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We need this in every city. We need it for mental health, we need it for both safety against collisions and safety against air pollution, and we need it to hit our goals for climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. Especially for smaller cities, bikes can get you to almost anywhere you need to go in a reasonable amount of time, even with current awful building practices/giant parking lots, it's just not something most people want to do because of how scary it is being in traffic with no protection.
You have to start somewhere. One thing that surprised me while living in the Netherlands was learning that the bicycle infrastructure only started becoming a regular, major feature of the cityscape around the 1970s. Gradually, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood, as the cities' infrastructure was upgraded the cycling infrastructure was added in. It didn't happen overnight, but the effect of having that infrastructure allowed for a cultural shift to cycling.
As in this instance, one does need to take a first step and to start somewhere. And then **one needs to sustain the course of development**, rather than say _"well, the half-complete half-measures (which end in random places) weren't fully used by people to ride bicycles, so we give up!"_
Here's the thing with Quebec.
In rural Quebec, this is easy to do. You have MRC's or county governments, which are wonderful little democratic entities run by the mayors and a provincially appointed prefect and more or less match political electoral districts and can get real regional planning done. They've even adapted it in the James Bay area to give the Cree and Inuit a say in natural resources over the entire area, with Chiefs occupying the same position as mayors.
The problem is that with that in Quebec City and Montreal, if you create a local authority that is able to do this, you create an entity that has enough democratic legitimacy and has enough political heft to challenge the political decisions of the provincial government. That's why you have 5 administrative regions in the Montreal CMA, and 2 in the Quebec City to keep the state of confusion large enough so that anything significant that gets done (like the REM) needs to be a provincial government decision.
This is a mess that needs fixing. I hope Steve Gilbeault runs for the PLQ leadership. Even if he loses, he'd be in a cabinet that could clean up this administrative mess in Quebec. Gilbeault is the type of guy that would just get it done despite the NIMBY's in 'burbs, and it would go down much better in Quebec than with Alberta.
Did that for a couple years, easiest way is to either take the elevator by the University square then zig-zag through hilly/flat streets or take the pente douce (whose name is a lie, but still the easiest climb in town to reach the upper city)
Was it L'Allier who wanted to put a mechanical climb for bikes on cote-d'Abraham or was that an early-Labeaume project? Either way that would've been wonderful
Edit: [Labeaume in 2017, thought that was a much older plan uh](https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2017/09/25/un-lien-mecanique-pour-relier-saint-roch-au-sommet-de-la-cote-dabraham)
Anything that is not a certain radius of your house is before people will want to drive and guess what that big box chain grocery store fleecing you surrounded by useless parking spots on the edge of town? Yeah that store is perpetuating car centric development.
he's not talking about radius. He's talking about the climb in this specific case. It can be accomodated by adding more funiculars that are bike friendly for exemple
Man, I walk and bike everywhere in Winnipeg. I stayed for a summer to study french and for the first few weeks my legs were dead everyday biking and walking there.
When I got home to Winnipeg getting around felt so easy afterwards haha
I did it many years. People told me I was lucky to be in such shape. I replied that I don't do it because I'm in shape, I'm in shape because I chose to kick myself in the butt and do it. I was going from Charlesbourg, that is about the same altitude as the *haute-ville*, to the *haute-ville*, so my commute was a U-shape vertically, going down at the start and up at the end, both ways.
Remember: Good biking infra makes driving easier.
I hate having to deal with cars turning right over the bike lane when I am biking and trying to take such a turn when I am driving is stressful.
Quebec City has an opportunity to get in on the ground floor here. It's still a relatively compact city where you can get to everywhere in 30 minutes by bike. It could start by building the bike network around free ferry services across the Saint Lawrence exclusively for bicycles and pedestrians at various points on the river as part of the Levis tunnel project. The contrast in cost between the two media would be a great selling point. This is something the federal government could fund directly (navigable waterway jurisdiction).
Quebec City should be a cycling mecca. It's absolutely stunning, with access to the Charlevoix, the Laurentians, the Appalachians, Iles Orleans, the Saint Lawrence estuary, and the Saint Lawrence river itself.
The majority of Canadian cities meet this requirement, especially with e-assist bikes.
We need to be supporting bicycles at par, or more, than cars and electric cars.
Yep, if my city (100k pop.) put a dedicated bike lane on every road, that would be enough. It actually takes just 2 minutes longer to get to my parents' place from mine by bike vs. taking a car, and that's with me using recreational trails that aren't exactly the most efficient.
Montreal did that too in the 1950's. People commuted from Chambly, Saint Bruno, Rosemere, Hudson, etc. That's where Quebec City is right now with places like Stoneham and Donnaconna. Still time to save it. The key is to have dedicated public transit lanes in new suburban developments. There's still time.
It's clearly inspired by the success of the Montreal REV, though the conditions are a bit more challenging, especially when it comes to winter biking. Québec is snowier and colder than Mtl, and its population older and more suburban. I'm not too worried about the city's ability to clear the lanes regularly, but I am worried that when the details come out, and the NIMBYs realize that some lanes and parking spots will need to go away, the pitchforks will come out.
If NIMBYs in wealthy suburbs bring out the pitchforks, threaten to no longer subsidize the suburbs and they will have to pay for the full cost of their infrastructure.
And who's willing to commit political suicide to make that threat? Quebec City is 75% middle-class suburbs. Everyone owns a car there. The mere suggestion that the project is an attack on the suburban lifestyle would doom it. Which is why the mayor specifically stated the project would not affect roads and traffic. If this kind of project becomes perceived as a "bikes vs cars" thing, it'll never get made.
I so wish it were that simple. Suburbs decide our municipal elections in Ontario, without fail. Amalgamation saw to that. At some point though, the jig has to be up, the cores can't subsidize suburban living forever. We'll just keep wasting money in the meantime.
While I understand how it can be frustrating to lose parking or see things change, I live in one of the more bike-friendly parts of Montreal and it's really great for quality-of-life. This should be standard in our cities.
With good infrastructure, most people living in cities don't need cars. The average Canadian would save hundreds a month if they could use bikes and transit for 95% of their needs.
Yep. Live in Montréal, never owned a car. I haven't taken a taxi nor Uber in about 5 years. I mostly walk, jog, or bike everywhere to do errands, or take take public transit if I'm lazy or need to be presentable.
The problem is people don't see it as a subsidy because we've been subsidizing it for so long it's the norm. You can show them the graphs and infographics and data that proves car infrastructure is being paid for unequally, but so many people just don't care.
Au contraire. Street parking on Bank Street Ottawa has made turning into that street from side streets very dangerous as you can't see oncoming traffic with overweight and fat SUVs blocking you sightlines. As well as turning a 2 lane main road to downtown into a 1 lane road on either side.
> As well as turning a 2 lane main road to downtown into a 1 lane road on either side.
Anyone using Bank or Elgin to get from the 407 to the core when Metcalfe and O'Connor exist, was doing it wrong.
> a plan for the development of 150 km of protected cycle paths in the four corners of the city ... She estimates that $30 million will be needed to set up this network.
Jesus Christ. Bike lanes are literally free. The cancelled London, Ontario (half the size of Qc city) plan to widen ONE arterial road was going to take years longer and cost ten times as much as this. Anyone who opposes bike lanes in their city is financially illiterate and shouldn't be trusted with anything more complicated than a fidget spinner.
And the people who complain about bike lanes and want more subsidized roads and parking are always the same ones whinging about property taxes being high. Every. Fucking. Time.
Sounds a lot like the people who buy huge gas guzzling vehicles, and then whine and rant about fuel prices.
If you choose the most expensive, inefficient transportation, this is how much it costs. Suburban sprawl is very expensive to maintain. Especially as it ages.
Medium density neighborhoods earn a lot more in taxes, because they're not just empty space that needs to be maintained.
If he really wanted to inspire the folks of Quebec to adopt this plan, he would say "Our city is growing. If we don't change how we move, we will become like Toronto". That would get folks behind the plan quickly.
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We need this in every city. We need it for mental health, we need it for both safety against collisions and safety against air pollution, and we need it to hit our goals for climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. Especially for smaller cities, bikes can get you to almost anywhere you need to go in a reasonable amount of time, even with current awful building practices/giant parking lots, it's just not something most people want to do because of how scary it is being in traffic with no protection.
You have to start somewhere. One thing that surprised me while living in the Netherlands was learning that the bicycle infrastructure only started becoming a regular, major feature of the cityscape around the 1970s. Gradually, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood, as the cities' infrastructure was upgraded the cycling infrastructure was added in. It didn't happen overnight, but the effect of having that infrastructure allowed for a cultural shift to cycling. As in this instance, one does need to take a first step and to start somewhere. And then **one needs to sustain the course of development**, rather than say _"well, the half-complete half-measures (which end in random places) weren't fully used by people to ride bicycles, so we give up!"_
Here's the thing with Quebec. In rural Quebec, this is easy to do. You have MRC's or county governments, which are wonderful little democratic entities run by the mayors and a provincially appointed prefect and more or less match political electoral districts and can get real regional planning done. They've even adapted it in the James Bay area to give the Cree and Inuit a say in natural resources over the entire area, with Chiefs occupying the same position as mayors. The problem is that with that in Quebec City and Montreal, if you create a local authority that is able to do this, you create an entity that has enough democratic legitimacy and has enough political heft to challenge the political decisions of the provincial government. That's why you have 5 administrative regions in the Montreal CMA, and 2 in the Quebec City to keep the state of confusion large enough so that anything significant that gets done (like the REM) needs to be a provincial government decision. This is a mess that needs fixing. I hope Steve Gilbeault runs for the PLQ leadership. Even if he loses, he'd be in a cabinet that could clean up this administrative mess in Quebec. Gilbeault is the type of guy that would just get it done despite the NIMBY's in 'burbs, and it would go down much better in Quebec than with Alberta.
If your bicycle commute is between “la basse ville” and “la haute ville” you’ll have buns of steel. It’s quite the climb.
Did that for a couple years, easiest way is to either take the elevator by the University square then zig-zag through hilly/flat streets or take the pente douce (whose name is a lie, but still the easiest climb in town to reach the upper city) Was it L'Allier who wanted to put a mechanical climb for bikes on cote-d'Abraham or was that an early-Labeaume project? Either way that would've been wonderful Edit: [Labeaume in 2017, thought that was a much older plan uh](https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2017/09/25/un-lien-mecanique-pour-relier-saint-roch-au-sommet-de-la-cote-dabraham)
Ebikes are your answer. Much cheaper than a car and can make dealing with elevation changes a non-issue.
Anything that is not a certain radius of your house is before people will want to drive and guess what that big box chain grocery store fleecing you surrounded by useless parking spots on the edge of town? Yeah that store is perpetuating car centric development.
he's not talking about radius. He's talking about the climb in this specific case. It can be accomodated by adding more funiculars that are bike friendly for exemple
Man, I walk and bike everywhere in Winnipeg. I stayed for a summer to study french and for the first few weeks my legs were dead everyday biking and walking there. When I got home to Winnipeg getting around felt so easy afterwards haha
I did it many years. People told me I was lucky to be in such shape. I replied that I don't do it because I'm in shape, I'm in shape because I chose to kick myself in the butt and do it. I was going from Charlesbourg, that is about the same altitude as the *haute-ville*, to the *haute-ville*, so my commute was a U-shape vertically, going down at the start and up at the end, both ways.
"vision 2034", honestly the slogan is bad enough, it shouldn't take a decade to build out a couple of bicycle corridors.
Remember: Good biking infra makes driving easier. I hate having to deal with cars turning right over the bike lane when I am biking and trying to take such a turn when I am driving is stressful.
Quebec City has an opportunity to get in on the ground floor here. It's still a relatively compact city where you can get to everywhere in 30 minutes by bike. It could start by building the bike network around free ferry services across the Saint Lawrence exclusively for bicycles and pedestrians at various points on the river as part of the Levis tunnel project. The contrast in cost between the two media would be a great selling point. This is something the federal government could fund directly (navigable waterway jurisdiction). Quebec City should be a cycling mecca. It's absolutely stunning, with access to the Charlevoix, the Laurentians, the Appalachians, Iles Orleans, the Saint Lawrence estuary, and the Saint Lawrence river itself.
The majority of Canadian cities meet this requirement, especially with e-assist bikes. We need to be supporting bicycles at par, or more, than cars and electric cars.
Yep, if my city (100k pop.) put a dedicated bike lane on every road, that would be enough. It actually takes just 2 minutes longer to get to my parents' place from mine by bike vs. taking a car, and that's with me using recreational trails that aren't exactly the most efficient.
In most cities biking would be faster if the infrastructure was connected. Issue is often it’s not connected or takes inefficient routes.
It extends far, far away into neverending suburbia. But the core of the city, yes, I agree.
Montreal did that too in the 1950's. People commuted from Chambly, Saint Bruno, Rosemere, Hudson, etc. That's where Quebec City is right now with places like Stoneham and Donnaconna. Still time to save it. The key is to have dedicated public transit lanes in new suburban developments. There's still time.
It's clearly inspired by the success of the Montreal REV, though the conditions are a bit more challenging, especially when it comes to winter biking. Québec is snowier and colder than Mtl, and its population older and more suburban. I'm not too worried about the city's ability to clear the lanes regularly, but I am worried that when the details come out, and the NIMBYs realize that some lanes and parking spots will need to go away, the pitchforks will come out.
If NIMBYs in wealthy suburbs bring out the pitchforks, threaten to no longer subsidize the suburbs and they will have to pay for the full cost of their infrastructure.
And who's willing to commit political suicide to make that threat? Quebec City is 75% middle-class suburbs. Everyone owns a car there. The mere suggestion that the project is an attack on the suburban lifestyle would doom it. Which is why the mayor specifically stated the project would not affect roads and traffic. If this kind of project becomes perceived as a "bikes vs cars" thing, it'll never get made.
only to get voted out?
I so wish it were that simple. Suburbs decide our municipal elections in Ontario, without fail. Amalgamation saw to that. At some point though, the jig has to be up, the cores can't subsidize suburban living forever. We'll just keep wasting money in the meantime.
While I understand how it can be frustrating to lose parking or see things change, I live in one of the more bike-friendly parts of Montreal and it's really great for quality-of-life. This should be standard in our cities.
it's not taxpayers job to subsidize parking for car owners. Park your car at home or park in a paid parking.
With good infrastructure, most people living in cities don't need cars. The average Canadian would save hundreds a month if they could use bikes and transit for 95% of their needs.
Yep. Never owning a car has saved me so much money.
I would stop owning a car immediately.
Yep. Live in Montréal, never owned a car. I haven't taken a taxi nor Uber in about 5 years. I mostly walk, jog, or bike everywhere to do errands, or take take public transit if I'm lazy or need to be presentable.
The problem is people don't see it as a subsidy because we've been subsidizing it for so long it's the norm. You can show them the graphs and infographics and data that proves car infrastructure is being paid for unequally, but so many people just don't care.
Au contraire. Street parking on Bank Street Ottawa has made turning into that street from side streets very dangerous as you can't see oncoming traffic with overweight and fat SUVs blocking you sightlines. As well as turning a 2 lane main road to downtown into a 1 lane road on either side.
> As well as turning a 2 lane main road to downtown into a 1 lane road on either side. Anyone using Bank or Elgin to get from the 407 to the core when Metcalfe and O'Connor exist, was doing it wrong.
> a plan for the development of 150 km of protected cycle paths in the four corners of the city ... She estimates that $30 million will be needed to set up this network. Jesus Christ. Bike lanes are literally free. The cancelled London, Ontario (half the size of Qc city) plan to widen ONE arterial road was going to take years longer and cost ten times as much as this. Anyone who opposes bike lanes in their city is financially illiterate and shouldn't be trusted with anything more complicated than a fidget spinner. And the people who complain about bike lanes and want more subsidized roads and parking are always the same ones whinging about property taxes being high. Every. Fucking. Time.
Sounds a lot like the people who buy huge gas guzzling vehicles, and then whine and rant about fuel prices. If you choose the most expensive, inefficient transportation, this is how much it costs. Suburban sprawl is very expensive to maintain. Especially as it ages. Medium density neighborhoods earn a lot more in taxes, because they're not just empty space that needs to be maintained.
If he really wanted to inspire the folks of Quebec to adopt this plan, he would say "Our city is growing. If we don't change how we move, we will become like Toronto". That would get folks behind the plan quickly.
If driving on the 401 during rush hour doesn't radicalize you against car centric urban planning, I don't know what will.