July 27: Driving in France

After Ellie, Elizabeth, and I got tattoos, Deborah and her boyfriend offered to drive us to the Fontainebleau train station so we could wait about 20 minutes there instead of an hour for the next Saint-Mammès train. While we were driving, I noticed that cars in France have to constantly yield to other cars, even if it is not explicitly stated through road signs. This is because a lot of roads in Paris are one-way or can only allow one car to drive through it at a time. For instance, we were driving on a two-lane street, but there was a small arch over the road where only one car could pass at a time underneath it, so we had to yield. This is because the roads seem narrower here to account for more space elsewhere. I also noticed that the roads do not expand far outward (the largest road I saw was in Île de Loisirs de Créteil, which had 2 lanes on one side, and 1 lane on the other). To be fair, though, we did not encounter any highways while we were here. Regardless, it is interesting to see that cities are more pedestrian focused than car focused. Medians are not really a thing here either. Medians usually direct the flow of traffic, but since car lanes are usually separate from one another, or have public transit in the middle to separate them, it is not needed as much. I see small medians more often at enter/exit ramps and crosswalks, but not so much in the middle of a random road like in America.

Also, because of the narrower roads, and the fact that it’s the city, there is a lot of parallel parking. Deborah was mentioning that whenever she does have to drive, she has to pay for parking. While that is very common in American cities, it is interesting to see how few parking lots there are for both countries (or at least from what I’ve seen). I saw one or two parking lots in Troyes, but they were smaller and seemed like you needed to pay to use it. The Troyes parking lot remembered me of Fredericksburg’s parking lots for this reason. Also, my family and friends made it sound like European roads had nothing but round-a-bouts, but I feel like France and the US have an equal amount of both, at least from my experiences. Even when I drive in rural Virginia to my grandparents house, I stumble across a round-a-bout every now and then, which seemed similar to our drive in Fontainebleau (even if it’s not as rural). Maybe America is just getting better at implementing them, slowly but surely.