<P> The pedi - cab, or bicycle taxi, was still in use in the spring of 1945 (Imperial War Museums, U.K.) </P> <P> Due to the shortage of fuel, the number of automobiles on the Paris streets dropped from 350,000 before the war to just under 4,500 . One customer, sitting on the terrace of a café on the Place de la Bourse, counted the number of cars which passed between noon and twelve - thirty: only three came by . Older means of transportation, such as the horse - drawn fiacre came back into service . Trucks and automobiles that did circulate often used gazogene, a poor - quality fuel carried in a tank on the roof, or coal gas or methane, extracted from the Paris sewers . </P> <P> The metro ran, but service was frequently interrupted and the cars were overcrowded . Three thousand five hundred buses had run on the Paris streets in 1939, but only five hundred were still running in the autumn of 1940 . Bicycle - taxis became popular, and their drivers charged a high tariff . Bicycles became the means of transport for many Parisians, and their price soared; a used bicycle cost a month's salary . </P> <P> The transportation problems did not end with the liberation of Paris; the shortage of gasoline and lack of transport continued until well after the war . </P>

Where was the german advance toward paris stopped