Biking in MTL

I've been pretty quiet the last few weeks here. Partially because I have a lot of other things I've been working on, but also because I've been spending a lot of time biking around Montreal. The city of Montreal has created two proper bike lanes that run through the downtown area, one running north/south and the other east/west. When I say "proper" bike lanes, I mean the kind with a concrete barrier separating cyclists from vehicles and a total lack of parked cars to open their doors into your path. They've done something especially clever here that I've never seen elsewhere, by grouping the bike lanes together on the same side of the road, meaning there's less space taken up over all.

It's ironic that Montreal, a city that lives under the weight of winter for so much of the year and consequently has a much shorter biking season than Toronto, would be so much more progressive with its infrastructure. The beauty of the whole situation is that you don't need to build a whole lot of them for the plan to be effective. If Toronto had two dedicated bike lanes cutting through downtown, most cyclists would have to problem going a few blocks out of their way to catch them, since they'd save a lot of time and hassle, not to mention injuries.

Anyone feel like lobbying Toronto City Council to build a few of these beauties?


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