Bike to the future

>>New bike paths, self-service rentals,
more parking places and bike racks on buses
and taxis are all part of the city’s ambitious
plan to make Montreal a cycling haven

FUNCTIONAL BUT COULD USE REPAIRS: The city’s bike paths

by ERIK LEIJON

Last May, city hall released plans to transform Montreal into a cycling haven on par with Paris or Lyon, envisioning a not-too-distant future of 400 new kilometres of new bike paths, a self-service bicycle rental system and five times as many bike parking places. The $134-million plan has since gone through 10 public and 10 agglomeration council consultations, and in a few weeks the city will announce how year one will shape up.

Vélo Québec, a non-profit cycling lobby group who were twice consulted on the project, called it “ambitious.” The transport plan is available on the city’s Web site as part of the Reinvent Montreal guide. Here are the Drapeauvian initiatives for Montreal’s pro-cycle future.

Completing last year’s work and making repairs

“It’s the spinal column of the city’s bicycle network,” says Rosemont-Petite-Patrie mayor André Lavallée, the executive committee member responsible for public transit and urban planning. Last summer’s massive reconstruction of de Maisonneuve Boulevard resulted in a new bike path along the south side of the street and the elimination of car parking spaces.

The project has yet to be completed, as Westmount and Old Montreal still need their respective paths, says Vélo Québec public relations director Patrick Howe. “They also need to finish painting the traffic lines and put up new street signs,” says Howe.

Before they go about adding new paths, Howe says the city must tackle the existing 20-year-old network, which is in need of repairs. “There are a lot of problems with the bike paths and it needs to be done this summer,” he says. “Then we can create new paths.”

Add five times as many parking spaces for bicycles

An elaborate bicycle network will all be for naught if the lack of adequate parking spaces continues, or if no one creates spaces for the presumably growing cycling population. There is already a regulation (although not a law) where every new proposed construction development has to provide adequate parking spaces in its plan.

Lavallee says including spaces has become “necessary for developers to sell their project” to the city, citing the recent Devimco Griffintown development project as an example. It’s also one of the areas where Lavallée feels the city has made strides already, by including 2,000 parking rings to the new parking metres. Eventually the idea is to have 10,000 rings, an improvement on the old, illegal method of chaining bicycles to any random post.

It has also created an unforeseen problem that could lead to more bicycle thefts in the future.

“We’ve been selling a lot more of the chain locks because it’s hard to put the u-shaped locks onto the rings,” says McWhinnie’s Cycle salesman Bruno Mastantuono, who says the u-shaped locks are stronger than the more accessible chain locks.

The city believes it has an able partner in private businesses to help ease the load of putting up new bike racks, and Lavallée thinks they are getting the message.

“It doesn’t make sense for a university to offer plenty of parking for cars and to provide none for bicycles—wake up,” he says. “I think people are starting to understand it’s not just the responsibility of the city.” He says a good example of private-public partnership occurred in his borough of Rosemont, where he dangled a prospective path around the borough’s three major schools in exchange for the schools providing racks. “I told them we’ll build the track if you build the stations,” he says.

Plans also include attaching bike racks to buses and taxis. The STM is currently looking at how racks can be placed on buses going outside of the downtown core.

Self-service stations and repair stations

Starting this fall, the city will be experimenting with unmanned bicycle rental stations. Inspired by the Velib system in Paris, users can swipe their credit card or a special pre-charged card to take out a bike and pay for time used upon return. No pricing plans or location details have been revealed yet, although the official launch has been set for next spring. In Paris, the first 30 minutes are free, and after it’s a steep one euro per half-hour.

Bicycle shop owners like Mastantuono are happy the city is trying to get more people into cycling, but not at the expense of retailers. “They’re moving in on our territory,” Mastantuono says. “It’s not good for me because if the city starts renting and renting, then you’re going to get a lot of people renting instead of buying bikes.” Conversely he adds, “There have been places that have rented bikes over the years, and I don’t see too many of them in business anymore.”

The long-term health of these rental bicycles could also derail the proposed system, and Mastantuono says the city needs to have trained mechanics to keep the bicycles in good shape, otherwise the rental bikes could become a laughingstock.

For bike owners, the city wants to open indoor bicycle stations to provide bike repair services and eventually other odd services such as showers, day care services, lockers and large parking areas. The current mission for these stations is more modest, as Lavallée says he hopes to work with groups such as SOS Vélo to set up areas for minor repairs.

Vélo Québec’s Howe thinks the rental system will work well with the goals of their Bike-to-Work program, which is supported financially by the provincial government. The program offers tips to downtown workers and businesses on how to make getting to the office more bike-friendly.

RENT AND RIDE: Vélib system in Paris

Double the length of the bike network

Although precise path locations will be announced later, Lavallée says one of the main goals of the six-year/$90-million doubling plan is to connect the current bike paths together, which are often separated along borough lines.

“The challenge is to realize this plan,” says Howe. “The plan to double the network means they have to add 50 km a year beginning now.”

Biking Year-Round

This past winter was supposed to be year one of keeping bicycle paths open during the frozen months, but the abundance of snow mitigated any noticeable progress. Weather permitting, 35 kilometres of bike paths should remain cleared all of next winter.

TRANSPORTING TRANSPORT:
Bike rack on San Francisco bus

Green line

>>La Route Verte is the continent’s
longest and some say best bike trail

RIDING THE LINE: Full trail to be finished in 2011

by ERIK LEIJON

When someone refers to the green line in Montreal, most people think of the metro, but there’s a much longer green line that has been passing right through the city since last year. Opened in August, La Route Verte is a 4,000+ kilometre bike trail passing through more than 320 municipalities in Quebec, from Gaspé to Abitibi with a pass through Montreal.

The trail won the Quebec tourism Ulysses Award in the best outdoor and recreational activity in Montreal category and was awarded best cycling route by the American-based National Geographic Society in their book Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 of the World’s Greatest Trips. It has also received considerable attention from cycling enthusiasts across North America.

The route is made up of bike paths, shared roadways, rural roads with limited traffic and paved shoulders. The Montreal section of the longest bike trail in North America passes along Berri; one official path goes up Berri and into Laval, and it also connects to the Lakeshore path from west to east along the southern tip of the island. On the west-east path, the Des Berges path stretches from Verdun to Lachine. The Lachine Canal bike path is considered part of the Route Verte trail.

(click on map for lager image)

Non-profit cyclist lobby group Vélo Québec originally came up with the idea in the 1980s and the trail has been steadily growing with the help of the provincial government since 1995. To officially be considered part of Route Verte, the designated road has to have proper road signs and meet safety standards for cyclists. The intention was for Quebec to have a route on par with Denmark and Great Britain’s networks, the Danube and Rhine bikeways and the American Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, an organization that turn unused railways into nature trails. Vélo Québec will be holding its week-long Montreal Bike Fest starting May 25.

The full 4,366-km trail will be completed in 2011. Vélo Québec is also working to splash the official Route Verte colours on as much of the trail as possible, including the special Route Verte road sign.