Whether one is a driver, a pedestrian, a runner or a cyclist, on a part-time or full-time basis, seasonally or all year round, the issue of biking on the island of Montreal has definitely come up more than once in our conversations with friends, family or coworkers.
The same debate appears in the media, in which the issue of biking in the city has recently drawn more and more attention. The importance of this debate directly shows when it comes to the last municipal election, during which many of the candidates at City Hall committed to take initiatives regarding biking in Montreal. One candidate promised to put in place more bike paths, another talked about a mechanism of “bike-sharing”, one other put forward the idea of a GPS system being installed on each bicycle, and finally, one last candidate said that he wished to put in place more parking spaces for bikes around the city…
In a nutshell, biking keeps people talking in Montreal!
No matter if one is a cyclist or not, the facts speak for themselves: the attention drawn to biking keeps rising. The protection of the air quality, the reduction of noise pollution, the decrease of traffic jams, money savings, the maintenance of a good health, etc… the list of arguments in favour of biking keeps growing, just like the number of cyclists that take the road.
This phenomenon is not unique to the city of Montreal. In fact, in certain places, biking has become a real habit… even during the winter months! In the Finnish city of Oulu, for example, even though there is about twice as much snow as in Montreal, the snow is almost entirely removed from bike paths in order to permit to people to continue to use the bike lanes to accomplish their daily activities (Le Devoir, January 15, 2014).
A Fragile Future
Even if biking in Montreal has become quite popular, its future is not to be taken for granted. On one hand, there will always be people against it, starting with people opposing the use of bicycles on the campus of McGill University. In fact, everywhere around the island, drivers and pedestrians fight for a better entrenchment of the traffic laws. Last summer, the police has also been criticized for the numerous contraventions distributed to cyclists considered as “dangerous” and for the possible impacts of that kind of police operation on the use of bicycles in Montreal. Furthermore, the many bicycle thefts do not encourage people to start biking, even more when we hear the statistics about the thefts, found in (Le Devoir, October 2, 2013), « explaining that no more than 1,5% of the lost bicycles signaled to the police as stolen are found afterwards ».
On the other hand, the popular “Bixis”, that have achieved to seduce an important number of citizens, will finally be placed under the protection of the The Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act as a consequence of an amount of indebtedness approaching $50 millions for the Public Bike System Company (PBSC), which manages the Bixi system (Le Devoir, January 20, 2014). By choosing to develop its own management software and selling it to other cities equipped with the same system, the PBSC would have contributed to causing the current deficit threatening the future of the Bixi system in Montreal, which in any event will still be available to use for summer 2014.
Nevertheless, the interest for biking and sustainable transportation will keep growing. Let’s simply hope that our municipal and provincial institutions will find the means and the political incentives to adapt the services and infrastructures to the news needs, expectations and preoccupations of their citizens.
© Image courtesy of RyanTaylor1986, on Flickr. See license here.
© Image of the Bixi is a courtesy of Matt’ Johnson, on Flickr. See license here.
