Friday Video: The Untold Story Behind the Paris Bike Boom

Anne Hidalgo’s visionary leadership gets a lot of the credit for Paris’s bicycling boom. But is there a deeper story behind the success of the City of Lights? In this video, Shifter unpacks how advocates held the vaunted mayor accountable for making good on her big biking promises, as well as how a simple Metro-style bike map helped residents envision a future where getting in the saddle was a real alternative to driving, plus as a few other tips that we could learn from in the U.S.

And along the way, host Tom Babin bikes all 40 of Paris’s newest cycling lanes in under 12 (edited) minutes.