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Forget EVs. Cycling is revolutionising transport
To understand why urban planners like bicycles, stand on a section of Saint Denis Street in Montreal and count the vehicles going by. On a sunny Thursday over a ten-minute period at rush hour, your correspondent counted 132 bicycles (at least a half dozen of which had children on the back) flowing one way. In the adjacent—and much wider—automobile lane 82 cars (almost all carrying just their driver) and one city bus moved by in a bumper-to-bumper crawl.
10 minutes on a Montreal street corner and bicycles move well over 132 people freely while just over half that amount are stuck watching from their vehicle, moving more slowly than the cyclists.
I’ve never understood why cycling infrastructure is so polarizing in the states, but maybe it’s because so much of the pitch is wrong. If you look at cities that really embrace it—actually plan for cycling and implement its supporting infrastructure as a primary mode, rather than an afterthought—you’ll find that there is a tipping point where cars also begin to move more freely. Montreal hasn’t hit that point yet, but it could happen.
The better pitch: no one is saying you can’t drive a car. No one is trying to make that harder for you. I truly do not care if you ever ride a bike. I’m simply asking for first class infrastructure that I can safely utilize so that you have one less car to contend with when you’re stuck in traffic.