It’s risky business lately for bicycle repair shops
Demand for two-wheeled transport booms as commuters avoid buses, métro
It’s a dangerous time to be repairing bikes.
“It’s scary, especially for my team,” said Dominic Paquet, owner of Recycle Cycle on de Maisonneuve Blvd. in Notre-dame-degrâce. “I don’t want to get sick, but I live alone. A lot of my teammates, they live at their parents’. So there’s more risk for my team than me. And that’s what I’m mainly scared about.
“We’re on the front lines because everyone wants their bike (repaired). We’re trying to be extra careful, but it’s scary. Somebody brings their bike in, then I’m touching the bike, then I’m touching the tools, then I’m touching the phone. If someone goes to Bureau en Gros, they choose what they want, then you just scan it. We touch what the person owns and which they touched 30 seconds ago. It’s really hard and I’m a bit stressed.”
At first, bike repair stores were not part of the list of essential services the Quebec government deemed should be allowed to stay open during the COVID-19 crisis, and so they all had to close in late March along with other non-essential businesses. But after some vigorous lobbying from Vélo Québec and others, Quebec added bike shops to the essential-services list on April 1 and many stores reopened in the hours and days that followed.
Many people are turning to biking as an alternative to taking public transport, given fears of potentially being exposed to COVID-19 on the bus and métro system.
At Recycle Cycle, the staff spray the bikes with disinfectant before working on them. At Cycle Néron Montréal on de Courcelle St. in St-henri, they wash the bikes outside the store before repairing them.
“Then we bring them in and we assess them for whatever needs to be done, unless it’s a really basic thing like repairing a flat, in which case if it’s not snowing or pouring rain, we’ll try to fix it outside,” said David Bryson, owner of this Cycle Néron store. “If it’s a repair or tune-up, we’ll wash it and sanitize it and bring it in and assess it with the client standing in a very specific box, two metres away from the work stand and the mechanic.”
At Néron, they serve only one customer in the store at any time and the others line up outside. Bryson said the store has been swamped since it reopened on April 1.
People who want to buy a bike still can. They just can’t walk into the store and buy it. The loophole is you can buy it online and in the case of Cycle Neron, have it delivered.
“Call us, we’ll talk you through what your needs are and we’ll send you to the website of the supplier, and we’ll deliver it, as long as it’s a reasonable distance,” Bryson said.
Bryson feels it’s simply too dangerous to have a bunch of people in the store looking at bikes they might buy, potentially touching many of them.
Suzanne Lareau, CEO of Vélo Québec, argues the government should allow the stores to sell bikes.
“It’s a bit absurd,” Lareau said. “They took the same model as the car business. There, the car dealerships are closed, but the repair garages are open. But in the case of the bike business, it’s the same stores that sell bikes and repair them.”
Lareau underlines that biking is a great way to practise the sort of social distancing being preached by the government.
“It’s a way of travelling where you can keep physical distance from each other,” Lareau said. “And the streets of Montreal have never been safer because there are very few cars. There’s a 75-per-cent decrease in the amount of traffic. The No. 1 reason people don’t ride bikes in the city is because they’re afraid of the cars, but from one day to the next, that problem disappeared. So it’s important to remember that biking is a great form of transport, even in a pandemic.”
The one place where social distancing becomes more difficult is on bike paths that are not very wide. In that case, Lareau suggests riding on the roads given that there are fewer cars than usual.
Another transport alternative will arrive April 15 with the launch of the Bixi season. On the day of the launch, Bixi is supposed to unveila series of measures designed to make it safer to ride the bikes during the coronavirus crisis.