Commuting in Paris in 2026
I live, work, shop and eat out in a square kilometre block between Paris’s 9th and 10th arrondissements. On my way to work I cross rue Lafayette to drop my two-year-old daughter, Emma, at crèche. By 8:30am rue Lafayette is choked with traffic. Paris has up to six million fine particles of pollution per litre of air. Inhaling Paris air is like breathing the second-hand smoke of eight smokers in a 25 m2 room — that’s according to Airparif, the organisation appointed by France’s Minister of the Environment to monitor air pollution. And we feel the affects every day — as I write this article Emma is on antibiotics for the umpteenth chest infection.
When I cross Lafayette I look up and wonder which balcony Edvard Munch was standing on when in 1891 he painted Rue Lafayette. The impressionist-inspired masterpiece depicts a man with a splendid top hat admiring the recently modernized city from his balcony. I become excited about the possibilities of Paris. Paris, home of impressionism, the movement of anti-establishment artists hell-bent on capturing the essence of light. Like Munch I too am a foreigner, and I too am bewitched by the magic of Paris. These days the magic is coated with a fine dust of diesel particles.
In the mid-19th century Paris was forward-looking. Napoleon III directed George-Eugène Haussmann to renovate the city. Crowded medieval neighborhoods made way for parks, squares and broad avenues. Apartments situated on the boulevards were prized for their abundant light.
What could Paris be like in 10 years’ time if the city was to adopt some of the innovations I’ve come across since building Autonomy: an independent platform/event for new mobility.
Cut to 2026. Although the world is two degrees warmer, we are well within Cop21’s carbon budget, and global warming fears are starting to ease. The Millennials have come of age and are applying a sharing approach to all aspects of life. Assets are to be used, not owned. Solar panels access energy from the blue and green parts of the solar spectrum, making them twice as efficient and half the price. Economies of scale and manufacturing advances have done the same for batteries, which lie at the heart of the urban mobility revolution.
Most cities are following Oslo’s lead, banning thermal engines. This is not necessary in Paris, where the revolution is happening from the ground up with the mass adoption of cheaper, cleaner ways of getting around. Europe is enjoying a massive savings dividend, 1 billion dollars in saved fuel, and improved air quality. Economists are talking of a 1% boost to GDP.
Emma is 12. Getting to school has become our favorite part of the day as we plan our little adventure. I have opted for a €1,000 per annum premium-mobility package. It bundles 15 different shared mobility brands, public transport, chauffer services, and a Tesla to rent on the weekend. I use a single smart-card for all devices and services, and my app keeps me informed as to availability. Emma’s friends are commuting by solo-wheel, but we enjoy the e-kickscooter, for which Samocat have stations near home and work. I book on the app and we grab our Kevlar collapsible helmets.
The streets are quite and clean, traffic is moving. Cars are limited to 30 km/h and they’re all connected to an intelligent traffic system. No speeding, no accidents, no congestion. Paris’ 100,000 petrol scooters have been replaced by shared e-scooters managed by City Scoot and Gogoro. Thanks to JC Decaux’s advances in light, removable batteries shared e-bikes are also popular.
Diesel cars were banned in 2020 and there is little demand for petrol cars. Values have evolved — driving an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICE) in a city has gone the same way as smoking in restaurants.
Millennials seek status from experiences not possessions. The switch from car ownership to sharing solutions has reduced the number of cars on Paris streets by 75%. Leading marques saw the writing on the wall and focused on ‘mobility as a service’, teaming up with on-demand, shared electric vehicle (EV) businesses: DriveNow, Car2Go, Autolib, ZipCar, KooliCar, to name a few.
We cross Lafayette where Easymile driverless shuttles are running their fixed routes into SNCF’s Gare du Nord et Gare de l’Est. Bicycles still share a lane with busses, but it’s safe and clean. Vantage Power have retrofitted busses with cleaner hybrid drive-trains, and Bosch Sensortec have installed sensors on the busses to detect cyclists. Chauffer services are still in demand, but they’re all e-cars which are now far cheaper to run than ICEs. Uber and Nissan have teamed up and operate 20,000 e-cars in Paris alone.
But, the real game changer is Padam’s smart mini-buses which run on a demand algorithm. Highlight the destination on your phone, walk 50 meters to the dot on the map, wait a few minutes for fellow commuters, and the bus takes you within 50 meters of your destination. Some clever hacker has even overlaid Tinder on the app — sit next to someone you like!
All cars are semi-autonomous and are coordinated by the intelligent traffic system, which slots them into a ‘traffic-train’. Just a meter separates each car, some of which are driverless. ‘Drivers’ use the time to catch up on work, socialize, or snooze.
There are some fully autonomous cars in the traffic and we’re all expecting the wide-scale adoption of robot-taxis to take hold this decade. Big players like Uber, Baidu, Renault, Apple, Google, BMW and Ford have cracked the technology. They’re using focused events to convince government and the public about the benefits of going autonomous.
We’re now moving quickly up Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, where we have our own micro-mobility lane. People on solowheels, e-skateboards, hovertrax, rollerblades, and Segways scoot along at 20 km/h. I tell Emma that ten years ago this track was for parked cars and all these fun devices took their chances with pedestrians on a meter of sidewalk, while 150 000 parked cars hogged twice that space. Why did cars park in the street she asks? It’s one of those kid questions that makes adults look stupid. I mumble something about private ownership and personal convenience. It’s hard to believe that we used up all this valuable space to store an inefficient, depreciating, polluting asset.
We dock our devices and I wave goodbye to Emma. My HERE multi-mobility app predicts that I’m headed to the office. Based on the weather, and my preference for cycling, HERE prompts me to take a bike. I agree and it guides me to a spot 15 meters away, where a cyclist is pulling up. She hands over the bike and our phones automatically pick up the NFR chips, registering change of user.
I pass some American tourists power-walking the city in their exoskeletons. This technology was developed for soldiers fighting in the Middle East during the oil wars. Oil wars?! What was that all about?
The Mairie de Paris has started to repurpose some of the 1.8 million m2 of surface-level parking bays. Young entrepreneurs have set up shop on 24 m2 ‘parklets’: boosting city rents, giving start-ups a leg-up, and giving us Parisians great street life. Apart from the usual — coffee and food — there’s ‘learn street French’, yoga, barbershops, tailors, and professional services.
Data too has changed the way we move. Transdev have created an open source data platform — Catalogue — which collects all the world’s transport data, making it widely available. IBM’s Predictive Analytics helps mobility businesses efficiently meet demand for shared devices. Dassault Systèmes, “The 3DEXPERIENCE Company”, build virtual urban environments for mobility planners, ensuring optimization of resources and bankability of infrastructure projects.
I open my eyes and I’m back in Paris 2016. As I conclude this post I have 80 days to go to Autonomy, our urban mobility event in October at La Villette. My team and I are rounding up the last exhibitors, concluding partnerships with other major cities besides Paris, and working on activations with our various sponsors. We are building a community of new mobility players who’ve anticipated this disruption and want to be part of it.
I invite you to join us at Autonomy, the world’s first multi-innovation platform aimed at getting cities moving, October 6–9 in Paris.
