From Co.Exist
… researchers at McGill University have just published a new study detailing how better bike infrastructure encourages people to ditch their cars and commute by bike, cleaning up the city’s air in the process.
The team looked at its own city, Montreal, for the study. It compared car and bike trip information from 1998, 2003, and 2008, along with changes in the “built environment,” i.e. the increase in bike lanes and other bike-friendly changes. …
The team looked at its own city, Montreal, for the study. It compared car and bike trip information from 1998, 2003, and 2008, along with changes in the “built environment,” i.e. the increase in bike lanes and other bike-friendly changes. …
Not that McGill’s results were that great. While the figures do show a shift from car commuting to bike commuting, the numbers themselves are quite small: A 10% increase in bike accessibility resulted in only a 3.7% increase in ridership.
Full article here.
Full article here.
It’s not surprising that it takes more than a 10% increase in bike accessibility to draw large numbers of cyclists. Imagine if our roads were disconnected and independent systems with large gaps and dangerous connections – or if our mass transit lines didn’t have places to transfer. Montreal has some great cycling lanes but it doesn’t have a robust network.
It takes a network for any transportation system to flourish. It will likely be a decade or two at current rates of progress (here or Montreal) to build a network that could attract the kinds of numbers you see in Europe. Hopefully build out will be more exponential.
Thank you for this link!
But, wait, Active Transportation and the current Council have declared that “the war on cars” is a misnomer, that their increasing bike lanes is not to force people from their cars. Surely, you are not now admitting the obvious, that war wages on, in fact.