City touts new ‘smart’ counters, bike paths

Over the next two years, the city of Montreal will add 58 new kilometres of bike path to its network, bringing it to 846 km, and install “smart” bike counters to provide the administration and the public with data on cyclists in real time.

The most elaborate of the new projects, one of 58 at a cost of $20 million, will be a protected bike path on Rosemont Blvd. between 15th Ave. and Chatelain St. All the intersections were evaluated and safety measures were integrated into the project.

A bike path on Souligny and Dubuisson Aves. in Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve will link the area east of Highway 25 to the western district, to the bike path on Souligny west of Highway 25.

The city will also complete a new phase of the project to develop a bike path that cuts east to west in the West Island, by extending the bike path on Timberlea-Trail St. until L’Anse-à-l’Orme Rd.

Apart from presenting specific routes to be developed, the Coderre administration outlined a strategy to better plan new additions to the bike path network to keep pace with the growing number of cyclists in different parts of the city. It put together a “bike committee” with representatives from different cycling-related organizations.

And the city will install 23 permanent bike counters in seven boroughs by the end of the summer, announced Marc-André Gadoury, in charge of bike issues in the Coderre administration. Among them will be three “smart” counters, which will display the data in real-time.

One is already in service in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough; the other two will be in Ville-Marie. The data will go directly to the urban mobility management centre, but also to an online platform accessible to the public, Gadoury said.

“The public sharing of data from the counters and the fact of making them accessible online through the web is a major initiative that will open up numerous possibilities for better services,” he said.