Transportation in Paris

Getting around in Paris was a relatively new experience that helped me generalize the overall movement systems in my hometown of Los Angeles, compared with Paris. The main metro system in Los Angeles consists of a few underground subways, Amtrak city trains, and city buses. Though Paris has the same set of arrangement in its transport system, it is more densely contained within the city. Part of this, in my opinion, has to do with the fact that everything in the city, from buildings to streets, is dense itself. In Paris, I only had to walk about 10 minutes to find the nearest metro station to my desired location. However, in Los Angeles, everything seemed to be more dispersed. I see that more people get from point A to point B with a car in Los Angeles, rather than with the public transport system. Additionally, walking long distances is not very common in Los Angeles due to the vast amount of cars owned by the population. In Paris I saw quite the opposite, which in turn became part of my routine in the city. Many of the workers, I saw, would take the public transport (subway in particular) to their work places, even with a little walking involved. Additionally, as I began to use public transport in Paris, I found myself walking longer than I had ever done so in Los Angeles. Seeing this overall difference in the city structure between Los Angeles and Paris, and its effect on the movement of people was quite interesting for me.

-Samvel Martirosyan (Post #3)