Studies for bike path on the Jacques-Cartier
The Jacques-Cartier bridge will soon turn 100, and the city has commissioned a lot of studies on options for improving the bike path, although it will cost a lot of money to do any of them.
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Blork 10:58 on 2025-08-09 Permalink
That’s great news! One thing they can do right now that won’t cost very much is to change the chicanes from their current rigid and non-reflective metal tubing to something soft and flexible (and highly reflective) that won’t knock you off your bike if you graze one at low speed. It boggles my mind that they haven’t done this already, given what a hazard the current ones are.
I also like the spirals in the illustrations that would let you go from the bridge to the bike path that runs under it and along the river on the south shore. Currently it’s a 5km+ diversion to go from one to the other, and many people unfamiliar with the routes find themselves on that path under the bridge thinking “how TF am I supposed to to get up there?” (Answer: that 5km+ diversion.) Nice as that would be, you’d need a good set of legs (or an electric bike) to climb that spiral, as it’s a long way up.
Nicholas 13:44 on 2025-08-09 Permalink
In a city where elevators didn’t cost like 5-10x what they do elsewhere, we could probably put two, even three, in. I agree with Blork. And, you know, it would cost just a few thousand in cones and signs to just block off a single lane of cars for bikes, giving more space to people walking to. We’re currently down multiple lanes in the Lafontaine tunnel, and surviving alright, so we could, once those lanes are back, use one (1) on the bridge for non-car uses. It’s a choice.
Blork 16:58 on 2025-08-09 Permalink
I’m not a fan of blocking car lanes on the bridge for cyclists, for multiple reasons. For example, the starting and ending mergers would be nasty and would wreak havoc on the traffic patterns (such as the traffic lanes heading north on Papineau and then looping around to get on the bridge) and I have no idea how they would manage it on the other side. Plus the car exit to Ile-Ste-Hélène would be an awful hazard. And even if they did figure it out you’d end up with a low-rent and unsafe lane separated from traffic only by cones, so it would be dangerous and not fun, so who would even want that?
Among the nice things with the existing bike path is that it is completely separated from traffic and it comes with a fantastic view. The main problems from my perspective are the hazardous chicanes (which can easily be changed to non-hazardous chicanes) and the risky bit at the exit for Ile-Ste-Hélène. It’s also annoying that for cyclists entering or leaving the island at that point you need to share the road with cars for a short stretch on the ramp down to the road on the island.
There’s also the problem of the path being “multipurpose,” which means you get a lot of idiot pedestrians on it. (Not all pedestrians are idiots, but those who are idiots seem to love using that path.) Idiotic pedestrians are those who are oblivious to the fact that they are sharing the path with fast moving bicycles, so you get things like people wearing headphones walking right in the middle of the path oblivious to bikes coming up behind them. Or groups of pedestrians in a big cluster that takes up the whole path dawdling along oblivious to the cyclists.
The path on the east side is much narrower and is supposed to be for pedestrians only, so if we were in Sweden or Singapore or whatever then cyclists would use the west side and pedestrians the east side, but that would require people to construct their lives around being aware of the needs of other people, and that shit don’t fly in Montreal.
I think a priority should be put on widening the bike/ped lane on the east side of the bridge. On the Longueuil side there’s a lot going into building up the area around the Metro station with high density housing, and it’s a very short run from that area to the east-side path across the bridge, but that path isn’t suitable for bicycles. Widen that path and it will take some pressure off of the west side and will possibly end up even busier than the west side. (For perspective, getting from the U. de S. building at the Metro station to the “starting point” on the bridge using the east-side path – currently unsuitable for bikes – is about 650 metres. Going around to use the path on the west side is 1.5 km to that same point.)
Widening the east side would also make getting from the bridge to the “village” of Longueuil (shopping area of rue St-Charles and all the housing around there) much quicker and easier.