I had the opportunity for a few days in Montreal, seeing my
daughter off on her new adventure as an university student there, so I had a
bit of an explore to see how claims made on behalf of the city to be North
America’s most cycle-friendly city stand up to scrutiny.
I should firstly say that
I have only visited four US cities, none of them particularly
recently – I suppose it is just that I don’t really view the solution to the
USA’s major problem with firearms deaths being yet more guns as an inviting or
welcoming message, especially after the most recent fiasco – and Portland is
not one of them. So I have little to go
on in assessing Montreal’s American credentials. These are just some anecdotal impressions.
Modal share &
culture
The city’s cycling modal share doesn’t actually strike me as
all that impressive. This visit was last
weekend, ie end of August, so it is in the summer – important because evidently
winter conditions make cycling distinctly unattractive – but just prior to the
mass return of university students for the start of the Fall Semester on 3rd
September. Possibly it improves next
week. Comparing central Montreal (Downtown,
Vieux Port, Latin Quarter) with an equivalent part of London I would say the
mode share is really quite low, although it does seem to be more consistent
throughout the day, ie probably more routine utility journeys if fewer
commutes. The better infrastructure is
definitely busier than the lower-quality or no-infrastructure streets around it
– no shit, Sherlock – but even top facilities like the MaisonNeuve segregated
path seem to carry fewer cyclists than an equivalent, though inferior, facility
in Torrington place etc in Camden.
Others have commented that Montreal’s reputation for cycling might rest
on the Plateau Mont Royal quarter, which is just to the west of McGill
University where we were staying. The
Plateau resembles Hackney, in more ways than one, but even here I wouldn’t say
that modal share was at Hackney levels.
The great majority of private bikes that I saw were
low-budget models, ranging from complete junkheaps through to the lower-middle
of the Halfords range in quality. This
may reflect the user population – I recall in my student days that few of us
had expensive bikes if only for the risk of them being “borrowed” by students
anxious to make their next lecture on time.
Certainly I don’t think I saw a single Pinarello, or indeed a Pashley,
or any brand of Dutch bike, most models being derailleur-geared hybrids,
without lights, mudguards or panniers.
Hub gears seemed to be non-existent, which surprised me considering the
unquestionable superiority of the hub for stop-start conditions with frequent
traffic lights – and almost no red-light-jumping whatsoever – and lack of
maintenance requirements. I similarly
saw very few decent locks, or much evidence of savviness in locking a bike
securely, to a decent parking facility – of which more below.
The vast majority of people I saw on their own bikes were
conventionally dressed – shorts and tees, summer dresses etc – with almost nil
evidence of lycra. Similarly, few
helmets and then mainly of the urban Bern styles rather than chiselled-whippet
Giros. This was even more the case with the Bixi hire-bikes, as you might
expect.
Cycling etiquette was pretty good. It was hot, this was not London or New York,
and the European influence (French almost universally spoken around you) was
evident, but people generally rode at a fairly sedate pace, and I almost never
witnessed anyone jump a red light. In
fact, it did seem to me that Montreal showed that it is quite possible for all
road users to behave quite courteously and sensibly towards each other – not
that this would justify not providing the right infrastructure – and obey the
law. Sure, cars occasionally
amber-gamble, but I never saw one pass a light at red, bar one case I saw on a
bus tour, which the tour guide put down to the fact that the car had US plates,
and the driver might not have been aware that the common US concession to turn
right at a red light does not apply in Montreal. In general where vehicles were turning right
at lights, the implication would be that the cross-traffic was held at red and
pedestrians would have a walking-man.
Unlike London, where motorists would simply hoot and bully the
pedestrians to hurry up and get the f*ck out of the way, motorists simply
waited patiently until pedestrians had crossed.
Perhaps that goes some way to explaining why traffic congestion there is
what it is – not many cars get to make a right turn on any one green
light. Pedestrians, too, stuck to the
rules, often to the point of absurdity, waiting patiently on an empty street
while the lights changed.
Cycle paths, cycle
lanes
Much of Montreal’s positive reputation rests on schemes such
as the Boulevard de MaisonNeuve cycle path, image below. (I have used embedded
Streetviews, for interactive viewing):
View Larger Map
This runs along several miles of one of the principal
downtown thoroughfares (thought of in Montreal terms as being east-west,
although in reality it runs a lot closer to north-south). It is similar in a way to the Torrington
Place path in Camden, only a lot longer and also quite a decent width. Also, encouragingly, not only is it largely
immune to illegal parking blockages, as it is protected by quite a high kerb
and median, during our stay it was closed in places to accommodate builders’
machinery, but in compensation a motor traffic lane had been coned off and
provided exclusively for cyclists’ use.
The curse of the UK cycle path, the give-way to side
streets, doesn’t appear to be an issue here, although that may simply be
because, in the north American grid system, virtually every junction is a
cross-roads, and they are all light-controlled anyway.
MaisonNeuve has an interesting history, related here: the local government’s strategy to gain
buy-in for the project, which would entail the loss of on-street car parking
spaces, was to focus not on the number of spaces to be lost, but on the
proportion of all available spaces within two blocks (about 5 minutes’ walk)
which would be lost – about 3%.
There are a few other instances of similar paths, such as
this, in University Street, which heads “north-south” in Montreal-speak.
View Larger Map
This one starts on the corner with MaisonNeuve, and ends at
the entrance to the McGill Campus about 600 metres away.
Beyond this, the on-street infrastructure isn’t really much
to write home about. Lots of paint on
the tarmac, slightly better respected by motorists than their UK equivalents,
but that is all. Some examples seem
quite perverse. Take Prince Arthur
Street “West”, for example: here you can
see a quiet, largely residential street, lightly used and with a 30kph speed
limit, one-way but well wide enough to accommodate a cycle contraflow. So what do they do? They paint a useless pair of solid white
lines for cyclists to follow, in the permitted one-way direction, in the dooring zone, that is all.
View Larger Map
(As an aside, we stayed during our visit at the University
B&B, which is visible to the left of frame in the shade of that tree. I can recommend it – clean, comfortable,
unpretentious and by Montreal standards reasonably priced. They have a website if you are interested)
Or take a look at this parallel road, Milton Street. Here the cycle lane is more sensibly a
contraflow, although the road environment is no better or worse than in Prince
Arthur St. You can see in the Google
image that the paint would be precious little use to protect an oncoming
cyclist, and that is exactly what I saw more than once during our stay. I suppose judging by general behaviour motorists would not stray across the line if
a cyclist was actually coming the other way, and at least the dooring zone faces the parked motorists so they can see you coming, but it is hardly perfect.
View Larger Map
These two streets are right on the “western” edge of Plateau
Mont Royal, the largely flat area beside the steeply sloping Parc Mont
Royal. The quarter proper starts at
Avenue du Parc – not an attractive proposition for a cyclist but the grid of
streets behind it is rather reminiscent of Hackney, in more ways than one. More cyclists, more facilities for cyclists
such as parking stands, more “hip”, a slightly down-at-heel area which
nevertheless is popular with younger middle class folks, and has attracted a
wide variety of independent shops and cafes.
Like Hackney, its attraction as a cycling area has little to do with
specific infrastructure, relying instead on traffic calming and permeability
measures. It is popular with McGill
students, as it is a short, flat walk from the campus, and that is extremely
important in winter, when snowfalls are heavy and daytime temperatures can be
low enough for the local met office to advise people to spend no more than 5-10
minutes out of doors. One of our last
purchases for my daughter before heading home was a “Canada Goose” down jacket
with fur hood, and Sobel snow boots.
Watching anyone cycling in such garb would be an amusing sight –
Michelin Man on a bicycle.
Cycle parking
Provision for securing your bicycle on the street in most of
Montreal is either non-existent, or extremely subtle. There are some posts with small horizontal
rings encircling them which appear to be intended to function like the
CycleHoops we see clamped to lamp posts and street signs in parts of London. For the most part people rely on the forest of
signposts which seem to clutter sidewalks in any north American street. This works, after a fashion, but it clearly
doesn’t allow for the conflicts it can create between the bicycle and the ease
or convenience of passing pedestrians or, indeed, parking motorists.
The position is much better in the Plateau area, although
even there the facilities are inferior even to a typical London “Sheffield
Stand”. It is not just that north
American cities don’t pursue the same aesthetic standards as, say, the City of
London does – that is true about almost every aspect of the urban realm – but also
the available stands don’t appear to be very securely fastened to the ground,
or conducive to good cycle locking practices (around the frame and both wheels,
through a closed loop on the stand).
Mind you, as the photo above suggests, owners might not regard their
bikes as worth very much effort to protect, the quality and the condition most
of them are in.
View Larger Map
Yes, this is a bike stand
Cycle hire
Montreal strikes me as an ideal city for tourists and
visitors to get about by bicycle.
Unfortunately, Mrs M falls into that category of nervous cyclists for
whom segregation is a sine qua non, so we wore out a lot of shoe leather and
got blisters from all the walking we did, but where there is no protected
infrastructure, I would say the road environment and driver behaviour is civilised enough for most able-bodied
adults. The terrain is reasonably flat,
and the distances manageable – if you think of central London as being bounded
by the river, Euston Road, Kensington Church Street and Bank, the equivalent
area of Montreal is only about half the dimensions of London. Distances are increased if you want to
progress diagonally as, like any American city designed on a grid system, that
requires you to “tack” repeatedly to left and right of your desire line. You also have to deal with the general lack
of cycle contraflow on the one-way streets which make up a significant proportion
of downtown.
The road surfaces are also pretty terrible. I didn’t see any potholes, but subsidence and
heave, and cracking of the surfaces, are rife.
This is probably inevitable, and not worth the cost of fighting, where
winter temperatures can stay below -20C for days on end and metres of snow can
be dumped in a single day. It does
however make for a pretty bum-numbing ride.
I had thought to lend my spare Brompton to my daughter to use there, but
I doubt she would tolerate the bruising for long.
So, they have Bixi.
 |
| Bixi hire bike docking station outside McGill Campus on Rue University |
If they look familiar, it is because they are: they are just like the London cycle hire
scheme (or rather, vice versa, as Bixi came first and both schemes are made by
a Montreal company). Except of course
that Bixi doesn’t give free advertising to Barclays Bank.
I hadn’t ridden one of these before – no need back home as I
have my Brompton – and I must say the experience was, well, interesting. It rather felt like the effort required to be
input, and resulting output, were comparable to riding a pedalo on the
Serpentine. The bikes also made all
sorts of alarming clicking, whining and scraping noises, which would have
worried me deeply had I not known that I could return it to a dock and forget
about it at my leisure. But it was fairly comfortable, and rode
through the awful road surfaces with less bruising and battering than I might
have suffered on skimpier tyres.
The scheme is only open about seven months a year, with the stations
being progressively stocked during April, and destocked during November. Evidently cycling largely stops in mid
winter, no doubt due to the abundance of snow and ice everywhere, and the
difficulties in riding around dressed like Michelin Man in wellies. Residents can buy an “annual” subscription for
C$82 (£47) or 28 day pass for C$28. For visitors, the scheme seems quite dear, at
C$7 (£4) for 24 hours – twice the price of the London scheme – or C$15 for 72
hours. For any combination of 1-7 days,
whether buying a 24 hour pass or a 72 hour (in London 1 week) pass, the
Montreal scheme would cost between 45% and 100% more than in London. Considering that the general exchange rate
for retail prices on coffee, meals etc in Montreal is C$1 buys £1, ie 40% cheaper,
this reversal is remarkable. Otherwise,
the conditions of use, first 30 minutes free etc, are substantially the same.
I figure I am going to be here a couple of visits a year for
the next three years, so I imagine I’ll get plenty of chance to explore.
