The Lyoneses traverse each day the equivalent of the tower of the Earth with bicycle. In one year, Lyon became a natural laboratory size for the study of the behaviors of the cyclists downtown. Indeed, since May 2005 and the installation of Vélo' V, the system of quasi free hiring of bicycles of JC Decaux, the movement of the cyclists increased of more than 30%. What is not without posing problem.

“We observe a development of mass of the bicycle, which affects the other modes of displacement. Now, it is necessary to manage the cohabitation of these bicycles beside the cars and of the pedestrians”, explains Gilles Vesco, vice-president of Large Lyon in load of “soft displacements”.

The engineering departments of the urban community of Lyon thus planchent on the solutions. The cyclists must find their place in this city which, like the majority of the others, was initially designed for the cars. Even if the number of cycle tracks multiplies.

Feel prohibited. Since the arrival of Vélo' V in Lyon, about fifty statement are drawn up each month with cyclists who roast fires, take the prohibited directions, roll on the pavements or telephone the handlebar. “All these infringements do not concern the delinquency. The cyclists take the pavements by fear of rolling beside the cars. And the prohibited directions because, with bicycle, one does not make turnings of several hundred meters to respect a traffic organization”, explain Christian Minaudier, technician of the roadway system in Large Lyon.

Lyons association cyclists Pinion-on-Street made calculation. To go of their room to the any close relation places Composts, it has only 160 meters there. By respecting the traffic organization, the cyclist would be supposed to make a loop of close… of one kilometer. From where the idea, taken up by the services of Large Lyon, to authorize the bicycles to circulate in misinterpretation on certain ways. At the time of the Festival of the bicycle this weekend (which proceeds everywhere in France), a whole axis of crossing in misinterpretation between the Saone and the Rhone will be tested. The experiment could, in the long term, be validated in the streets which allow it.

But it is especially on safety, and more precisely on the “feeling of insecurity”, than Large Lyon works. To release brutal several thousands of cyclists, often beginners at circulation downtown, had made fear the worst as regards road safety. However the implying number of accidents of the bicycles absolutely did not vary since the invasion of Vélo' V in the city (less than ten wounded per month).

Marking. The complaints of pedestrians, on the other hand, increased. “The arrival of the bicycles on the pavements and in the malls was perceived like a danger, in particular by the old people”, explains Christian Minaudier. Conscious that all the cyclists will not have the notch to go to plunge itself in densest flows of the circulations, the services of Large Lyon thus study the possibility of dividing the broadest pavements, with a readable marking.

On its side, the ministry for Transport thinks of the installation of a “code of the street”, history to pose clear rules of cohabitation between pedestrians and cyclists downtown.