Winter cycling in this city an exercise in frustration
Four-season bike paths full of snow, making two-wheel travel dangerous
I’m feeling like a super hero as the lone cyclist on the Parc Ave. bike path. With snow-covered Mount Royal on my left, I’ve got a good pace. I’m warm and dry in my waterproof winter gear and I feel like I can conquer the world. But in a second, my smugness comes crashing down. I find myself suddenly lying on my back on Esplanade Ave., with two other cyclists stopping in their tracks to ask me if I’m okay — appearing out of nowhere just in time to see me wipe out. For a split second, my 40-yearold brain has visions of hip replacement surgery, long hospital stays and months of physiotherapy rehab until I realize I’m just fine. Only my ego is bruised. This is winter cycling in Montreal. A challenge in the fairest weather with aggressive cars and pothole-laden roads that look like the surface of the moon, cycling with ice, snow and cold temperatures to contend with isn’t for everyone. But for the bold (or the stupid, depending on your point of view), biking during the winter is a great way to get outside and moving. Navigating the bike network, on the other hand, can be challenging. Despite promises by the city that 75 per cent of its bike network is cleared of snow, only a handful of the most popular paths are ever routinely cleared. I’m lucky enough to live two blocks from De Maisonneuve Blvd. where snow clearing is consistently good from my home in Notre-Dame-de- Grâce to my office downtown. A tour I took this week of the city’s central boroughs, however, revealed spotty snow clearing is just a fact of life in the city, even in boroughs that tout themselves as bike friendly. I was in the Plateau-Mont-Royal when I fell, turning left from Duluth Ave. onto Esplanade, going from one so-called four-season bike path to another. On this day, however, roughly 24 hours after a snowfall of about 10 centimetres, both streets were covered in so much snow it was impossible to even see the painted white lines that demarcate a bike lane.
One of the cyclists that comes to my aid is Peter Boudreau. A McGill PhD student originally from Georgia, in the U.S., Boudreau said he’s frustrated that much of the paths on his usual five-kilometre commute from Little Italy are covered in snow. Biking on streets that don’t have bike paths is no better, because snow builds up in the spot where cyclists are supposed to ride. “A couple of major roads aren’t really taken care of on the sides,” he said. “It gets bad in the Plateau and the Mile End, which is ironic because that’s where the bike paths are.” Boudreau says he still prefers to bike because it’s faster than the bus, but he often has to walk his bike when he runs into snowbanks or dangerous conditions. “There’s a lot of dismounting, walking, then getting back on again when you’re biking,” Boudreau says. “It’s not fun, but at this point I’m used to it.”
There’s a lot of dismounting, walking, then getting back on again when you’re biking. It’s not fun
I get back on my bike, and continue on my way. My survey of the Plateau, which prides itself in having the city’s largest concentration of cyclists, reveals only a few places where the conditions are ideal for them. Bike paths with concrete barriers separating them from the rest of the street like Rachel and Clark Sts. are cleared down to the pavement. However, bicycle lanes that are just painted lines on the side of the road are routinely slippery and slushy, because that’s where plows tend to push snow. It’s no different in neighbouring Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, where the bicycle lanes on either side of Bellechasse St. are being used as a dumping ground with huge mounds of snow deposited throughout. Outremont’s Côte-Ste-Catherine path — which is separated by a concrete barrier — has piles of snow and ice, making it dangerous for cyclists. Before I bail out at Stuart Ave., I notice Outremont resident Cynthia Fish walking through knee-high snow to cross the street where the path meets a pedestrian crosswalk. She says pedestrians are just as frustrated as cyclists this winter. “It’s seriously atrocious,” she says. Fish, an endurance walker training for the 6633 Arctic Ultra — a 380-mile trek through the Yukon that crosses the Arctic Circle — was just beginning a four-hour walk. She regularly walks around the city and has noticed snow clearing has been worse than usual everywhere she goes. “At least last year at the first freeze, they got it all up,” she said. “This year has been slow.” On my ride home that day on the De Maisonneuve Blvd bike path, I run into Daniel Lambert, a spokesperson for the Montreal Bike Coalition. He says with so few bike paths and bike lanes consistently cleared, only the heartiest of cyclists venture out. He has been pushing successive city governments for years to improve snow clearing of bicycle paths, and has been disappointed by Mayor Valérie Plante’s administration — now going through its second winter. “The quality of snow clearing is not at all what it should be,” he said. “For cycling to be a viable mode of transportation, you have to be able to do it year-round.” Speaking for the Plante administration this week, Jean-François Parenteau — the executive committee member in charge of citizen services — admitted snow removal on bike paths has been less than ideal. However, he said the situation has been slowly improving over the last few years with new methods being tried, and new equipment purchased, like sidewalk sweepers. Parenteau said anyone who sees a bike path, sidewalk or road that isn’t properly maintained should call the city’s 311 phone line, preferably with a picture showing the problem. “For sure it’s not perfect, but when you compare it to five, six or seven years ago, it’s completely different,” Parenteau said. “We need to fine-tune the city’s snow-clearing policy and we’re going to do that for next year. We’re trying to get better. We know that if we improve maintenance, we will get a be a good response from cyclists.”