Last month I went to Montreal for a long weekend, and the city’s bicycle infrastructure blew my mind.
Protected. Bike lanes. Everywhere!
Never. Empty. Bikeshare docks!
It felt like the alternative history of the United States, in which the goal of urban planning is to improve people’s quality of life, not move cars quickly.
Like many cities that developed innovative transportation infrastructure earlier than others, Quebecers feel that Montreal’s bike infrastructure – developed in the 1980s – has stalled. “People here ride bikes in spite of the infrastructure,” Zvi Leve, a transportation expert affiliated with the Montreal Bike Coalition, told me. “Even simple things, like keeping the paint on the ground for bike lanes, are difficult.”
But Montreal is still worlds ahead of most North American cities: and there are a lot of small solutions that our cities can learn from their bike infrastructure.
So here are three of those “small” features of Montreal’s bike infrastructure that make biking in Montreal so easy.
Signs that tell cyclists where the bike lane continues
Biking in most North American cities consists of a game of “Where Did the Bike Lane Go?”
It’s difficult to see if the bike lane continues past the next intersection – or if it ends in the middle of the block while you’re riding it, forcing you into traffic. This uncertainty makes biking a new route difficult.
In Montreal, these handy, intuitive signs (pictured below) eliminate guesswork by indicating where the bike lane continues – so you know exactly what you’re riding into in any direction.
Dense and rarely-empty bikeshare docks
For a bikeshare system to be reliable, there simply needs to be bikes available when people want to ride. That means bike docks should never be completely empty or completely full.
Montreal’s BIXI system (the first bikeshare system in North America and the model for systems like Capital Bikeshare in Washington, DC and CitiBike in New York) accomplishes this in two ways: a high density of bikeshare stations and an aggressive rebalancing program.
BIXI stations are placed on every block or every other block. This means that if one station is empty, you don’t have to walk far to find another bike – or use a different transportation mode. “Bikeshare thrives when there are options,” Leve said. “That’s why BIXI stations are never more than 200 to 300 meters apart.”
In addition, BIXI rigorously rebalances the system, especially during rush hour. “In mornings, BIXI employees collect bikes in commercial areas the moment they’ve been docked by users,” Leve said. “They truck them back to residential areas very quickly.”
No right on red
Drivers are allowed to make right turns during red lights almost everywhere in the United States. This means that although people crossing the street (usually) have the right of way, cars are allowed to drive through their path, heightening the risk of collisions.
Streetblogs’ Angie Schmitt recently reported on a 1995 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report that found over 50 percent of right-on-red fatalities were pedestrians and bicyclists.
In Montreal, not only are right-on-red turns banned, but traffic signals are timed to give a head start to the people who are walking and biking. “Before the light turns green, there’s a straight-only phase for about five to 10 seconds for pedestrians and bicyclists,” Leve said.
Photo of people riding bikes by Jason Pier.