Cycling tracks | Small queen and small policy

The cars will do well. Nevertheless, This is the title a bit of a bitterness of a new study by McGill University. Similarly, which shows that the number of cycle paths in Montreal could double without affecting motorists.

The city would not switch to chaos. Nevertheless, It would not create monster traffic jams. Consequently, And motorists would not suffer from it in the least. Meanwhile, Even they would benefit from it: one can imagine that with twice as much cycle paths. Consequently, more Montrealers would swap the steering wheel for the bicycle, which would mean fewer vehicles on the roads, therefore less cycling tracks | small queen traffic jams. Similarly, All this falls under the meaning.

But do not speak of logic to those who wake up at night to rage against cycle paths. In addition, Do not take them out of studies proving their multiple benefits. Therefore, For them, the thing is settled: we are dealing with a real wound of Egypt.

I read it again in a column of Journal de Montréal. Moreover, Three months ago: “The cursed cycle paths are killing Montreal”, nothing less. Similarly, They aggravate traffic caps and, hold on, air pollution. Furthermore, It is necessary to put an end to their “stupid expansion”. Consequently, dismantle those “which harm the well-being of the vast majority of Montrealers”.

Admit that it is rare, such a mastery in the art of reverse the logic ass above head.

Less rare is this visceral hatred of cycle paths. Therefore, The simple fact of asking motorists to share the road has the effect of diving some of them in. For example, a black anger. For example,

And not only in Montreal. Additionally, For example, All over the world. English speakers have even invented a word to describe the phenomenon: Bikelash. who plays on words bike lane (cycle path) and backlash (Hinged).

Unsurprisingly, politicians of all hair seek to transform this anger into votes.

cycling tracks | small queen

As the municipal elections approaches, the Montreal overall chief, Soraya Martinez Ferrada, is displayed as the candidate who will finally slow down the allegedly stupid expansion of the lanes reserved for cyclists. Last week, she promised to get rid of the city of those who would prove to be “dangerous”.

M^me Martinez Ferrada is far from being the only one to do small policy. on the back of the small queen. In Ontario. Alberta and Nova Scotia, provincial elected officials are even made to mingle with what does not look at them and to claim the dismantling of cycle paths fitted out in major cities.

The government of Doug Ford. Ontario, launched the ball by adopting a law which not only allows the province to suppress cycle paths in Toronto, but forces municipalities to obtain cycling tracks | small queen provincial approval before developing new ones if this implies removing tracks reserved for motor vehicles.

On July 30. an Ontario court declared this unconstitutional law, judging that the abolition of the cycle paths of Toronto exposed people to an “increased risk of damage and death”. In other words. this would violate their right to life and security, guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

To make its decision. the Ontario court based on facts: six cyclists were killed in Toronto last year on tracks without cycle paths. He also based on expert judgment: according to all probabilities, the application of this law would make deaths. The most absurd is that it would not reduce traffic jams, as Doug Ford promises.

His government has appealed. Obviously, the Ontario Prime Minister seeks to please his electorate. There is no other logical reason to persist in this path. And again. Sooner. later, the politicians who set themselves up, like him, in Don Quixote fighting against the cursed cycle paths may go for a wall.

In London, The Guardian calls it the “paradox of bikelash ». Even if the urban redevelopment invariably provokes the anger of some of the citizens. the elected officials who proceed to this redevelopment are equally invariably rewarded in the ballot box, notes the daily.

This is the case of the cycling tracks | small queen mayors of London, Milan, Sydney and Vancouver, all re -elected, often with comfortable majorities.

In the long term, the development of cycle paths is therefore politically profitable.

It is not really a paradox. Citizens eventually realize that cycle paths improve their city and their lives. Take the Rev of rue Saint-Denis. Remember, five years ago, the shields of merchants. In the end, the disaster announced did not take place. On the contrary, the street is more alive than it had been for a long time.

New businesses open their doors. Merchants do good business. The rage has passed. Forgotten. And this is no exception. Studies carried out in New York. London, Toronto and San Francisco, among others, have shown that the development of a cycle path had the effect of increasing sales of surrounding businesses.

cycling tracks | small queen

“I know from experience that each time has been redeveloped a street. the resistances have been stretched for use and popular membership took over the initial resistances. In all the cities that are transformed. the cycle is repeated, ”wrote Municipal Councilor Marianne Giguère, who worked for more than ten years on Facebook, who worked for the development of a network of cycle paths worthy of the name in Montreal.

She responded to the specious arguments that we still hear too often. like: “It is not everyone who can cycle”, as if pedaling was a privilege reserved for the ecological sores of the plateau. Is to take things upside down, again. What should rather be emphasized is that everyone can drive a car. Many cannot afford it.

These people have the right to ride their bike cycling tracks | small queen without putting their lives in danger.