Isn't the most interesting point about this the assumption that people are going to abandon public transport in favour of cars when the lockdowns end?
That seems to suggest we'll have more crowded roads with reduced capacity (due to the added cycleways); maybe I'm being too pessimistic though, and we'll see a big switch to WFH.
I do think it’s inevitable we will see a switch to work from home for a long time. Social distancing norms significantly reduce elevator capacity, making high-rise office towers impractical. Staggering morning and evening rush hours might be doable, but add the need to schedule lunch traffic, and, I think, the conclusion will be that the building can’t hold as many people as before.
As to a move to cars: if cycling becomes faster than public transport, adding bicycle lanes could speed up car commutes because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs–Thomson_paradox (“the equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys taken by public transport“)
> That seems to suggest we'll have more crowded roads with reduced capacity (due to the added cycleways);
The goal of course is to have people actually use the cycleways, which should increase capacity: you can fit multiple cyclists in the space used by a single car driver.
Of course not everyone who is driving will immediately switch to bikes, that would be unexpected. But many do use cars when they could have used bikes, but because the infrastructure is poor, they chose cars. The ones that come from outside the city can now park within range of their work and bike the rest. Paris is notable for it's shitty traffic (and drivers...), so many would want to switch to bikes, just to avoid going insane.
During the transport strikes last december/january, Paris had a huge surge in commuting by foot/bike/scooters; it is possible to make it happen again, it worked well, actually so well that bike lanes became too crowded, sometimes more than car lanes. I think they are aiming to make the same kind of "behavior" happen after may 11th, but enhanced.
Cars were in surge too at that time mostly for people not living inside Paris but needing to go inside, since the distance plus less bike lanes in the cities around makes bikes impractical for that use case. That's likely to happen again, sadly there is no good way to solve both inside-inside and inside-outside street sharing at the same time...
That seems to suggest we'll have more crowded roads with reduced capacity (due to the added cycleways); maybe I'm being too pessimistic though, and we'll see a big switch to WFH.