Paris Electrified
About 50 years ago, we lived in Paris for six months. In 1975, my employer, NASA, and the CNES (the French NASA) jointly sponsored me on a 6-month Temporary Duty Assignment (TDY) to live in Paris. The French were about to launch their Meteosat (a copy of the ATS 1 weather satellite camera that my UW Madison major professor had invented). They also paid the way for my wife and two little daughters to go along. (See my wife and two daughters in front of the Notre Dame on July 1, 1975, in Fig. 1)
Paris Was Very Different Then.
The Paris Metro was electrified (See Fig. 2), and my commute to work one hour south to Palaiseau in the suburbs was also electrified, but all automobiles and taxis ran on essence (gas) or diesel, and all the buses were diesel. My wife and I had Carte Orange monthly Metro passes, which we used for all our transportation in Paris. However, we bought a small 4-seat Simca gas car to travel around France and Europe.
Another Return Trip to Paris
A few months ago, my wife purchased round trip tickets to Paris for the two of us at $500 each. We would spend a week there and reprise the highlights of our many past trips. On March 13, 2024, our son drove us in our Tesla Model 3 to Salt Lake International Airport. We walked a few hundred yards to Gate 21 and got on Delta Flight 220 for our economy class seats flying direct nonstop in 9 hr. 22 min. to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport on an Airbus 330, which was fully booked with 277 passengers.
Should We Feel Guilty About a Long Flight to Europe?
According to the My Climate Calculator, my wife and I were responsible for the emission of 7.3 tons of CO2 for our round-trip flights. Since there is no way to substantially reduce aircraft emissions in the foreseeable future, if we are really committed to a greener planet, we won’t be flying to Europe again.
By Train to the Center of Paris
Getting off DL 220 and walking several hundred yards, we boarded the RER-B electric train for a one-hour ride to the Notre Dame/St. Michel stop in the center of Paris. We walked the few hundred yards through the underground labyrinth of tunnels to our hotel across the street. For two 80+ year olds, that was close to our walking limit for the day.
As Old Folks, Our Short Trips are now by Taxi or Uber
As young adults, we used to travel around Paris by Metro. However, as 80-year-olds, we took short taxi rides to St. Chapelle, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Musée D’Orsey, and Montmartre. Uber had a green taxi option, but those were only hybrids, not battery electrics. We also took a train on the Normandie Grande Ligne from Gare St Lazare to the Manet Gardens at Giverny and another train from Gare Montparnasse to the south to the fabulous classic French Cathedral at Chartres. All the trains on the main passenger routes in France like these are electrified.
Most Modes of Travel in Paris are Going Electric
From our Notre Dame Hotel just across from the Notre Dame, we observed that all the buses on the Châtelet line were 100% electric (see Fig. 3). The other buses we could see from our hotel were hybrid double buses as shown in Fig. 4.
On almost every corner, there were big rental ebike stands like the one with 16 ebikes shown in Fig. 5. and the monster ebike rental stand in Fig. 6.
The rental ebikes, private ebikes, and regular bikes are seen swarming on the dedicated bike paths everywhere in Paris as seen in Fig. 7. An advantage of the rental bikes is that you can rent them just for a one-way trip, then drop them off at a stand near your destination, and you don’t need to worry about locking them up or getting them stolen.
There are also lots of delivery ebikes like the one with a trailer shown in Fig. 8. I even saw an electric truck as shown in Fig. 9. I saw most of these just watching out the window of our Notre Dame Hotel while eating breakfast.
Stepping out of our hotel, I saw a Tesla taxi waiting for a customer (red light on) as shown in Fig. 10. There were lots of Teslas, usually Model 3s or Ys, around Paris. The Tesla taxis were rare enough, thouh, that we never got to ride in one.
Even the mopeds in Paris were electrified. See our short ride in one in Fig. 11 below. However, the driver tried to overcharge us when we didn’t ask the price before the ride.
You’ve heard the expression: All roads lead to Rome. That’s certainly true with Paris as well. There are six massive train stations which allow you to arrive or depart from Paris in any direction: Gare du Nord, Gare de l’Est, Gare de Lyon, Gare d’Austerlitz, Gare Montparnasse, and Gare Saint-Lazare. There was a seventh, the Gare D’Orsey, across from the Louvre which was so beautiful that it was converted into the Impressionists Museum, the Musée D’Orsey. All the major tracks and many of the sidings are electrified with overhead catenaries as you see in Fig. 12. We left Gare Saint-Lazare on the Normandie Grande Ligne to go north to the Manet Gardens in Giverny and the next day from Gare Montparnasse to go south to the Cathedral at Chartres. As you can see in Fig. 13, you ride in modern, comfortable, clean double-deck electric trains.
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