Making the Link: Is the marriage of cycling with transit the future of transportation?

Riding Portland’s LRT is a breeze with your bike – Image from Thomas Le Ngo’s Flickr page

As North American urban planners grapple with the challenge of moving away from an auto-centric vision of urban mobility, new attention is being given to ways to integrate cycling with public transport. This marriage may hold the key to expanding the reach of existing transit service and encouraging “spillover” mode share gains, and is being successfully implemented in cities like Portland, Oregon, and all over  Europe.

Montreal is aiming to capitalize on this synergy, especially by implementing reduced rates for various different combinations (or “cocktails” as we say here) of Bixi, Communauto and public transit. However, many other opportunities exist, including racks on transit vehicles, long-term bicycle parking and integrating bicycle lanes with transit stations.

To better understand these possibilities, researchers from McGill’s School of Urban Planning have produced an online survey for anyone living in the Montreal region  to share their views and preferences related to multi-modal connections. (Full disclosure : I am one of those researchers.)

To take the survey in English or French, go to http://tram.mcgill.ca/cycling.html

For those who care to follow more closely, a Facebook event has been created as well: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=122256861146625