Last September, I participated in a webinar on island platform bus stops - ie, bus stops along protected bike lanes. The host @itecanada.bsky.social has made a recording of the webinar available here: www.itecanada.org/webinar-isla...

Non seulement c’est possible de bien déneiger le nouvel aménagement cyclable à l’intersection Christophe-Colomb / Bellechasse, mais regardez à quel point c’est bien pour les piétons : ils n’ont pas à traverser un lac ou un montage de slush.

The Christophe-Colomb and Bellechasse protected intersection under the snow (📷 @velo.qc.ca). There was much handwringing about this being "impossible" to clear of snow. My team will be talking to maintenance crews to see how it's going and what we could improve in future protected intersections.

The east of the avenue Christophe-Christophe reconstruction between Jean-Talon and Jarry is complete. It features wide, raised cycle tracks and advanced stormwater management features that will make the street more “spongy”.

Montreal’s BIXI #bikeshare system is introducing cargo trailers! bixi.com/en/trailer?u...

“Vehicles with higher, more vertical front ends pose greater risk to pedestrians. Vehicles with especially tall front ends are most dangerous to pedestrians, but a blunt profile makes medium-height vehicles deadly too.” Deadly by design. And they know it. www.iihs.org/news/detail/...

Newly released data shows that the bicycle mode share of people residing in the central part of the Montreal region doubled from 4% in 2018 to 8% 2023 (all trips purposes, 24h on weekdays).

Montreal has website/app (infoneige.ca/index-en.php) that allows residents to monitor progress of snow removal ops in real time. The purpose is to warn residents to remove parked cars before the operation starts. It’s best to remove parked bikes as well so that don’t get dinged by the machines.

After a record 74 cm snow dump, #wintercycling is on hold for a few days. Sidewalks, bike lanes, and local streets are buried in so much snow that plowing is ineffective or simply impossible. While snow removal operations progress slowly, we’ve been getting around on x-country skis instead.

Traffic signs in Quebec are only loosely based on the MUTCD. Pictograms are preferred over to text to allow speakers of any language to understand. On this windy Monday, a colleague reminded me of traffic sign D-61-1 "Squall", Quebec's finest! Oddly, I am reminded of a certain other blowhard...

mainstream narrative.

"The bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created...a triangle-framed bike can easily carry 10x its own weight—capacity no automobile, airplane or bridge can match.” —Bill Strickland.

A shared street is essentially a pedestrian street that cars are allowed to use. The street must be designed to make motorists feel like they are invading the pedestrian realm. Any visual distinction between roadway and sidewalk must be avoided. Video: de la Gauchetière Est in Montreal.

Taking the whole lane ✔️ Distracted (singing) ✔️ No helmets ✔️ No lights ✔️ No reflective vests ✔️ Riding in a pack ✔️ The textbook radical anti-car cyclists our culture despises

English version of the document here: designmontreal.com/s3fs-public/...

Montreal's summertime street pedestrianizations and other tactical street retrofits have been successful in part due to careful layout and design. The City's Design Bureau has drawn on these experiences to compile this great guide for temporary on-street spaces. designmontreal.com/s3fs-public/...

This excellent @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social video about Laval, Montreal’s neighbour to the north, shows how a car-oriented suburb can rapidly expand and improve cycling infrastructure to create a workable network. Laval might be a more salient example for many North American communities than Montreal.

Last winter, Montreal's BIXI #bikeshare system stayed open for the first time. Though only 1 in 8 stations remained open from mid-November to April, 93,000 people used the system to make about 1-million trips. 65% of them were #wintercycling for the first time. 81% said they'll do it again.

Good news. Because I have a picture of a street with no cars in it, we don’t need streets for cars. I know that because of all the helpful people who have told me over the years that because they have a picture of a bike-lane with no bikes in it, we don’t need bike-lanes. Sounds reasonable, right?

Yesterday I biked: - from home in Villeray to the office in Old Montreal (7.1 km) - from the office to a work party in the Olympic Park (8.6 km) - from the Olympic Park back home (8.1 km) 100% of my journey was on separated, winter-maintained infrastructure. We have come a long way, my friends.

🎯 www.revuegestion.ca/electrificat...

Build it and they will come. Plow it and they will come in the winter.

First significant snowfall in Montreal. Maintenance operations on the cycling network completed overnight. Smooth sailing for people heading to work and school on their bikes this morning. #véloMTL

Les pistes cyclables n'occupent que 1% de la voie publique à Montréal, contre 75% pour l'automobile. Elles ne reçoivent que 7% du financement routier à Montréal. Il y a 1,1 million de cyclistes à Montréal et... 983 000 automobilistes. Mon texte dans @lactualite.com : lactualite.com/societe/pist...

“Motonormativity” or “car brain” - cultural inability to think objectively and dispassionately about how we use cars. www.theverge.com/2023/1/31/23...

If you want fast response of emergency services - build wide bike lanes…

BREAKING: “Removing bike -lanes from busy city streets will increase traffic congestion, according to a government document leaked amid a furious row over urban infrastructure. The findings undercut claims that the dedicated routes contribute to urban gridlock.” www.theguardian.com/world/2024/n...

The Toronto “bikelash” is negligible in Toronto itself, where city council voted 21-4 in favor of keeping its bike lanes. It’s due to angry suburbanites who want to overrule city residents’ transportation decisions. www.theguardian.com/world/2024/n...

Truly shocking. A government knowingly legislating to make streets more dangerous. This is not just backwards, it’s evil.

About 20 years ago, I was in a grad school class where we had a discussion with a Parisian city planner. Bikeshare in Paris had just launched. He said, "Parisians will never give up their cars." When I start getting frustrated about progress, I think of that conversation.

Ce que je reproche le plus à ce chroniqueur est qu’il confond le concept d’une consultation avec celui d’un référendum. Une consultation devrait servir à améliorer l’acceptabilité sociale d’un projet, pas a decider si on va de l’avant avec le projet. www.lapresse.ca/actualites/c...

"The mark of a great city isn't how it treats its special places, but how it treats its ordinary ones" - Aaron Renn

Surprise! The Chateaubriand bidirectional has been extended north of Bélanger. #veloMTL

It’s also interesting how people talk about how “you can't bike through two feet of snow”, not realizing that cars can’t do that either, completely taking for granted the fact that roads are plowed in order to make car traffic possible.

Recently released initial results from the Montreal region's 2023 origin-destination study show that, compared to 2018, the number of morning peak trips taken by car and by public transit have dropped by 10% and 25% respectively. However, the number of trips taken by active modes increased by 28%.

Why talk so much about bike infrastructure? Simple: we use it every day and it makes our lives better. If our city didn’t have it, our lives would be worse. We’d either spend more money or have less mobility. We’d be less active and healthy. More people should be this lucky. (Av. Bourbonnière)

In 2008, a year before the BIXI #bikeshare system was implemented, an average of 40,000 bicycle trips were taken daily in Montreal according to the regional origin-destination survey. Yesterday, on a cool day in mid-November (high 9°C), almost 40,000 trips were taken just on the bike share system.

“This is a bicycle. It makes you happier.”

Hello friends, it’s been a while. I’ve been hard at work with my team, helping out with different street redesigns around town and creating guidelines for us and our partners in Montreal’s 19 boroughs. See what we have come up with so far here: montreal-amenagement-rues.powerappsportals.com