Aug 22 2007
De Maisonneuve Bicycle Path News
It looks like the long awaited cross-town bicycle path along de Maisonneuve Boulevard in Montreal is coming along nicely. I was worried they would simply paint some stripes on the road or something lame like that, but in fact they’re tearing up the street and laying a new median to separate the bicycles from the motorized traffic.
That’s great news, as it will drastically cut down on the chances of people getting doored. Generally speaking, I’m a bit skeptical about bicycle paths, as they give some cyclists (read: the not very bright ones) a false sense of security. Plenty of times I’ve seen people whizzing down the bicycle paths on Rachel street or Milton at full speed, iPods blaring in their ears, not checking for cars at intersections, blissfully mislead into thinking they are magically protected from the hazards around them because they’re on a bicycle path.
Fortunately, most people are not as bad as that, and de Maisonneuve is such a busy street that I would hope people are wise enough to not take their safety for granted even with the new path – which is better described as a bicycle lane.
Here’s a really tall view of the construction…
Update: despite the little interruption over the weekend, construction on the bicycle lane continues. This morning (August 27) I saw the construction markers as far east as rue Berri (where the Berri bicycle path runs north-south) and they were cutting into the pavement to lay the meridian near St. Denis. I’ve seen the construction as far west as Atwater, and I’ve heard that it is going to all the way to Greene Avenue in Westmount, where it will meet up with the existing Westmount bicycle path.
11 Comments on “De Maisonneuve Bicycle Path News”
It will encourage cycling by destroying tons of parking spots (a good thing between April-November) - forcing more people to choose to cycle or to take public transit.
It should be a nice addition to the downtown core too, allowing people to not have to bike down to the canal to get from east to west and back.
I saw it tonight and it looks like it is much wider than the other bicycle paths so it is likely it will be open all year around, because the snow clearing trucks can enter the lane. Not that many people cycle in the winter, but you maybe it will be possible, weather permitting.
Yeah! Such a great thing…Montreal needs way more of these.
I am not too sure about that one. I am myself a cyclist and I would have like another bike line like the one on St-Urbain. I don’t think cyclists should be separated from the cars… quite the opposite in fact. The more bikes on the streets, the more car drivers will be careful. We have to share the road.
Some cities even started to removed every road signs and traffic lights and the security improved: ambiguity makes people more careful!! (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html). This is why I think going with a protected bike lane like the one on Maisonneuve is not really a move to encourage people to take their bike, but more of an action to appease cyclists claims.
More information on that ‘Share Space’ idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space
I’m only used to biking on roads where the traffic rate is about three cars an hour. Six or seven at rush hour. Good old small town life. The consequence is that I’m afraid to buy a bike in Montreal.
Biking in Montreal is an Xtreme sport.
Simon…I am aware of the shared space argument. But the Urbain path is not a good example of it…it is in fact a counter-example as it is reserved space (ie, with road markings). No other attempts have been made on Urbain to bring the cars and pedestrians and bikes into harmony to “share the space”. From a driver perspective, there is no incentive to go any slower than you did before the bike lane appeared, thus people drive as fast as they always have on urbain and dodge in and out of the bike lane with no care (the “impedance mismatch” between the groups still exists). The “reserved space” also puts bikers back in to the gutter right next to all the cars, waiting to be doored. Before the bike lane, bikers had a de-facto right to take a lane if they were close to capable of keeping up with traffic (which was easy since it was downhill). If they weren’t they could use the path down Clark, Esplanade (note that that path is actually not a reserved space, just marked so that bikers can find their way) and through Jeanne-Mance park (which they could and should finish down Hutchison) or some of the leisurely sidestreets in the plateau.
That said I agree that it would have been much, much cooler if they setup a true “shared space” concept on Maisonneuve that put pedestrians, bikes, and cars on equal footing but personally, I’ll take the protected path instead of poorly conceptualized reserved space if they are unwilling to go that far.
And you are right…more bikes equals more care from drivers, BUT you can’t get more bikes on the road if you don’t make it truly safer for them to participate (because the brave ones already are!).
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The De Maisonneuve bike path is the best thing since De Maisonneuve. I hope the path is well connected accross Decarie as well so that NDG riders and sail all the way to downtown on the path without treacherous stretches.
[…] rode on the de Maisonneuve bike lane today, twice. The lane is still under construction (when completed it will run from Berri to Green Ave. […]