A "Car" for Grenoble

Ever since it acted as host to the 1968 Winter Olympics, the city of Grenoble (pop.: 380,000) has been trying to improve itself even more, becoming France's laboratory for urban planning. Now, in an ambitious move that is being watched by urban planners everywhere, the city is moving to reduce the number of private automobiles that clog and pollute its streets.

Last fall Grenoble started to extend its bus and trolley systems. Now it is testing a new kind of "people mover" --an aerial tramway akin to a ski lift that may be extended from the city center to the suburbs. The city is also giving downtown shoppers a break; cars have been banned on three streets which have become pedestrian malls. By 1980, Mayor Hubert Dubedout predicts, downtown will be served exclusively by public transport--a pedestrian's paradise, with no automobiles to be seen.

Free Choice. When this type of plan has been tried elsewhere, it has usually failed. Transit facilities simply cannot compete with the freedom and privacy of the auto. So Grenoble is promoting a humble alternative. "The bicycle offers door-to-door convenience," says Traffic Engineer Alain Leclerc, head of what he calls "the Two Wheels in Grenoble" program. "It also offers free choice of departure time and destination, plus the possibility of moving about without taking a hard-to-park ton of steel along with you." In case of inclement weather or too many parcels or small children, mass transit would always be available. By geological accident, moreover, the Grenoble valley is almost flat, and thus is ideal for bicycling. The only drawback: auto and truck traffic has made bicycling too dangerous.

One solution is to separate bicyclists from motorists, and Grenoble has budgeted $1.2 million to do just that. By 1979 there will be six miles of exclusive bicycle lanes, either built along new urban roads or reserved on downtown streets. No other European city has gone so far, nor has any city anywhere treated a grid of bikeways as an integral part of a mass transit system. As a start, Grenoble is installing racks at bus stops, where bike owners can change from two-wheelers to four.

Will bike riders opt for the safe bikeways if it means taking a longer route to their destinations? To find out, Leclerc is now setting up a test bicycle path alongside a heavily used downtown street. But he is already convinced that "a bike should become a second car --perfect for cities."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.