Montreal City Weblog

Kate 07:54 on 2022-05-27 Permalink Reply  

• DeWolf 10:13 on 2022-05-27 Permalink

  It’s a decent plan that solidifies the bike network, but it’s also remarkably unambitious for an administration that supposedly cares about cycling above all else. There are still a number of gaping holes in the network of protected bike paths that need to be addressed.

• Kate 10:27 on 2022-05-27 Permalink

  I suspect they’re balancing bike path creation against the volume of outcry over lost parking spaces, over time.

• DeWolf 13:30 on 2022-05-27 Permalink

  That was the excuse last year, when the administration was nervous about the election, but they won an unquestionable mandate. The loudest and most militantly anti-bicycle candidates lost. They hold all the levers of power. So why are they being so timid, especially at the very beginning of a new term?

• Uatu 14:07 on 2022-05-27 Permalink

  Now is the time to press for more bike infrastructure. It only makes sense with the price of gas and the rise of electric bike sales. Especially also that business is using cargo ebike delivery for the last mile.

• mare 14:40 on 2022-05-27 Permalink

  [sorry, carried away with the length. I type very slowly, so it’s hard for me to edit this down]
  Because of health reasons I’ve been cycling a lot lately (200km last week, on an eBike), and ended up in parts of Montreal that I had never visited before, or only by public transport. I’m amazed how many bicycle paths there are in Montreal, even in neighborhoods that are not in the core. And that’s great. Some are grade separated, and some are just painted but they are there and it reminds drivers that cyclists exist. I actually think bike lanes with painted shards are okay in quiet neighbourhood streets that are often much wider than they need to be, but would prefer them to be against the direction of car traffic, to prevent dooring accidents. (Little know fact: almost all one-way streets in the Netherlands allow bikes to go in both directions. And these are often *very narrow* streets, that just fit one bike and a car.)
  REVs are nice but are very expensive and slow to built and they anger drivers (less lanes!) and store owners (less parking!) although those are obviously not arguments I agree with. IMHO More side streets used by bicycles is better than REVs, but you run into issues with blocking train corridors and highways (with their high speed busy service roads).

  I agree with @Dewolf there are a lot of gaps in the network though, and connections are not well indicated so if you haven’t been in an area before you often have no idea if, at the end of a bike path section, you should turn left or right to find the continuation of the path, and even *if* there is a continuation at all. Lots of improvements could be made to make our network less patchy. The fact that many of our East-West streets are busy arteries doesn’t help, but is inherent to the grid system. More of those busy streets should be turned into one-way streets with bike paths and wider sidewalks.

  During my recent wanderings I found some gems in our bike network though, some of them even unknown to Google. One of them is a gorgeous 5 km bike path on the grassy area along Rue Prince-Albert in Pointe-au-Trembles and Montréal-Est. It used to be a railway line but is now transformed into a linear park. It’s an absolute joy to cycle there, because there are very few cross roads and there’s no car noise. It can imagine it makes bike commuting from the east of the island a much more viable option.

  Bundling bike paths next to railway lines should happen more often. These corridors are very under-used, and often have quite wide gravel roads along the tracks, only sparsely used by railway maintenance trucks (and security to see if nobody crawls through holes in the fence). Using some of this excess width for building bike paths would be relative cheap (just eliminate some shrubs and move a fence is sometimes all it takes) and it would make for great additional paths. The bike path North of the CP rail line between the Plateau and Petite-Patrie could easily be extended to the Université de Montréal campus, and, in the other direction, from Rue Masson all the way to Notre-Dame. If some extensions to bridges are made (which is more expensive than you’d think because they have to support a snow load too, and maintenance trucks and snow plows) you could also go further west, all the way to Dorval even. You’d think the city can find some bargaining power to negotiate with CP and CN. They got the public land their rail lines are built on practically for free. There are many other possibilities of course, just looking at Google map will tickle your imagination.

  It may seem like impossible dreams now, but know that the Netherlands wasn’t changed into bike-heaven overnight either. It took decades, and is an ongoing process.
  The number of separated bike paths in core areas of Dutch cities is much lower than people think, but because there are so many cyclists they just take up a lot of space and cars need to adapt their speed and driving style (or kill and mame a lot of cyclists, but that’s frowned upon). One of the reasons that there are so many people riding bikes in the Netherlands is that almost all kids ride their bike to school because there are good bike paths in the periphery of cities. (There are also no school busses, no parking near schools and the driving age is 18 and driving a car or moped is in general more expensive and some other reasons.) A lot of them continued riding bikes when they’re university students but also after they aged into jobs and got families. And almost all drivers rode bikes when they were younger, so they know how it feels from the other end. (Maybe we should abolish school buses and have large car-free zones around schools… and while we’re at it, cancel cold and snowy winters.)

• Robert H 15:32 on 2022-05-27 Permalink

  @mare: Vous m’avez donner l’envie de sorter ma velo et parcourer les sentiers!