Should Montreal double its number of bike paths? One study says ‘yes’

A McGill University study found that Montreal bike path infrastructure is below the demand, and the city could, and maybe should, double it.

There are not enough bike lanes in Montreal, a McGill University study finds, stating that “micro-mobility” infrastructure does not meet the city’s demands.

Those who hop on a bicycle, e-bike, scooter, motorized unicycle or skateboard make up five per cent of the city’s commuters, but the study found that the infrastructure for them takes up just two per cent of the road space.

Far from pushing cars off Montreal streets, the study, titled “The cars are going to be alright: Examining micro-mobility infrastructure space allocation and potential improvement scenarios in Montreal," suggests that more space for bikes would barely affect motorized vehicle traffic patterns.

“If people had a better understanding of how little space it takes, because it’s such a space-efficient transport mode, maybe they would be less upset about giving some of that space to a cyclist,” said lead author Daniel Romm, a PhD candidate in McGill’s Department of Geography.

People for Bikes, a site dedicated to improving biking in cities, named Montreal the best city for cycling among major cities in 2022.

Via Rail listed Montreal as one of the top five bike-friendly cities in Canada.

However, Romm said that in the 11 studies analyzing street space in recent years, Montreal ranks highly by North American standards, but trails far behind European cities, which have superior bike infrastructure.

“What we find when we compare to studies that used European cities is that Montreal is doing much, much worse,” he said. “In the global picture, Montreal is still doing quite poorly.”

Romm said he found that, despite criticisms about bike lanes, the reality is that there are not enough of them.

“We found that micro-mobility infrastructure takes up a very small proportion of street space in Montreal,” he said. “Even doubling all existing infrastructure, it still makes up just a minuscule proportion.”

That ratio is even more pronounced in some boroughs.

The study found that in Montreal’s Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, 22 per cent of people use micro-mobility, but the infrastructure remains under five per cent of the street space.

• READ MORE: City of Montreal intern mapping island’s entire bike network

To compile the study, researchers looked at dedicated, physically separated bike paths, cycle tracks and BIXI docks.

Romm said the methods the researchers used, which included the Equal Infrastructure Allocation (EIA) score, can help improve space for cyclists.

“This is best used as a diagnostic tool for where there’s too little space,” he said. “It’s very intuitive: square metres per traveller is a simple way to understand whether infrastructure is keeping up with demand.”

The researchers combined street geometry data from the city with regional travel surveys and modelled future scenarios, including doubling the existing micro-mobility infrastructure.

They found that these new scenarios would give “significant gains for cyclists, without dramatically affecting space for cars.”

Going from two per cent to four, five or even 10 per cent would still give 90+ per cent of the road to automobiles.

“Micro-mobility infrastructure is incredibly space-efficient,” said Romm. “There’s ample available space for such infrastructure without severely affecting the relative space allocated to automobiles.”

The team said it intends to do the same study in other Canadian cities, which Romm expects to also “have a lot of catching up to do.”