If I could walk 500 miles

Toulouse is great place to explore on foot, but there are plenty of eco-friendly alternatives, from bike-sharing to a modern and expanding métro network

Getting to know a new city is a little like going on a first date. There’s excitement, but there’s also this fear in the back of your head that it’ll turn out to be a disaster. Take a few wrong turns and what could have been love at first sight instead becomes the road you wish you had not taken.

I love Toulouse. Yes, it’s a little early to be professing that, but it’s a vibrant, friendly, walkable and eclectic city, with a variety of activities, from museums and churches to parks and pubs. The cafés are full, the streets are clean, and the merchants are mostly cheerful and helpful.

You never know who you’re going to run into on a leisurely walk through Toulouse centreville.

My previous experience with French cities has led me to develop what I call the crotte-count. In Paris, for example, I was surprised on my visit 15 years ago to see that dog-owners would leave their fur friend’s feces wherever they happened to plop. But city crews were very vigilant in sweeping up the dog-doo and other urban detritus, so I gave it a crotte-count of 5. In Marseille, however, the poop was partout and it became a challenge not to sploosh in it every time you took a walk. Score 10 for Marseille. In Toulouse, however, not only is it a rare occurrence to see puppy patties, but there are public stands all over the place that offer free bags to scoop the poop and toss it in the trash.

So on a crotte-count of 1 to 10 — which in my mind is a reflection of how much citizens care about their neighbours and their city — Toulouse is number 1 for limiting number 2, dog doo.

That was a good first sign. Another was the emphasis here on ecologically responsible modes of transport. Bikes are everywhere, especially as delivery vehicles for everything from parcels to pizza.

For the bikeless, there’s a Bixi-type bike-share program called VéloToulouse where you can get an annual membership for as little as 20€ (about $30 Canadian) that gives you the first 30 minutes free and 1€ an hour after that.

Or if you need a little more power, you can sign up with YEGO, which offers 50CC electric-powered scooters (not to be confused with the abomination sometimes called scooters operated by companies like Lime, but known in French as trotinettes). The YEGO service functions like Communauto’s Flex, where you find an available scooter via the online app and can leave it in any legal parking spot within the YEGO zone, which covers much of central Toulouse and a few dozen spots outside it. YEGO also operates in Paris, Bordeaux and Nice, as well as Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla and Malaga in Spain. You don’t even need to worry about helmets (two are provided) or recharging, the YEGO staff take care of that.

Toulouse wisely opted last year to say no to “free-floating” trotinettes, which just confirms my crush on La Ville Rose. Montreal’s flirtation with Lime was a flop, tho it appears it’s ready to give it a second chance. What’s that saying about “fool me once …”?

Anyway, Toulouse also has a car-sharing service called Citiz (offering a service similar to Communauto’s station-based cars) which operates in 190 French cities. You need to proof of residency to join, however, so I didn’t get far in exploring that option at this point.

But who needs a car? I’ve got my VéloToulouse and YEGO membership in hand, and the modest public transit system here is in the midst of a huge growth spurt. The current métro has two lines and 38 stations, but 22 new stations are under construction on a third line spanning 27 km that is a model of eco-conscious design. The expansion reminds me of the type of vision that inspired Montréal’s extensive transit system that, for all its faults, is among the world’s best.

If you’re looking to get out of town, the city’s train and bus stations are side-by-side just a 10-minute walk (or 2-minute métro ride) from the city centre. The fares are shockingly low, especially once you obtain an Advantage Card from the national rail service, SNCF. Senior fares kick it at age 60 with 30% discounts and a maximum fare of 79€ for trips of more than 3 hours.

Even with all these transit options, tho, I keep finding myself pounding the pavement. I’m averaging about 10 km a day so far, happily burning more calories than I’m consuming. (Seriously, who comes to France to lose weight?) There’s happily not a lot of traffic here. In the downtown area many of the older streets are too narrow to handle anything but determined commuters and delivery vehicles. The only thing you need to watch out for are the occasional careless cyclists and the almost always kamikaze trotinettes, which seem to attract the worst kind of drivers.

Traffic is pretty light, but watch out for the trotteurs, Seriously, sandals on a moving vehicle?

Plus, it’s the best way to appreciate all the little shops and restaurants that pepper the city’s back streets and broad avenues, to discreetly take in toulousains and toulousaines as they go about their business, to eavesdrop on conversations where quoi is an exclamation and and Rs sometimes roll around in the mouth so long that they age like fine wine, quoi.

I’m slowly getting used to the language as well. Tho most of it is familiar, I was caught off guard the first time a grocery cashier asked me if I wanted a ticket. For a raffle, I wondered? Did I miss the sales pitch? Or did he think I had parked illegally? Un quoi, I asked? He waved the cashier’s receipt in the air like a flag of surrender. And since he was French, I felt I had no choice but to accept.

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Thanks for coming along on today’s transit ride. See you on Saturday as I take my first trip outside the city to visit Charlie Fidelman, a former Montreal Gazette colleague who lives with her husband in the small town of Moissac. Charlie has organized a month-long photo exhibition there and I’m lucky enough to be here in time for the vernissage (and take my first train ride). À bientôt.