Cyclists and their routes: McGill researchers undertake Montreal’s largest cycling study

19 comments

1. I tried to answer your survey but there was a glitch. I have a Mac.

   There is also a problem with the question “do you own a car”? (I don’t). There is no yes-no answer before the questions on car use.

   It is not very easy to estimate the number of rides.

   Yes, of course I understand the need for such quantitative surveys.

2. Thanks, Maria, for taking the survey.

   In fact, there is no question on car ownership; it’s just use, without distinguishing for owning a car.

   I look forward to posting the results next winter!

3. I also did the survey – one thing I think will skew the data is that it doesn’t take seasonal riders into consideration. Do I take the metro every day? In the winter, yes. Do I ride my bike to work every day? In the spring/summer/fall, yes.

   Another thing is the “which path do you use” questions – I ride 7.5 km each way on my commute, and switch from bike paths to regular streets and back again depending on where I am in town and which direction I’m riding to compensate for hills & construction… I actually take 4 bike path routes (du Parc/Hutchison, Milton, deMaisonneuve centreville, deMaisonneuve Westmount/NDG) to work and 3 on my way home (deMaisonneuve Westmount/NDG, Milton, Parc/Hutchison). My answers on the survey wouldn’t really indicate that.

4. I had the same problem as greynotgrey. In the summer I do all my transportation by bike. This could mean going to work, then the gym, then a show on one day. It could be library, shopping and visiting family on another. I try to fit a bunch of things on a cross-town trip and there is no single destination. But there ARE routes that I use regularly (de mais NDG, de Mais downtown, all the little routes in the mcgill ghetto, Rachel). The survey dosen’t really capture that.

   I also love biking up st-laurent for the rush and the people watching and the people watching and the whole ambiance. Even though I don’t feel particularly safe on this route, i take it all the time. (also, i don’t want to deal with the hill on Parc ave, and you supposedly aren’t allowed to bike on prince arthur, so i end up heading north on St-Laurent quite often.)

5. I appreciate the difficulty of choosing one destination and identifying the single bike path that you use the most to get there. Especially during the summer months, tons of people are going everywhere by bike, varying their routes slightly according to each different destination. This is one of the reasons that route-specific bicycle research is so rare.

   This research is unique in that it will allow us to compare the relative attractiveness of each bike path to cyclists. But this requires a simplified response, based on a single destination with a usual route. Perhaps I should add this caveat to the question.

   Thanks, all, for the feedback; it is truly appreciated. I am happy to report that only 24 hours after launching the survey, we’ve already got 200 responses!

6. Alanah, the problem is that there is no bicycle path on either St-Laurent or a parallel street to correspond to the St-Urbain path into the city centre. Much as I enjoy walking and having a coffee on the widened sidewalks, I think that the major renovation should have provided for a dedicated cycle lane.

   Going over to Parc would also usually take me out of my way as I live between St-Laurent and St-Denis in Petite Italie.

7. This is a great idea for a survey. I personally think the biggest problem in Montreal for cycling isn’t as much the lack of bike paths. I often avoid them as they are too slow or make you do huge detour – and I’m not even talking about the potholes.

   The biggest problem is the education of both motorists and cyclists alike. Many car drivers see us as a disturbance, don’t check before opening their doors, often cut us rudely. Adding bike paths could have 2 effects on this… it could either improve the situation by adding more cyclists, or confirm motorists in their opinion that we have no business outside of bike paths!

   I rode in Paris to go to work for about a year, and I felt a lot safer than in Montreal, even though there was a LOT more traffic. The reason? Motorists were a lot more used to seeing bikes around them. And that was before Velib’s !

   Many cyclists, on the other hand, aren’t helping at all by going past red lights, being rude to pedestrians and even driving in the wrong direction. I once saw a cyclist taking the De Lorimier in the opposite direction. I thought “there’s your Darwin Award…”.

   Oh and I’m with Alanah Heffez on this one: I just love riding up on St-Laurent! I feel like I’m risking my neck but it’s so much fun. :)

8. My only problem is that it’s way too much “bicycle path-centered”… I almost systematically avoir bicycle path because there a) dangerous and b) incredibly inefficient. Most people avoid riding in the streets because they fear the moving cars but there is way more risk on bicycle paths on which you have no control.

   I’m with Benoit LeBlanc :”The biggest problem is the education of both motorists and cyclists alike. Many car drivers see us as a disturbance, don’t check before opening their doors, often cut us rudely. Adding bike paths could have 2 effects on this… it could either improve the situation by adding more cyclists, or confirm motorists in their opinion that we have no business outside of bike paths!”
   Bicycle has to be tought outside of a “separate but [falsely] equal” persective. Cyclists need to be in the street, behave responsabily and cars have to learn sharing the road with respect (no honk every time they see a bike).

9. Like many people noted, my travel habits vary greatly by season. Metro in winter, bike other times of year.

   I consider myself an urban cyclist and am quite comfortable riding on most roads in Montreal. Yeah the road surfaces are terrible and the drivers are very erratic, but things are still tame relative to other places. Until recently I tended to avoid the bike lanes because they were either not convenient or did not feel comfortable, but that is starting to change. Although I did have a very close call from a “right-hook” into a bike lane just the other day.

   Surprisingly (or perhaps not), it is on the quiet residential streets where one is most likely to encounter the deranged lunatic drivers – the ones who will literally chase after you and try to run you down! This kind of thing would never happen on a busy street.

10. Interestingly, the way bixi works has changed how I choose my route — the other day, when I checked the stations online, the ones around Place Ville Marie were all full, so instead of taking the de Maisonneuve bike path, I rode across town on de la Gauchetière street to park it by the station next to 1000 de la Gauchetière.

11. Why is there so little love for bike paths? I find them pretty convenient. Especially the one on Berri/Brebeuf/Christophe Colomb.

    I find pedestrians walking or standing in bike paths or not looking before crossing bike paths to be a nuisance though.

    — X

12. Three points:
    1. Heading East on the demaisonneuve bike path goes against the traffic light sequence. Useless.
    2. Why did they put a bike path on cote-ste-catherine? Traffic was already slow enough that it was never dangerous. And the lanes on both sides were quite wide before.
    3. How many cyclists got doored/killed on St. Denis last summer?

13. Thomas – I am a frequent user of the Cote Ste. Catherine bike lane and I have some thoughts about it. I agree with your point of view that it was perhaps not completely unnecessary (as you said, no real traffic problems and not particularly dangerous), but there are a rather large number of cyclists heading up to UdeM who come from the Plateau, Rosemount, Mile End, etc. and all of them funnel into Cote Ste Catherine.

    I have been pleasantly surprised by the qualtity of the implementation, and I have definitely noticed a perceptible increase in bicycle ridership along the corridor. There are some ‘kinks’ that still need to be worked out at a number of intersections (no cycle signal coordination whatsoever, plus it is hard for turning cars to see the bicyclists in the cycle lane and there have already been some accidents), but all in all I have been favourably impressed. I still feel like the people who are thinking about the design details are not bicyclists (ie they don’t seem to understand how bicyclists travel and what their particular needs are), but at least they seem to be making an effort.

14. To go to UdeM from downtown, Côte-Sainte-Catherine was rather scary at rush hour and quite a climb. Since UdeM is almost as rigidly 9-to-5 as downtown is, this means cars and bikes will be in the same place fairly often. I would just avoid it and go on Bernard / Van Horne. There is a real lack of N/S streets in that quasi-suburban space between Côte-des-Neiges and Outremont, so it would take forever and I would just not bother!

15. Well NewUrbanShapes, “just not bother” is not really an option when one needs to go to work. I have been riding that corridor more or less 9-to-5 for well over ten years now, and I have tried all sorts of different route options. For me, I found nothing more direct and convienient than Cote Ste Catherine. Van Horne is probably equally good, but it is quite out of the way. Bernard becomes quite steep and does not go all the way up. Plus try navigating a four-way stop with cars at each corner while going up a hill! No one knows what to expect of the bicyclist and it is not clear who should give priority to whom. A colleague of mine mentioned today that she takes Maplewood (continue *above* Cote Ste Catherine from Villeneuve) and comes out behind the School of Music. Haven’t tried that one yet….

    In my opinion the traffic on Cote Ste. Catherine was never a serious safety issue. The only really dangerous point was in front of the daycare at St. Germaine (on Vincent D’Indy) when the parents are dropping off their kids and then rushing off to work.

16. How about widening the Rachel street bike path? The eastbound bikers are cruising at top speed, cars are forever inching out into it or turning right onto it. And it is usually full of kids who tend to weave rather than ride straight. I’ve dinged my handlebar on one of those green posts and nearly broke my neck. It needs to be twice as wide.

17. Leila, taking out the parking between the driving lanes and the bike lane on Rachel (and perhaps also widening the bikeway) would go a long way toward improving the safety of this particular bike path. But go ask the merchants how they feel about taking their parking spaces away!

18. Another thing I forgot to mention is how confusing it is to ride on a street with a taxi/bus lane. It is so unsafe with the frequent stops and it is hard to tell where exactly we’re supposed to ride. Plus the busses are constantly constantly honking at people.

19. Juste pour ajouter mon grain de sel à cette conversation. J’ai bien hâte de lire les résultats de cette étude et je souhaite qu’elle donnera du poids à des actions futures.

    Pour ma part, j’utilise un vélo Bionx pour me rendre à mon travail sur une distance de 13 Km en traversant l’ile de Montréal du Nord au Sud. Je n’utilise pas la piste cyclable Christophe Colomb principalement car cette piste ne permet pas de rouler rapidement. Il y a plusieurs courbes et arrêts et cette piste me semble avoir été conçue pour le tourisme à vélo. Par contre, j’utilise le corridor réservé sur la rue St-Urbain, car je le trouve rapide et la chaussée est récente et sécuritaire. Grâce aux intersections, il m’est possible de synchroniser ma vitesse et de limiter mes arrêts. J’utilise évidement sur mon trajet des petites rues résidentielles tranquille qui me permettent de respirer et apprécier la quiétude de la ville lorsque aucune piste cyclable n’est possible.

    À noter que j’ai fait l’achat d’un vélo Bionx (assistance électrique) surtout pour la vitesse et le confort que ce type de transport peut procurer. À mon avis, ces vélos sont appelé à être de plus en populaire auprès d’une clientèle qui souhaitent se déplacer sur des grandes distances pour “commuter” au travail.