STM to improve metro access for cyclists
Another regular reader has alerted me to this STM announcement about plans to enlarge metro access for cyclists, relaxing the old rules, and keeping only the proviso that bikes are unwelcome at rush hour and may be barred around very popular events.
The item also mentions continuing the pilot project to permit dogs in the metro.
jeather 11:00 on 2023-04-12 Permalink
Those seem pretty reasonable rules, bikes allowed any time except morning and evening rush hours, in any car instead of just the first one.
Kate 11:31 on 2023-04-12 Permalink
Especially since the Azur doesn’t have separate cars.
carswell 11:56 on 2023-04-12 Permalink
The rule restricting bikes to the front car wasn’t thought through. Once or twice I’d been the fourth bike in the car, which was supposed to be the maximum number, when a couple of other bikes would embark at later stations, effectively turning the car into an obstacle course and a safety hazard. It also became an issue when groups of school children crowded into the front car, as they always seem to do. And changing trains on the same level at Lionel-Groulx meant you had to push the bike diagonally across the entire length of the often crowded platform, an accident waiting to happen.
Am also pleased to see bikes allowed from 05:30 to 07:00, meaning cyclist riders don’t have to wait till 10:00 and can get off to an early start, and especially the decision not to shut down the entire system for certain events. The blue line is almost never crowded except during rush hour but was off-limits many summer weekends and evenings (e.g. Osheaga and fireworks). Same was true for a route I often take (after biking out to Lachine and back via the canal to Atwater market): Lionel-Groulx to Snowdon.
I suppose we owe some of this to reduced ridership. If so, a silver lining to the pandemic.