From the Montreal Gazette:
The cycling route running along de Maisonneuve Blvd. was officially named the Claire Morissette bike path yesterday afternoon amid fanfare and promises to make Montreal more bike-friendly.
Just after cutting the official red ribbon on a section of the bike path near the Berri St. intersection, however, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay wouldn’t say where the city’s half of a $10-million tab for building
100 kilometres of additional bike lanes on the island by next spring would come from. The expense wasn’t included in this year’s budget, and the mayor wouldn’t say how he planned to avoid tax increases.
“I’m going to be creative,” Tremblay said.
The bicycle path along de Maisonneuve Blvd. opened in November 2007 at a cost of $3.5 million after cycling activists such as Morissette spent decades negotiating with city hall and elected officials for an east-west cycling corridor through the downtown core. In total, Tremblay said, the city intends to add an additional 300 kilometres of paths “in the next couple of years” to meet targets set out in the 2007 transportation plan.
From the 1970s until her death in 2007, Morissette was an outspoken environmentalist and feminist, and a bold advocate of making streets safer for cyclists. She was known for staging
dramatic anti-car protests and demonstrations with the group Le Monde à bicyclette, creating Canada’s first vehicle-sharing network and founding an international organization to distribute bicycles in developing countries.
“She was really someone who brought change,” her brother Pierre Morissette said yesterday at the ceremony.
“She had a global mindset - bicycles were one of the first things she focused on, but there were so many other things to do in the world.”
Suzanne Lareau, president of Vélo Québec, described Morissette as an “activist … passionate, very motivated and terribly humble,” for whom she developed an “enormous respect” as they both lobbied, in their own ways, for better cycling paths in Montreal.
Thanks to Morissette’s efforts, more than 3,600 people used the bike path each day during a study period in June, Tremblay said.
“It’s an incredible route,” said Olivier Hamel, a year-round bicycle commuter who often uses the path. “It’s comparable to the best bike paths in the world.”
Other users say the path is a victim of its own success: too many riders of various skill levels combined with reckless drivers and inattentive pedestrians create a hazard zone.
Sean McBride, another regular bike commuter, said the path on de Maisonneuve is “particularly bad” for westbound users because of tricky intersections without adequate signage or traffic signals to regulate the flow of vehicles turning left across the bike lane.
“We don’t need bike paths, we need bike roads,” McBride said, pointing to cities such as Vancouver that have designated roadways where bikers have priority over other vehicles.
André Lavallée, the Montreal executive committee member responsible for transit, said lower speed limits on downtown streets, increased enforcement of road rules, and better road sharing by motorists, cyclists and pedestrians would make the streets safer.
“Everyone has to take responsibility,” he said.
“Without a doubt, we have to increase not only preventative measures, but also (limit) certain behaviours.”
More on the Claire Morisette Bike Path from Kate Molleson’s ‘On Two Wheels’ blog
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