Cyclists want general access to bridge
Cyclists held a protest Sunday to keep the Jacques-Cartier bridge open all winter for everyone. There’s a pilot project operating allowing only 25 cyclists to use it this season, and they have to cross the bridge every day. Seems to me if you’re plowing for 25 riders you might as well allow everyone aboard.
Blork 14:44 on 2019-12-16 Permalink
No way. Don’t assume “plowing” means the paths will be nice and clean all the time. Consider how difficult it is to clean the bridge bike path, and consider that the platform will ice up very easily (“bridge freezes before road”) and consider that for most of that 3km ride you are either going up a steep hill or down a steep hill. Result: it will be very hard to NOT wipe out.
AFAIK the trial-use people are required to use winterized bicycles (big tires, possibly studded).
If they opened it for everyone there would be significant risk to life and limb because those wipe-outs would be happening with lots of people around instead of in isolation where they won’t take other people down with them.
Also, if it were open to everyone you’d have idiots with skinny summer tires going across, plus old people on their electric Vespa-like scooters. It would be chaos.
My prediction is that the bridge path will NOT open to the public in winter anytime soon. All the winter cyclists are all ra-ra-ra wanting it open but zero people seem to acknowledge that going 25kph downhill on ice on a bicycle is freaking dangerous.
Kate 15:11 on 2019-12-16 Permalink
True enough. I’ve only crossed the bridge once but I remember it felt a bit hairy on that narrow path going downhill toward town. I also recall a report of a cyclist having a fatal crash there on his own when he lost control of his bike there – and I don’t think that was even winter.
qatzelok 18:07 on 2019-12-16 Permalink
If the idea that “someone might get killed” is a reason not to open bridges to bikes in winter, then we should stop all car driving since “someone might get killed” happens to cars (and their drivers) every day on every surface in every season.
Raymond Lutz 19:44 on 2019-12-16 Permalink
During the last year of my Bac. at UdM and the 3 years of my M.Sc., I biked that bridge twice a day, year round, summer AND winter. That was before the rebuild: the pedestrian alley was even narrower! (yes, I had to jump the locked fenced gate) and yet, here am I, bien vivant… c’est une anecdote, je le concède.
Blork 13:23 on 2019-12-17 Permalink
When I was in university in small town Nova Scotia I used to do some winter biking on my mountain bike. I fell several times, always on icy hills, and occasionally in the presence of cars which fortunately did not run me over. The most dramatic was when the wheels just whipped out from under me at the top of a hill that was really icy, and I slid at least 30 metres down to the bottom, in the middle of the road, with the bike sliding along about ten feet away from me. Fortunately no cars that time.