Transportation
What France Can Teach U.S. Cities About Transit Design
What the French gamely call the "art of insertion" is really a multimodal understanding of streets.
Leave it to the French to refer to proper tram design as "the art of insertion."
It will be a long time until Americans are comfortable enough with sexual innuendo to appropriate that term. But there's an awful lot that U.S. cities should learn as soon as possible about the way the French design their transit networks. Whereas American light rail systems have had modest success and modern streetcar lines have questionable transit value, France operates 57 tram lines in 33 cities that together carry some 3 million passengers a day and create a fantastic balance of mobility options for urban and suburban residents alike—all built in the last 30 years.