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- The economics of the project will need to be markedly better than the Netherlands experiment before any of this effort makes sense in the future though. In the Netherlands, the 229 foot bike path cost $3.7 million to build and generated roughly $2,000 worth of electricity in its first year. At that rate of return, France’s project would be a complete fiasco. With that said, France is using entirely different technology, and it is impossible to project what the cost of the project might be. The Netherland’s bike path was around 1,000 square feet which means it cost roughly $3,700 per foot to install. The French project is a little more than 78.5 million square feet, so at the same cost per foot, the 620 miles of road would cost an unaffordable $290 billion. Obviously the economics for France will have to change drastically versus the Netherlands project for the project to ever get past the announcement stage.