image cc Antoine Belaieff

I've been invited to participate in a conference organized by the association québécoise du transport et des routes (AQTR), called « La mobilité urbaine à l’heure du paiement électronique ». This non-profit works in collaboration with the Ministère des transports du Québec. The conference is geared towards transportation planners, management, consultants, and designers in the public and private sectors. I've been invited to discuss how electronic payment could help improve mobility for transit users.... apparently I'm meant to speak right before the OPUS marketing team. Gulp.

Being just one individual transit user - and seasonal one at that - I'd like to gather some comments from Spacing contributors and readers. Please share any experiences that have marked you, recommendations, examples of best practices, or obstacles with regareds to electronic payment in our public transit system in the comments below. The comments section will be open for the next 3 weeks.

The AQTR's mandate is province-wide and extends beyond public transit, so think big!

Red means stop; green means go: It's just about the only thing that people across North America can wholeheartedly agree upon. They are such a structuring element of our environment that it's hard to believe that some of our grandparents have been around for longer than our traffic lights.

On November 16th 1927, The Montreal Gazette reported on the first traffic signal in Montreal, in front of the Craig Street Terminal, on what is now the corner of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Urbain.  Each day, 25,000 pedestrians crossed Craig street to enter the terminus during evening rush-hour and 256 street cars would leave the station during between 4:30 and 6:30 pm.

Naturally, juggling pedestrian, automobile and transit traffic in downtown Montreal was a complicated task from the start:

"In this case it is not east-west traffic versus north-south traffic, but street cars versus automobiles," the Gazette reported, "Lights, bells, traffic constables on Craig street, and tramways officials inside the terminus collaborate on the system."

"When street cars are ready to move out, bells ring and two red lights go on, giving traffic officers outside the signal to change the traffic movement. An officer on the sidewalk turns on the Craig street red light, which is also the signal for three traffic constables to stop motor traffic. As every second is valuable and the periods of time for each flow of traffic vary...automatic signals are said to be not feasible"

However, it seems that Westmount was ahead of Montreal in the traffic light department: earlier that year, a Gazette article about attempts at creating uniform traffic laws throughout Canada included a mention of traffic lights on Sherbrooke street:

"At present, red, green and amber are the colors uniformly used in the United States, and these colors are to be retained. These are familiar to Montrealers because of the light signal experiments being conducted in Westmount on Sherbrooke street."

"An endeavor is now being made to have pedestrians observe the light signals just as do the drivers of vehicles...Jay-walkers are almost as bad as jay-drivers."

I guess that when it comes to actually respecting traffic signals, some things have never changed...

A calèche trots along Beaubien, in front of the a bagel shop and a restaurant offering a mix of Hots Dogs, Souvlakis and Italian food. In the coming year, we'll be talking a lot about how food shapes the urban landscape and defines the Montreal experience here on Spacing Montreal.

Happy Holidays!

This week the the Lower Main redevelopment saga is drawing to a sad and quiet close: on December 21st, the Ville-Marie borough ordered the demolition  of 1190 to 1220 boulevard Saint-Laurent. The five buildings, which were constructed between 1889 and 1900, have been left vacant since the Société de Développement Angus purchased them in 2009.

Given that the owner has not maintained the properties or even heated them during the winter, it's no surprise that the centennial buildings have become so dilapidated that they present a risk to public safety and fire hazard. The Monument National has also complained of humidity and leaks creeping in since its neighbouring building was left in a state of abandon.

Facade-in-a-Box

Quebec's Ministry of Culture had to approve the demolition of the buildings, which are in the protection area surrounding the Monument National. Bizarrely, the building which recently housed Épicerie Importations Main - the one which is actually threatening the foundations of the Monument National - will escape demolition. The Ministry has also stated that the facades of 1190-1212 must be conserved - which means numbering the building stones and packing them away so that they can be puzzled back together at some undefined future time. (We have collected photos and history of all the buildings in question in this post)

After public consultations in 2009, the OCPM report highlighted that the SDA's original plan to integrate the facades of centennial buildings into the office tower failed to do justice to a site of "exceptional heritage value." The report spoke of preserving the buildings' original volume as well as function.

But developers are all too aware that, when it comes to heritage preservation time - and entropy - are on their side (and I'm sure City officials are no stranger to the principle either). Thanks to a few seasons of negligence, we are now forced not only to settle for façadism, but we are faced with the prospect of a facade in a box and an empty lot where there were businesses just a few years ago.

A sad and unjust conclusion after all the energy that was poured into saving the historic Main...

Whose fault is it anyways?

I find it interesting to note that, two years after the Quadrilatère Saint-Laurent was put on ice, the Gazette is saying that the OCPM report panned the development while La Presse maintains that Café Cleopatra sank the project when they contested the expropriation. I had been under the impression that the company simply didn't have the financial resources to follow through with their plan. The news cycle turns on, and finger-pointing becomes fact...

Image via la Presse

Right after completing her Masters degree in Architecture, Alex got a job with a local firm that designs those condominiums you always see cropping up in the Plateau, Rosemont and Villeray. We have all seen these new constructions and shuddered, or perhaps just sighed it could be worse. The blocks are neither offensive nor inspiring: they're mediocre at best.

“We’re creating a generation of condos that are really ugly," Alex says,"It’s as bad as the 'eighties.  Frankly, I think it’s going to be worse.”

She runs through a list of all-too-familiar features: cramped juliettes where balconies should be; basement apartments with dug-out cours anglaises surrounded with bars that end up looking like jail cells; the use of different tones of brick to break up the façade; the random insertion of incongruous colours to add a semblance of architectural variety...

As Alex describes it, designing condos is a constant give and take between respecting the building code while maximizing the client's profits that leaves little space for creativity.

Here's an example: the City of Montreal requires 80% of building fronts to be masonry and monotone bricks in taupe matt, grey anthracite and Champlain orange-red are inexpensive (how cheap it feels to reduce the urban landscape to colours in a catalogue). The most an architect can hope to do is to add a splash of coloured plexiglass, and only if the borough's CCU lets it through.

Within the envelope, the constraints are event tighter: Alex describes her workdays as "trying to shove too much into a space that’s inherently too small.”

She recalls debating with a colleague about the ethics of sketching a double-bed into the plans when a queen simply wouldn't fit in the room.

"'If you can’t fit a Queen-sized bed in your apartment, then it’s not an acceptable apartment," Alex insists. But most people don't have much experience reading architectural plans so they don’t necessarily realize what they’re getting.

The developer, on the other hand, knows exactly what they want: "they come to you and say: this is the lot, and we want 8 condos in it." That leaves room for only a couple two-bedroom apartments, and the rest bachelors, all within the footprint of what was once a duplex or triplex apartment block.

"It’s more profitable to sell more condos than to sell more bedrooms,” Alex points out.

There's another catch: buildings under three stories fall within part 9 of the building code, which is more lenient in terms of fire safety regulations. But by sinking in a couple basement suites and adding a mezzanine (which must not exceed a certain percentage of the floorspace), it's possible to squeeze five levels into a building that is officially only three stories high. At least there's a sliver of good news: just this year the city stopped allowing windowless rooms.

And while we may be in favour of urban density, tightly-packed residential units are not synonymous with density of inhabitants.

"All these properties with great potential are being turned into one single type of real estate that is not family friendly: it’s all geared to young professionals without children. They’re not big enough for a growing family and there’s no flexibility in the space," says Alex.

Another thing that she laments is that, with the requirement to transform every square inch of the lot into square-footage of floorspace, there's a tendency to lose the individual entrances, balconies and outdoor staircases that are typical of Montreal's urban landscape, and that create a dialogue between public and private space.

Of course, being an architect, she also dwells on the aesthetics: “It’s all going to look very 2010," she sighs, "....and not in a good way.”

"Projet à développer / 8 condos / plan d'architect et permis de construction inclus," the sign says, indicating that this triplex on Christophe Colomb in Rosemont-Petite-Patrie will be torn down and replaced with a condo development.

With the abundance of churches in Quebec, I'm always surprised to find religious groups occupying non-traditional sites, like this Catholic church in a ground-floor of an old-folks' residence on Christophe-Colomb (Petite-Patrie).

The priest seems to have kept a website for some time, which provides insight into why the parish decided to sell their church to the residence's developers, and how the parish's identity has changed since the church was demolished and they began "celebrating mass around a table."

A quick look at the map of Griffintown (pdf) shows that every other block is newly developed, under-construction, or awaiting authorization for transformation. So it may seem odd that the Sud-Ouest borough is only now putting together an integrated urban plan for the sector. In light of this plan, which will eventually be included in Montreal's updated urban, Montreal's Office de Consultation Publique has been given the mandate to open a discussion on Griffintown's future, and develop a vision for the neighbourhood taking into account issues such as:

• cohabitation of new projects with current use;
• preservation and integration of the neighbourhood's historical and architectural heritage and scale;
• transportation demand management, public transit, and parking;
• the presence of public spaces and green spaces, and local services;
• how development in Griffintown will fit in with other local projects like the Bonaventure redevelopment, the ETS campus, and the Bassins du Nouveau Havre.

Presently, there are a number of competing visions for the neighbourhood : prime real estate near downtown for young professionals, a student area around ETS, a cultural corridor, an opportunity to build more affordable housing for families...

According to Anik Pouliot, the OCPM’s logistics and communications coordinator, that the important thing is to “ensure that there are intentions behind the development, and that it is not just the market that decides.” In short, it looks like the consultation that should have been held five years ago, when about 25 blocks of the industrial area were rezoned to make way for Devimco's  1.3 billion dollar raze-and-rebuild plan, which failed to materialize.

A first online consultation forum

While the OCPM has used online surveys in the past, Pouliot says that «Griffintown selon vous» is the first time that they’ve opened up a true web 2.0-style online discussion forum. The format they have chosen is "a consultation all in pictures": the public is invited to comment on a number of photos of the neighourhood, and may also submit their own photos to spark a discussion.

Pouliot says that the photo-gallery format was chosen so that, even in the midst of winter, Montrealers could discover the neighbourhood - from the views of downtown, to the hidden nooks like the abandoned Wellington tunnel - and then decide for themselves what landmarks and landscapes should be protected, put in the spotlight, or transformed. Since it was zoned industrial for many decades, relatively few people actually live in Griffintown and many Montrealers' knowledge of the neighbourhood is patchy. 

This forum will be open until at least mid-February, and a more traditional live consultation session will be held January 20th. Pouliot says that the comments posted on the site will be analyzed and classified by theme, and then synthesized along with memoirs and verbal comments that the OCPM receives.

 But Pouliot also recognizes the risks of opening up the dialogue online at large. During most public consultations, the OCPM begins with an information session, publishes a number of documents, and then several weeks later allows citizens to register Pouliot says that the opinions that the OPCM receive are usually well-informed. Those who take part in an online forum may not be so meticulous: “there’s a danger of getting all kinds of comments based on rumors, interpretations, emotions,” Pouliot says. But she also hopes that the web will be a way to reach more people in the 18-34 year old age bracket, are less frequently seen at in-person consultations.

So far, Pouliot says that people have mainly come to browse the photos and at least 40 photos have been submitted by the public, but the comments have trickled in more slowly. One weakness of the site, I believe, is that it is impossible to see which photos have sprung a dialogue without clicking through them. I noticed that this photo of the New City Gas Co. had collected a handful of comments - not a bad place to start.

Spacing Readers are known for their informed and critical commenting - so put 'em where they can really make a difference and go drop a line at Griffintown selon vous.

Les macarons et les aimants du métro de Montréal sont finalement en vente sur le web! Vous pouvez les acheter individuellement ou bien commander toute la série. Durant le temps des fêtes, ils seront aussi disponibles dans le réseau Distroboto et à la boutique du musée McCord.

Le design de chaque macaron et aimant est inspiré des motifs originaux des stations du métro montréalais. Jusqu’à présent, 25 stations sont représentées: celles de la ligne orange entre Snowdon et Jean-Talon, celles de la ligne verte entre Lionel-Groulx et Berri-UQAM, ainsi que la station Jean-Drapeau. Les autres suivront sous peu.

Nous vous les suggérons pour le bas de Noël des fans du transport collectif, des Montréalophiles ou des jeunes qui tentent leur premier voyage solo en métro! Portez les couleurs de votre quartier avec fierté et célébrez ainsi l’originalité du réseau de métro de Montréal.

-------

At long last, Spacing Montreal's metro buttons and magnets can be yours! You can now order individual metro buttons and metro magnets of your choice from our website, or get the whole set! This holiday season, they will also be available in the Distroboto network of art-vending machines, as well as at the McCord Museum's gift shop.

Each button or magnet is inspired by the original bricks, tiles, or designs of the metro platforms. So far, 25 stations are available: the orange line between Snowdon and Jean-Talon, and the green line stations between Lionel-Groulx and Berri-UQAM, as well as Jean-Drapeau station. Fear not, the rest of the green line is on the way soon, with other stations to follow!

Get'em as stocking stuffers for the transit-nerd in your life, the Montrealphile, the avid Spacing Montreal reader, or the kid who's embarking on their first solo metro journey! Wear your neighbourhood colours with pride, and celebrate the decades of creativity that has been poured into Montreal's metro design!

Thanks to 24-heures for scooping us and forcing us to release these without any any further delay!

Readying to replace the winding staircase in front of a triplex on de la Roche.

Montreal’s heritage protection policy requires homeowners to restore staircases according to their original characteristics, even if it sometimes means twisting the building code a little. I wrote more about Montreal's iconic staircases here.

Ateliers:

Atelier A (10 h à 10h30) :  Tout ce que vous avez toujours voulu savoir à propos des demandes d’accès à l’information, mais que vous n’osiez jamais demander
Animé par Linda Gyulai, journaliste des affaires civiques de la Gazette de Montréal

Atelier B (11 h à 11h30) : Les données! À quoi ça sert?
Animé par Sébastien Pierre, co-fondateur de Montréal Ouvert et fondateur de FFunction

Atelier C (13h30 à 14h00) : Introduction à la visualisation de données
Animé par Sébastien Pierre, co-fondateur de Montréal Ouvert fondateur de FFunction

L’événement aura lieu Samedi le 19 novembre, de 9h30 - 16h dans un local de la ville, au 801 rue Brennan.

sont tous de grands usagers de données ouvertes et leur participation démontre l’importance croissante des données pour le métier de journalisme.S’il vous plaît, allez visiter la page d’inscription dès maintenant! Au plaisir de vous voir à notre événement. Café et dîner servi à prix modeste.

Ateliers

Atelier A (10 h à 10h30) :  Tout ce que vous avez toujours voulu savoir à propos des demandes d’accès à l’information, mais que vous n’osiez jamais demander
Animé par Linda Gyulai, journaliste des affaires civiques de la Gazette de Montréal

Atelier B (11 h à 11h30) : Les données! À quoi ça sert?
Animé par Sébastien Pierre, co-fondateur de Montréal Ouvert et fondateur de FFunction

Atelier C (13h30 à 14h00) : Introduction à la visualisation de données
Animé par Sébastien Pierre, co-fondateur de Montréal Ouvert fondateur de FFunction

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MontrealOuvert n'a aucune association avec la ville de Montréal. Montreal Ouvert.net has no affiliation with the city of Montreal.

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photo by mbeachy

It was once self-evident that "eyes on the street" in dense urban neighbourhoods would lower crime and vandalism because they belonged to concerned citizens who were prepared to intervene when things got unruly.  Yet, while downtown Montreal is not short of eyes, and while some people will brave a call to 911 if they witness a full-out brawl or break-in, many of us are unwilling to speak up in other, less urgent instances when a simple word could be enough to curb bad behaviour.

Is it because tolerance has been lauded as the greatest virtue in our society that people hesitate to intervene?

I have watched a child deliberately pound the glass out of a car window with a rock, and tolerated this behaviour. I have seen a woman place her laptop on the seat of a 105 bus during rush-hour, while fifty people stood crammed aboard and the driver left passengers behind at the bus stop, and every single one of us tolerated it.

Why, I wonder, in times like these, do I feel the compulsion to mind my own business?

If I had a living grandmother, I would ask her the appropriate way to discipline a stranger's child on the street, but I do not, and I have been hardpressed to find role models in this matter. Still, I've tried to forge ahead in baby steps.

This summer, I biked by a drunk woman in the Concordia ghetto who was yelling at a group of students, "go back to your country," and I mumbled,  "hey, cut that out," though I doubt anyone heard.

Then, last week, I saw a young man scrawl a tag in black marker in the back of a bus. Without thinking, I tapped him on the knee to get his attention and told him not to.  I'm not sure which one of us was shocked more by this reflex.

"I don't talk to strangers!" he said defensively, clearly unsettled by this unbidden contact.

"Well then why are you writing on other people's stuff?" I asked,  forced at last to find my voice.

"The bus belongs to the City. The City sucks," he retorted.

I don't know whether it was just your typical teenager's distrust of authority, or whether he came to this conclusion from reading newspaper headlines, or through a more personal experience (working in high schools in the Sud-Ouest, I've heard enough stories of black teenagers being harrassed and ticketed for innocent infractions like loitering at the metro station or hanging in parks after hours).

None-the-less, I argued back: "the City sucks because they don't have the money to do any better. It won't help if they have to pay to clean up stuff like this."

But as we pulled into the metro station, he and his friend defiantly threw up two more tags, and what could I possibly say to that?

Do you have any words of wisdom that have worked in instances like these? Can you, perhaps, ask your grandparents on my behalf?

Zoom sur Square Victoria, le 5 novembre, 2011. Plus de photos ici.

For just over a year, Montréal Ouvert has been pressuring the city to provide data to citizens that is readable by a computer program, centralized in a permanent location, and licenced in a way that allows other to use it. They envision that this data can be incorporated into interactive websites, social media, and iPhone applications that will in turn make it more accessible and useful to citizens.

Last October 27th, the city launched its first platform for open data. Montréal Ouvert is happy with the announcement and have highlighted the contribution of the elected officials and city employees who moved relatively quickly to make data accessible.

"It has a good licence, though not perfect, and they have released some interesting data sets," says Jonathan Brun, co-founder of Montréal Ouvert, "The real test will be to see if they continue to roll out data sets over the next 6 months, something they have promised to do. "

At its launch, the site includes the following data sets:

• 2006 directory of statistics for the agglomeration of Montreal
• Photographic archives (110 photos)
• Boundaries of the borough territories
• Location of fire stations, police stations, emergency centres, air conditioned public spaces, and water access points
• Distribution of votes, electoral stations and repartition of ridings by address for the 2009 municipal election
• Info-travaux: traffic obstructions related to work on roads, sewers and acqueducts
• Location and schedules of skating rinks
• Location of winter ports and leisure sites
• Ski conditions in nature parks
• Number of trips on bike paths
• City support for festivals and cultural events

Please keep us posted of any new tools that come out from this data set. We are always excited to learn about new ways that Montrealers are interacting with the city, and Montréal Ouvert is eager to show the city the added value that Open data can bring citizens.

Spacing Montreal has never thought of holding a Halloween costume contest but if we did, I'm betting Ian Langohr would take home the prize with "Factory Face," a reproduction of the Canada Malting Plant in mask form.

"I have been fascinated by the old maltage plant since moving to St. Henri in 2009. I find it surrealistic in itself, as it sort of resembles a bizarre collage of industrial buildings. The holes, rust, graffiti and general decaying nature just add to the charm," he writes.

Langohr created the mask from bits of plastic, rubber and metal found on the streets or in the dark corners of Saint-Henri hardware stores, using techniques he picked up working in a mascot production company. Check out the minute details captured in the creation on Langohr's website.

"I think wearing it around Atwater market or to a DJ night at the St. Ambroise Brewery would be appropriate," Langohr adds.

Oh, and on that note, next year we definitely should hold a Montreal-themed Halloween costume contest. Consider this your advance warning.

Vous trouverez art, antiquités, vélos, et toujours un sapin de Noel bien décoré chez Jean-Pierre Rioux, coin des Érables et Gilford.

Does the imaginary need a space in which to exist?

Every once in a while, to my great pleasure, a post on Spacing Montreal develops a life of its own. Take a look at Christopher DeWolf's post about a unique building in Snowdon which, for the past four years, has been steadily collecting accounts from people who grew up in the neighbourhood (follow the link and scroll down to the comments section). Names, memories, and contact info are swapped as the comments section becomes a lively - if virtual - reunion among people whose experiences have overlapped in space if not necessarily in time.

Should the memory of a place necessarily be a part of its current design?

A 2009 post about the Faubourg à m'lasse has also continued to collect souvenirs (and even a poem) from those who were born and raised in that neighbourhood. Today, the impenetrable Radio-Canada tower and its vast, sterile parkinglot offer no hint of the 778 homes, 12 stores, 13 restaurants, 8 garages, and 20 factories that once clustered there.  The memories forged in this bustling, workingclass neighourhood remain for now, but with no anchor-points in the physical world, and no landmarks to orient those of us who never knew the place, their existence is tenuous.

"Toute mon enfance a disparu avec la démolition du quadrilatère Fullum/Morin/Emmet/Archambault," wrote Edmond Martel in the comments.

Do ghosts get a say?

On a more chilling note, Guillaume Saint-Jean's montage of the Orphelinat Notre-dame-de-liesse has drawn comments from people still raw from the traumas experienced in this orphanage.

"Que cet édifice reste vide mais reste le monument des souffrances des orphelins de Duplessis," commented Nicole, herself a Duplessis orphan.

"J'espère qu'un jour quelqu'un va démolir cet immeuble car cet endroit est hantée est que des mauvaises souvenir," replies another commentator, after describing an encouter with a ghost on the site.

Does demolishing the building exorcise the ghosts of this disgraceful past or does it deny the trauma endured there?

How can we evoke the memory of a place without either trivializing it nor freezing it in time?

What are your reactions to these questions? What responsability - if any - do planners and design professionals have towards the memories embodied in the landscape?

2-22 Sainte-Catherine, en construction le 30 Septembre 2011

17h-18h : Atelier d'expérimentation cartographique et de création.
Cet atelier de création cartographique propose de réfléchir aux usages et réappropriations de l'emprise ferroviaire. À partir de leur propre expérience du lieu, les participants seront invités à représenter sur une carte leurs chemins de traverse, leurs détours et leurs dérives autour de la voie ferrée. Les cartes créées feront partie d'une exposition organisée par la galerie Articule à l'automne. Venez participer à la mobilisation et partager votre expérience du lieu de manière créative!

En partenariat avec : galerie Articule, cabinet d'architecture Rayside-Labossière, Comité citoyen du Mile End, Les Amis du Champ des Possibles.

18h : Projection À la track !

Projection multimédia sur l'univers visuel et sonore de la track: sélection de photos, dessins, vidéos, films, animations et créations sonores illustrant la réalité, l'insolite, la vie quotidienne, les rencontres, l’atmosphère et la poésie de la voie ferrée et ses alentours. En partenariat avec : Pop Montréal, Ubisoft, Les Amis du Champ des Possibles.

10h00-12h30: experience the QDS as never before, by meeting some of the characters who inhabit and shape the Quartier des spectacles: Pierre Dénommé from Sentier Urbain who gardens with street kids on the Corner of Ste-Catherine and de Bouillon, Éric Paradis, of Club Sin and Save-the-Main fame, and Keith Schmidt, priest of the red roof church across from Place des Arts. The tour will also include in-situ poetry, music and lunch!

13h30: Join us at Cabaret Cléopatre to meet some of people who have been professionally involved in conceptualizing, designing and occupying the Quartier des spectacles: Réal Lestage (QDS architect), André Carpentier, Marie Belzil, Pascal Lefebvre, Muriel de Zangroniz, André Dudemaine, and Clément Demers. The afternoon will include a panel discussion and a "fishbowl", during which all participants will be welcome to take a seat on the panel, followed by cocktails at Cléos.

The event will be mostly in French, but English interventions are welcome.

WHEN: Friday September 30th, 10am-5pm

WHERE: Meet at Place de la Paix at 10am

COST: Participation is free but places are limited and regiatration is required.

To register, email stripteaseqds@gmail.com or call 514.868.6691

Fortunately, Eco-Counter is tallying the true number of bicycle trips on ten of Montreal's most important bike paths. At conferences he attends, Rheault says, local engineers will  guess that a bike path like de Maisonneuve is used by 80-800 cyclists per day when in fact Eco-Counter's sensors have recorded up to 8000 trips on a sunny weekday (on a rainy day there will still be around 4000 trips).

Last year, McGill University analyzed data from five of Eco-Counter's sensors and concluded that bicycle trips in Montreal had increased 35-40% between 2008 and 2010 (Gazette article). Rheault shared some of this year's findings with Spacing Montreal.

Cycle trips up 125% on Laurier Avenue in 2011

When the Plateau Mont-Royal borough introduced two bike lanes on Laurier Avenue and reduced motorized traffic to a single lane, the number of cyclists to use this route more than doubled.  In May 2011, eco-counter recorded an average of 980 cyclists per day on Laurier Ave. After correcting for differences in the season, they calculated an average of 2200 trips per day after the bike lanes were introduced, a 125% increase!  (The seasonal correction factor is calculated from hourly, daily, and monthly fluctuations in usage, as well as fluctuations due to weather conditions, from all 10 bicycle counters in Montreal).

While this increase probably does not represent new cyclists on the streets, it is interesting to note that the number of bikes on Laurier Ave is now approaching the number of cars on Laurier before the modifications were made (between 2000-4000 car trips per day). In this light, it does not seem so extreme to give half the street over to cyclists!

Bike lanes now take up half of Laurier Avenue... and there are as many cyclists as cars on the road

Rheault also says preliminary studies have shown a 10% increase in bicycle trips on the Boyer bike path in Petite Patrie between 2010 and 2011. He attributes this increase to the construction of a separated bike path on Christophe Colomb that provides a safer and more comfortable way to cross the CP tracks.

Since a separated bike path was built under the CP tracks, bike trips have increased 10% on Boyer in Petite Patrie

And while de Maisonneuve remains the busiest bike path in the city, Rheault says that they have recorded as many as 300 bike trips within 15 minutes on Milton street near University.  Ideally, he says this kind of information should affect how the cycling network is designed in particular locations.

Helping cyclists gain visibility on city streets

Bicycle Sensors by Eco-Counter http://www.eco-counter.com/

Even after learning where eco-counter's sensors were located* and what to look for, I barely noticed the thin, diamond-shaped marks in the bike path (you can spot one in the photo at the top of the post). But each time that a pair of bike wheels cross the loop, they interrupt an electromagnetic field and the signal is transmitted to a nearby sensor and recording device. Though the technology is developed by Eco-counter, they are owned, installed and maintained by the City of Montreal. Once a month, a City worker downloads the information and sends it to researchers at Eco-counter and McGill university who crunch the numbers.

Ottawa also recently installed five bicycle counters, and will be putting in another three very soon. But they have created an even more dynamic system, where sensors are hooked up to a modem that transmits the bike-tally on a daily basis.  According to Rheault, transmitting data by modem is cost effective compared to manually downloading it. More importantly, the data becomes easily accessible to the public, so anyone can check how many people have cycled Ottawa's Laurier path on a given day.

This fall, Ottawa is taking it up another notch by installing a bicycle barometer which will publicly display the real-time bicycle count in a public place.  Should be a great antidote to drivers who complain that bike paths are underused: just because cyclists aren't in gridlock, it doesn't mean we aren't using the streets!

*The ten eco-counter sensors are currently located on Berri, de Maisonneuve (2 locations), Saint-Urbain, Bréboeuf, Rachel, Parc south of Duluth, Pierre Dupuys (measuring bikes heading to the Jacques Quartier bridge), Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Christophe-Colomb and Univeristy.