A ride with Monsieur Vélo
A Journal writer went for a bike ride with Stein Van Oosteren, invited here for the Go Vélo festival last month. Van Oosteren, nicknamed Monsieur Vélo, points out places where our bike paths are ill conceived and unsafe for cyclists, but this piece is very brief and we don’t get too much of a sense of how the European expert felt about the city.
Blork 11:49 on 2022-07-04 Permalink
He’s exactly right about the problem of cars parked along the Rachel bike path. I both drive and cycle along there, and it’s nasty. From the motorist perspective, turning off of Rachel onto a side street is difficult because the only way you can see if a cyclist is coming is to nudge into the cycle path, thereby pissing everyone off (but there’s no other way).
It works the same way when driving from a side street onto Rachel; the only way to see if there are cars coming in your path (on Rachel) is to nudge across the bike path so you can see around the parked cars.
But good luck getting those parking spots removed for the sake of bike path safety. It’s been done for the stretch that runs along the top of Parc Lafontaine. I doubt there would be much success extending that.