Martinez Ferrada wants to “review” bike paths
Soraya Martinez Ferrada is promising, if elected, to review the city’s bike path system. Who can doubt that she’s saying this to gain votes from people who hope she will stamp them out, although without making a promise to do so?
Joey 17:22 on 2025-08-11 Permalink
Just the worst. Anyway, there should be a rule that you can’t report the number of cyclists using a particular bike lane without the corresponding number of cars that used the adjacent roadway.
DeWolf 21:22 on 2025-08-11 Permalink
More vague posturing. It’s like she’s trying to channel Denis Coderre but without any sort of charisma.
DeWolf 21:39 on 2025-08-11 Permalink
Also, since a lot of people seem completely unaware of this: bike paths in Montreal aren’t just drawn up randomly on the whims of politicians. Each one is approved by the engineers and planners in the SUM. So what Martinez is proposing is for the SUM to run an audit on the work already done by the SUM.
Unless she is planning to hire some outside consultant to review all the bike paths. Doug Ford maybe?
Ian 22:12 on 2025-08-11 Permalink
Engineering plans aren’t required for bike paths.
DeWolf 23:51 on 2025-08-11 Permalink
Source, Ian?
Ian 08:44 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
Well, you can’t provide sources for things that don’t exist, DeWolf.
When they put in the new bike paths in the Point a few years back, my friend, an avid cyclist, was fairly certain (after she got hit by a car) that the new paths were even less safe than the old system with fewer paths as they changed traffic flow in such a way that it brought bikes and cars into more conflict. She asked to see the traffic flow studies – I imagine this is the type of transportation engineering you mean – and was told there weren’t any.
Similarly, when I asked Luc Rabouin if there had been any mobility studies before pedestrianizing Mont-Royal (I was concerend about hte removal of bus lines) he openly mocked me, saying that PM wasn’t going to waste their time studying something they already “knew” woud have positive outcomes.
I do not think that drawing the conclusion that they do not use engineering plans for bike paths is hasty or unreasonable given this evidence.
It’s worth noting that vélo-Québec has their own training and guidelines for “bikeway planning” (Technical Handbook of Bikeway Design) that they refer to extensively in their advocacy. Nowhere does it suggest the necessity for transportation engineering’s involvement such as formal traffic flow studies.
I would go so far to say that not having transportation engineers involved with this level of planning is one of the reasons that we have, for instance, such inconsistent pedestrian crossings throughout the Plateau. Take Parc, for instance – Van Horne, Bernard, Saint Viateur and Fairmount are all completely different light and turning setups. There is a centre lane that swtiches depending on time of day. Parking and schoolbus stops are allowed. There are no bike paths at all, or protected turns crossing Parc even though the east-west streets have a lot of bike traffic. All of these factors combined makes bicycling even more dangerous. PM has been in power in Mile End for a long time, too, so even saying “these things take time” doesn’t hold up. There has been time.
Every time the city gets involved in response to accidents in Mile End it is on an intersection-by-intersection basis, like the bollards at Hutchison and Saint-Joseph that actually decrease bicyclist visibility, for instance. Even the Jeanne-Mance bike path had to be redone because the bi-directional path was causing issues like kids getting run down by cyclists and that the southbound bike lane wasn’t visible from the driver’s side of a parked car. Reactive roadworks are not a substitute for planning.
dhomas 10:46 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
I’m pretty sure the city does use engineering firms (who likely have engineering plans) to develop and design cycling infrastructure.
Sources:
https://www.cima.ca/en/project/reseau-express-velo-express-bicycle-network/
https://www.exp.com/experience/peel-street-geometric-redevelopment/
https://www.arup.com/en-us/projects/samuel-de-champlain-bridge-corridor/
https://www.copenhagenize.eu/projects/montral-site-outremont-district-bicycle-plan
These were the easiest to find, but you can probably find more. That said, these seem to be mostly for large-scale projects, not for “regular” roadway-sharing cycling infrastructure, so Ian might have a point. I too have noticed inconsistencies in cycling infrastructure strategy across the island.
Joey 11:24 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
East-west bike paths are tricky crossing Parc because Outremont has to be on board, or else the bike path dies at Hutchison. Of course you left out the bike path on Laurier that connects to the St.-Denis REV, the Clark bike path, the forthcoming St-Urbain bike path and the Cote-Ste-Catherine bike path. For now at least, even Projet Mtl doesn’t propose protected bike lanes on every street.
DeWolf 11:38 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
When there’s a new bike path, it’s the city’s engineers who draw up and approve the technical plans that are then posted on the SEAO for an appel d’offre. They’re not drawn up by politicians on the back of a napkin.
“Traffic flow studies” is another issue entirely. As the name suggests, they have to do with the flow of vehicular traffic. As such they are historically concerned with only one thing: moving as many cars as possible as quickly as possible. There’s no scientific formula. It’s simply about reducing friction for motor vehicles.
Here’s an urban planner and civil engineer who has written a book about the flaws of traffic engineering:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/8/26/we-cant-leave-street-safety-to-traffic-engineers
And some of the problems with traffic studies:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/1/29/the-trouble-with-traffic-studies
But you’re right there is nobody sitting down and master planning every single street and intersection. Things are necessarily done piecemeal because you can’t do everything at once. Montreal has a big problem with consistency but that’s not because engineers aren’t involved, it’s because there are different ways to do things according to legal standards like the MTMD’s Tome V. It’s a problem, but it’s a problem with different engineers taking different approaches. I’ve always wondered why each intersection on the REV St-Denis has different traffic light arrangements. I’ve been told it’s because the traffic engineers want to test out different configurations to see what works best.
Park Avenue’s current setup dates back to 1992 when the reserved lanes were built and the reversible lane was installed. There has been a political desire to redesign Park going right back to the Tremblay administration, but I’ve always been told it relies on the STM’s plans for either a BRT or tramway, and that has never moved forward.
As for Jeanne-Mance — the previous set-up dates back about nine years. Similar bike lanes were painted on streets throughout Montreal (not to mention other cities around Quebec). And yes, it was conflict-prone and not very safe. Which is why the Plateau and other boroughs are in the process of upgrading these kinds of arrangements so that the counterflow lane runs between the sidewalk and parked cars, and the unsafe dooring-zone bike lane in the direction of traffic is replaced by a chausée désignée. The same thing has been done on Prince Arthur and Casgrain, to name a couple of examples.
Again, this is the work of the city’s engineers, who have developed and approved technical plans. It’s not improvised. The politicians push the project forward, but they don’t draw up the plans.
DeWolf 11:59 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
Here’s an example of a minor bike path in Verdun that was developed by the borough’s engineers and sent out for tender:
https://seao.gouv.qc.ca/avis-resultat-recherche/consulter?ItemId=8167a8c7-0b3c-4ad5-b385-f7c1498806f5&prov=/recherche-avancee&search=flTxtAnyWrds=piste%20cyclable
Ian 15:13 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
Certainly the bigger installations like the REV. but the assumption that city engineers are behind all the bike paths is a big one. Even Clark, arguably the most successful Mile End path, had to be redone as it slowly evolved from the original plans with a simple divider into flowerbeds then treed boulevards… with streets that were now too narrow for emergency vehicles to pass.
DeWolf 15:36 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
You don’t just wing it on a $7.7 million project that also involved replacing water pipes and electrical wiring. The treed median were part of the plan from the beginning, as you can see in media coverage from before the project got underway. The problem was that the median that was designed and approved was 30cm too wide, which would have made Clark an official “rue étroite” and parking would have been banned on one side in the winter. The politicians claim they weren’t aware of this outcome. Whether you believe them or not, there were engineers involved who designed those initial plans. It’s not like there was some guy with a shovel who was eyeballing everything.
Ian 16:36 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
I don’t blame the people doing the actual roadwork, for sure somebody with a higher pay grade hung someone else out to dry- and yes, I do believe Norris lied through his crooked teeth about it. The version I read was that the initial plan was modified while work was underway, but if not, the initial plan was obviously flawed which usually indicates a rush job.
Either way it had to be torn out and redone after it was completed, and the attitude of officials towards citizens was so egregious Plante had to make an apologetic statement and Norris got his leash shortened. It cost basically twice what it should have.
Ian 16:48 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
PS
This whole discussion comes from my assertion that engineering plans aren’t required for bike paths.
Emphasis on “required”. Obviously some do have them, but there is no formal requirement for a study any more than he city paying someone for stenciling flowers over the potholes – which has also been done.
Orr 17:44 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
Fun fact: assertions are not facts.
Ian 21:03 on 2025-08-12 Permalink
Not by default, no. But if you want to play at word games, go ahead.
Joey 09:19 on 2025-08-14 Permalink
If Sorraya really cared about safety, she’d promise to do something about this:
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/chroniques/2024-09-16/tickets-en-chute-libre-des-policiers-du-spvm-inquiets.php?sharing=true