes will soon be permanent.

3rd - New York: New York’s Open Restaurants and Open Streets were launched in 2020 in response to the COVID crisis. While some bike lanes were installed, very few were motivated specifically because of COVID; most were projects that were already in the works and simply installed on an accelerated timeline.

Parklets

A parklet is an old parking space that has been transformed with greenery and space to sit down. They can increase peoples’ sense of belonging whilst meeting local needs - a place for children and adults to play outside, a space for those with mobility needs to rest, foster a stronger sense of community, a place to learn new things.

1st - London: In Hackney, London, 70% of people don’t own a car. Thanks to pressure from local campaigners, the Council is trialling the first ever community parklet scheme in the UK, (and only the second such scheme in Europe!). There are now 15 residential parklets planned by the Council this year, and this may increase depending on the success of the initial pilot scheme.

2nd - Paris: In 2019, four parking spaces in Paris were transformed into parklets as a trial. Paris is set to remove half of its 140,000 on-street car parking spaces as it seeks to make the city greener and more people friendly, and is currently asking people what they want to use this space for, so we’d expect to see more parklets coming up! However, according to city hall itself, the goal of 70,000 reallocated places will be difficult to reach, so this may not happen as soon as we’d like.

3rd - New York: New York launched the Open Restaurants program in summer 2020. Today, more than 12,000 restaurants are participating in the program with approximately 50% located either completely or partly in former parking spaces or other curbside space. However, these parklets are commercial enterprises rather than the community assets seen in London and Paris.

Political will

What are the London, New York and Paris mayors' visions for their cities?

1st - Paris: Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris since 2014, has made the reduction of car traffic one of the spearheads of her campaign. The policies she has led have proven effective, resulting in an 8% reduction in traffic in 2019. Re-elected in 2020, she intends to continue the fight against air pollution, but will also be tackling noise pollution. She also wants to reallocate many public spaces and roads previously reserved for cars. The will is there, the challenge will be to deliver this goal all over Paris.

2nd - London: London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, used the Healthy Streets Approach as the framework when creating the transport strategy, which has the goal of increasing the number of car free journeys from 64% to 80% by 2041. In January 2022 he launched a net-zero by 2030 report, which stated that London car traffic must reduce by at least 27% by the end of the decade.

3rd - New York: New York’s mayor-elect, Eric Adams, has promised 300 miles of protected bike lanes and an expansion of projects incl. bike share, open streets and more. It is too early to know whether these goals will be achieved.

School streets

High levels of air pollution in cities have a devastating impact on children’s health which can be severe, long term and even deadly. School Streets, where traffic is restricted on roads outside schools at pick-up and drop-off times during term-times, make it safer and easier for children to walk, scoot and cycle to school.

1st - London: As of July 2021, over 500 School Streets were in place across London, with more on the way.

2nd - Paris: In September 2021, Paris introduced 185 School Streets in an effort to make the city safer for children. However, Paris sans Voiture say that not all of these streets currently have the same level of safety or design standards, and many of them require improvements on these fronts. In collaboration with La Rue Est À Nous, Paris Sans Voiture has created a school streets map showing that only 9% of Parisian schools have good quality 'school streets' and highlighting the progress that still needs to be made.

3rd - New York: New York does not yet have a school streets programme.

Micromobility

E-scooters provide a convenient, accessible, on-demand transport option that take up far less space than cars and have a much smaller climate impact.

1st - Paris: There are about 15,000 e-scooters for rental in Paris from Lime, Dott, and Tier. After getting off to a rocky and largely unregulated start, they are now bound by strict rules – one person per e-scooter, maximum speed of 20 km/h, and only on streets or bike paths. In several ‘slow zones’ in central Paris, especially where the city recently expanded the pedestrian zones, a speed limit of 10 km/h applies.

2nd - New York: In August 2021, NYC Department of Transportation launched a scooter share pilot in the East Bronx. Three companies – Bird, Lime and Veo – are involved in the project. E-scooters may be ridden in bike lanes and on streets with speed limits no greater than 30 MPH, but the speed limit is capped at 15mph.

3rd - London: Select London boroughs are taking part in a year-long e-scooter trial that began in June 2021. Some 85,000 journeys were made on e-scooters rented from Dott, Lime or TIER, as part of the trial in the first three months. It’s legal to ride them on the road, but the speed limit of trial e-scooters is capped at 12.5mph - they will automatically reduce speed to 8mph in 'go slow' areas. Privately owned e-scooters remain illegal, despite sales of them rising. In November 2021 we released data showing that Black Londoners were over three times more likely to be stopped and nearly twice as likely to face potential prosecution by the Met Police for e-scooter offences than white Londoners in 2020. Britain’s outdated legislation is standing in the way of e-scooters potential to decarbonise travel in our cities and beyond - with Black people on the front line of the consequences.

Clean air zones

Low emission zones and ultra low emission zones prevent the most polluting vehicles from entering certain areas, or require that they pay to enter, in order to incentivise them to swap their current vehicle for a cleaner, compliant vehicle.

1st - Paris: The Paris Low Emission Zone was initiated in 2015, and updated in 2017, 2019, and 2021. The criteria for entry into the zone will become progressively more stringent from now until 2030. By 2030, under the current implementation plan, only battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will be permitted to enter the LEZ, keeping Paris within WHO pollution limits. Furthermore, since August 2021, the vast majority of the capital's streets have introduced a speed limit of 30km/h (about 18mph). 

2nd - London: In April 2019 London introduced the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone, and the area it covers was expanded 18-fold in October 2021. The data shows that 92% of vehicles detected travelling within the ULEZ since expansion have been compliant compared with 87% during the two weeks before its introduction. This is an impressive increase on the original 39% compliance level in the Central London area covered by the Congestion Charge zone in February 2017, prior to the Mayor introducing a Toxicity Charge on the most polluting vehicles driven there in October of that year. The Congestion Charging Zone also has a 20mph speed limit.

3rd - New York: New York doesn't have any clean air zones nor are there any plans to introduce any as far as we know.

For more statistics on the car-free status of our three megacities, visit our data dashboard.

Do you have your own car free story? Add it to our map here.