Scenes from a Transportation Evolution
Office parking for the 21st century?
Something is amiss in the fine city of Montreal. Having lived abroad for the better part of the past five years, the last few times I have returned home for a visit I’ve noticed the growing presence of cyclists on the streets. With my most recent and somewhat more permanent return to the Montrealer fold, I’ve been taking long walks around town to reacquaint myself with the place and its ways. One thing I’ve noticed on these expeditions is not only are their more bikers on the streets, but they are now being accommodated as never before- although evidently the bar was set extremely low given this is a North American city. Bike parking is appearing in new projects, public spaces and outside office buildings; plans for a major expansion of the city’s bike paths, potentially cutting through the heart of the downtown core, are in the works. City planning, it would seem, is finally recognizing the real needs of cyclists (and pedestrians) in an urban world so traditionally hell-bent on accommodating the private automobile.
Growing spaces for pedestrians and cyclists
And yet it is probably best not to get too carried away with hope quite yet. These changes are evidence of a slow and painful evolution rather than a true revolution in how we understand the shape and function of our cities. With the convergence of environmental worries, traffic gridlock and a population that is increasingly sedentary and out of shape, the encouragement of cycling in dense urban cores makes perfect sense. Yet how much of our urban space is truly reoriented to prioritize bicycles (let alone people) as opposed to motor vehicles depends on the extent to which we can temper our continued love affair for the automobile. While bike infrastructure sprouts up as part of Montreal’s recent mini-construction boom, is this nothing more than a half-hearted effort to appear environmentally enlightened?
The truth is that biking in an urban centre such as Montreal won’t reach critical mass until more people feel that it is a safe and enjoyable experience. Away from the bike paths, cycling on the majority of this city’s streets would appear to remain a rather stressful and even dangerous experience, unless you enjoy getting sandwiched between a bus, an SUV and a row of parked cars with a scant foot or two to spare. Bikes have yet to be truly accepted as part of the urban fabric, seen instead as barely tolerated intruders on the sacrosanct domain of motor vehicles. We’ve been so ingrained our whole lives to understand cars as the only normal mode of transportation (everything else been reserved for history, the park or poorer countries), that it will probably quite some time before many of us accept that, in many instances, cycling just makes more sense. Of course, it doesn’t help that so many cyclists brazenly disregard the rules of the road and fly through stop signals as if these don’t apply to them. This does nothing but foster further conflict with drivers and perpetuates the notion that bikes are somehow ‘outside’ the normal context of city streets.
I am heartened by the growing presence of bikes on Montreal’s streets, and applaud the greater attention paid to their accommodation in the urban core. However, I am not so naive to believe that the automobile is anything less than the still undisputed king of the pavement. While public places in hip urban neighbourhoods win awards for environmental design, the mainstream mass of our cities sprawl ever further with road construction and soulless car-centered development. It’s 20% change, 80% business as usual. And until we manage to break that association, embedded in so many of our minds, between the automobile and the idea of convenience- which persists so strongly despite a growing disconnect with the reality of traffic jams and air pollution - the bicycle is in danger of remaining a niche market when it should instead be gaining mainstream, even prominent, status in urban transportation. Ultimately, the evolution of urban transportation most take place in our minds as much as on our streets.
Business as usual, circa 6pm