Parking, People, Parisian Charm, and the Scooter Advantage
Story and photos: The Bear
Paris, the City of Light, and scooters, I'm adding scooter because they are everywhere and they are not even mainly the light variety. Once Paris was the city of bicycles. They are still there in their thousands, especially now that electric bicycles have hit town. But classy transportation is by scooter, two and three-wheeled, and numbers are still growing. Everyone from chic young office ladies to serious-looking middle-aged businessmen is getting around on scooters.
The reasons are twofold. The first is parking. It can be impossible to get a parking spot for a car, while it’s just about impossible not to get one for a scooter. Parking bays line major roads and though they’re usually full, you can park next to them on the footpath. Yeah, you sure can. As well, everyone is tolerant, and if you have to park on private property then zut alors, you just have to park there! The resident watching you do that is just as likely to do it him or herself if necessary. Scooters seem to be invisible to the parking police. Just don’t park in the way of the traffic, and especially the truck traffic. Those people are merciless.
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Paris is an old city, and its complicated network of streets has not been sanitised since Baron Haussmann did it on the order of Napoléon III of France. Appointed in 1853 as the Prefect of the Seine, he led the massive transformation of Paris until 1870. But though he did a spectacular job, complication has crept in again – not least with the many one-way streets. So it’s easy to get snookered. If that happens in a car, you’re not only stuck yourself: you are also holding up other traffic. On a scooter you just perform one illegal manoeuvre or another, and everybody‘s clear. I have yet to see the gendarmes object to this.
But at first glance, navigation looks a little bit of a challenge. I remember back in the’70s I came to Paris for Christmas with my mate Ross Edwards, the composer. It was the middle of the night and we couldn’t find our hotel, so we asked a flic. “C’est à gauche à le troisième feu,” he said or something like that and pointed down the street. “The third fire to the left,” said Ross. “Has the revolution started up again?” I’ve since learned that the French call a traffic light a “feu”. Who knew?
That brings me to the point that being on a scooter is an excellent way to make contact with locals, some of whom are remarkably cute members of both sexes. It doesn’t matter whether your French is any good or not. Scooter riders are a community, and they’ll help each other if they can. You can always ask another scooter rider for information, and if you choose that rider carefully enough you can make a handy friend.
You don’t even need to ask directly. Just observe which scooters appear to be going in the general direction you want and follow them as they negotiate the tangle of streets and, more importantly, the tangle of traffic. At some of the big roundabouts, the lanes divide in mind-boggling ways. If you become confused (everyone does, unless they were born on the Isle de la Cite) just do the same thing: follow another scooter that seems to be going your way. Okay, maybe it won’t get you where you were going. It may get you somewhere much nicer.
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France being France, and especially Paris being Paris, renting a scooter is usually a friendlier and more personal matter here than most places. While rental agencies are unlikely to bargain about the price of the rental itself, you may well find that they will be flexible about the cost of delivering the scooter to your hotel – sometimes a friend of the proprietor will look after this – and even the timing of pickup and return.
Fuel is no problem. While big cities in places like Australia have lost just about all petrol stations close to their centres, Paris has a weird and, at first sight, worrying facility: service stations right on the footpath. They’re actually quite hard to see, some look just like someone’s messy garage. Others, like the one in the photo, are really respectable. Whatever, they seem safe enough. I’ve never seen one catch fire.
All of that might make it sound as if riding a scooter in Paris is difficult. It is not. Firstly, it is better than walking for endless kilometres underground if you try to use the Metro. Seriously, changing trains on the Metro is like changing towns anywhere else. Secondly, you’ll meet people who would pointedly ignore you on the Metro. And thirdly, riding a scooter is always better than not riding a scooter, and that’s especially true in Paris. And don’t forget the ease of parking!