Cyclists slam 13.6-km bike path detour
A Parks Canada recommendation that cyclists on the Lachine Canal bike path take a 13.6-kilometre detour to circumnavigate a 1.5-kilometre section of the popular path under construction for the next year is creating bike path rage.
“Is this a joke?” wrote one irate cyclist on the Parks Canada Facebook site. “A detour of 14 km to replace a stretch of 1.5 km? Do you ever bike?”
“Totally unacceptable and disconnected from reality,” wrote another. “How can you pretend that imposing a detour that’s 10 times longer than the zone under construction could be reasonable?”
Parks Canada announced that starting last Monday, the stretch of the bike path running north of the canal between Dollard Ave. and Angrignon Blvd., south of Ville St. Pierre and Notre-Dame-de- Grâce, will be closed because of renovation work on the canal’s retaining walls until June 2020.
On their Facebook site, Parks Canada suggests cyclists pedal south along the municipal bike paths of LaSalle Blvd. to the Aqueduct path running parallel to Champlain Blvd. before returning to the Lachine Canal path. The detour for a section that would normally take about seven minutes to cover would take between 45 minutes and an hour to cycle.
Audrey Godin-Champagne, a spokesperson for Parks Canada, said the federal body wanted to suggest protected bike path alternatives similar to the route under construction, separated from car traffic, to ensure a similar level of security.
Putting a temporary bike path on St-Patrick St. that runs alongside the south edge of the canal was not feasible, she said, because the road is too narrow and sees considerable traffic.
The federal body said it was working with Canadian Pacific to see if a temporary bike path could be created on an old rail line, but no agreements had been reached yet.
Many cyclists said they would be ignoring the proposed detour and taking separate routes, including St-Patrick St.