It is more necessary to double the cycle infrastructure of the City of Montreal to meet demand, according to a new study by McGill University.
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Currently, cycle infrastructure, such as cycle paths and Bixi stations, occupy 2% of Montreal public routes. It would not be sufficient in relation to demand, according to the study published on Monday.
“The results reveal a blatant imbalance: cars occupy almost 98% of traffic lanes, while they only represent 95% of travel. Micromobility-which puts in particular on bikes, electric bikes and scooters-explains the remaining 5%, except that it barely monopolizes the road, “it is said.
To reach this conclusion, the research team has calculated the area devoted to micromobility on the entire Montreal road network compared to the data on the population movement habits.
The imbalance is even greater in certain districts, such as the Plateau-Mont-Royal, where 22% of the trips fall under micromobility, but that the infrastructures dedicated to it occupy less than 5% of the public roads, it is said in the report.
Notable impacts
By doubling the space dedicated to mobility, we observed “important gains for cyclists”, and which would be “without significant impact on the space reserved for cars”.
In all the models carried out by the research team, more than 90% of the public routes in all the districts would remain for motorists.
“The micromobility infrastructure occupies only a tiny portion of the road,” recalls Daniel Romm, a doctoral student in the geography department of McGill University and the main study of the study. There is enough space available for these infrastructure without the relative space allocated to cars having to be amputated. ”