As I wound my way through the city’s network of paths, one thing came to mind: I should have studied harder before heading out.
My trip to Jarry Park from the Montreal courthouse was an easy 6.2-kilometre trek along St-Laurent Blvd., following the same road the whole way. But getting to the same destination while staying on bike paths proved more difficult.
Before heading out, I scanned the city’s online map of bike paths for about an hour, and wrote down all the ones I thought would best take me to my destination. But as I made my way north up Berri St., the protected path unexpectedly ended. I could go north no further. The path became one-way southbound and the only other bike path option was to go east toward Lafontaine Park, significantly out of my way.
Overall, staying along the maze of city’s bike paths was a 10-kilometre ride that took 45 minutes to complete, while I rode just six kilometres along St-Laurent Blvd. in 25 minutes without the protection of paths.
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Despite taking longer, the bike-path route was far prettier, especially the parts through Lafontaine and Laurier parks and the quiet streets of the Plateau. However, even as an experienced Montreal cyclist, I still took a few wrong turns, with the signs on the bike paths providing few clues about where bike paths end, or where to find the next one.
St-Laurent, which has no bike path of any kind, seemed a dangerous alternative. Cars often crowded the right side of the road while waiting to turn right at intersections — either squeezing cyclists toward the sidewalk, or forcing them to ride in the lane further left on the road, contrary to the Quebec Highway Safety Code regulation obliging cyclists to stay on the right.
The No. 55 bus also caused some discomfort, because buses are big, heavy, have huge blind spots and they often cut off cyclists as they load and unload passengers. This pattern repeated itself several times during my trip, since buses tend to travel around the same speed as cyclists.
The only time I felt truly protected on St-Laurent was riding on the roughly 200 metres of the underpass at Bellechasse Ave. — the only section of the street where a concrete median separates car traffic. However, continuing straight on St-Laurent at the end of that underpass seemed risky, since signs instruct cyclists to turn right onto Bellechasse, and cars don’t expect cyclists to stay on St-Laurent. To head straight, you have to stop and wait for cars that aren’t turning, or get off your bike and walk across.
At the end of the trip, it became clear that if I were a regular bicycle commuter on this route I would share the frustration of cycling advocates who routinely complain about the lack of options going south to north, and I would agree with city cycling spokesperson Marc-André Gadoury’s assessment that there is “an urgency” to have a bike path heading north. It seems, however, that the city has no plan in the short term to build a direct path from south to north on one main street.
