Took my bike to work today for the first time since last June. I had forgotten how much cycling along Ste. Catherine St. in morning traffic can be like what I imagine bungee jumping feels like – enjoyable but hair-raising. There’s the constant fear of a car door swinging open, the double-parked delivery trucks blocking the way, the shiny, speeding SUVs cutting you off.
But the most annoying part of the trip is the 400-metre stretch (see map above) between the end of the Montreal bike path on de Maisonneuve Blvd. (at Décarie) and the beginning of the Westmount bike path on de Maisonneuve Blvd. (at Claremont). It wouldn’t take much to turn one lane of that stretch into a bike path. Just move the taxi stand on to the Vendôme métro station’s bus parking lot and get rid of a dozen or so parking spots.
Instead, the Montreal bike lane abruptly ends just before Décarie and cyclists use a narrow path worn into grass to reach the corner, at which point they battle traffic at an intersection where cars are moving in six (count them: six) directions. Then they move uphill while worrying about cars, taxis and buses that, not surprisingly, ignore the the white bicycle pictograms the city has painted in the middle of their lanes.
There. Got that off my chest. Now I have to build up my enthusiasm for the trip home.
1 Comment
June 11, 2007 at 2:34 pm
[...] Comments While doing some research on another topic today, I think I figured out why that dangerous 400-metre-long bike-path gap continues to exist on de Maisonneuve Blvd., between N.D.G. and [...]