Dear Pedestrians in answer to Jazz

My lil sister Jazz wrote a blog today about cyclists being a menace for pedestrians. So seeing as I'm an avid cyclist I thought I would share my thoughts about pedestrians.

Dear Pedestrians,

Most cities in the world have specially made places for pedestrians to walk on. These special paths should be only for you, dear pedestrian, bikes should not ride on them and cars even less so. They belong exclusively to you... They are called sidewalks. Now cities are also building bike paths. These may look like super wide sidewalks but they are not. They are made for bikes and bikes travel quite a bit faster than you do and cyclists just hate having to dodge around you as you stroll along, without a care in the world. How do you know if it is a bike path? Well that should be easy, there are usually big yellow signs with a black bicycle on it and sometimes there is a big white bike painted on the ground. Is there a little black pedestrian on a yellow sign or a little white man painted on the path? Nope... well then you sure as hell ain't on a sidewalk... Another clue should be the yellow line painted in the middle, very much like a highway.  (see examples below)
Now I really don't mind if you want to get yourself killed, but if that is your fondest wish, go for a walk on the highway with the cars because hitting you at 30 km/hr will really warp my front wheel and lead to my having serious bumps and scrapes. Also please remember, that baby carriages do not qualify as bikes, neither does your 3 year old on his tricycle qualify you to be walking along the bike path. 
A concerned cyclist...

Bike path

Sidewalk

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's back to work we go.

Well summer is officially over and it's time to get back to the classroom. Mind you, I rather like my job and enjoy doing it, so it isn't too painful. We also have a new beloved leader who seems to be very dynamic and on top of things. Last year's model was, unfortunately for us, less than optimal, which made my job a lot harder to do, nuff said.

So what did I do after the trip to Ireland? I could say that I travelled to the far reaches of the North American continent but that would be a slight exaggeration, all I did was go stay at Mrs. BB's place in Gatineau. Now for those of you from foreign climes, a small geography lesson. Our nation's capital is Ottawa which sits on the Ottawa river, across said river, is the city of Gatineau which is on the Rivière des Outaouais which is the name the francophones call it. So not only do they have two names for the same river but the two cities, which are for all intents and purposes just one metropolitan region, reside in two different provinces. This has all kinds of interesting consequences, for example, let's say Johnny Canuck works for the feds in the ministry of doodads in Ottawa and his department is moved to their new building in Gatineau. He has moved one kilometre from where he was but he now works in a different province, which means the payroll deductions for income taxes, social security, Medicare are different from his province of residence, which makes filing his income tax return an even bigger hassle. Only in Canada.

What did I do in the month of August besides trying to figure out the name of the river, well I pedalled all around Gatineau. For a rather small city, Gatineau has world class bike trails. The city has hundreds of kilometres of trails. Not bike trails like here in Montreal where you have to share the road with cars. No, real two way paved bikeways that are more than 80% through forest, meadows and wetlands. On the island of Montreal, all the land along the river was sold off to developers long ago. In Gatineau/Ottawa all the land along the Ottawa/Outaouais river and the Gatineau River was made into a park and the bikeway follows the parks. On the island of Montreal, the municipalities can't even get their acts together and hook up all the different bike paths. In Ottawa/Gatineau all the bike paths are one network and it is easy to get to where you want to be. Here in Montreal, if we want to cross the St. Lawrence river by bike, you have to ride all the way to the "Estacade" (a small bridge/pillared structure used to break up the ice) to be able to cross safely, There are three bridges and one tunnel and none of them are bike friendly. In Ottawa/Gatineau all the bridges have dedicated bike paths, not sharing the road with the cars, not riding on the pedestrian sidewalk, but reserved lanes for bikes and to top it off they connect the Gatineau bikeways with the Ottawa bikeways... fantastic. Finally to put the cherry on the sundae, on Sunday mornings all the roads in the Parc de la Gatineau and the Ottawa River Parkway are open only to bikes... The mayor of Montreal is always going on about how green we are, and how we need to get rid of cars in town. He should go see in Gatineau how it should be done, people regularly go to work by bike, there are always plenty of bike racks to park your bike and they are often under CCT surveillance, and more importantly you can get from A to B without getting killed.

So what did I do there... you guessed it, I explored all those marvellous bikeways. I ended up doing 50 km a day and in the three weeks I was there. I did about 600 km in all, I was in bike heaven. So here are some photos that illustrate what the paths look like.

As you can see there is plenty of wild life, in fact the last day (when I left my camera at home) I saw a deer in a clearing. We watched each other for at least five minutes before I kept on riding.



Fallen tree on the Gatineau River

Bike paths and ski trails

In Montréal we pride ourselves in being an open cosmopolitain city but when you get right down to it, it is pretty much like any other big american style city, many roads, many cars and not much in the way of safe paths for walking or biking.
Last week I was staying in Gatineau, the little city on the other side of the river from our nations capital, Ottawa. I was amazed by the amount of green space and bike paths that exist in that one small town. The picture on the left is a picture of Parc Gatineau bike path. It's also used as a cross country skiing trail when there is enough snow. This is only one of the many bike paths that crisscross the city, not just a sign saying that cars must share the road with bikes, but real bike trails just for bikes. The bike paths not only crisscross the city but they also join up to each other and to the kilometers of bike paths in Ottawa. In Ottawa the same thing is the case, all along the Ottawa river there is a green space that has a bike path that stretches its whole length.
What do we have in Montreal? An autoroute that cuts off the city from the St. Lawrence River. There are bike paths, the canal Lachine path being one, but it is not joined to any others. To get to the bike path you must go down Lakeshore road with the automobile traffic. Lakeshore road not being in the best of conditions, this sometimes can be quite perilous especially when you share with buses and trucks. Even getting down to Lakeshore road is dangerous since you have to cross over autoroutes, where cars won't give you any chances as they get on or off the autoroute...(cloverleafs)
On the southshore, off the island, there are also many bike paths, but to get to them from the island is to say the least a rather dangerous undertaking since getting across the bridges is almost impossible. The only really safe way to cross is the "Estacade" (a kind of small bridge that is used to break up the ice before it gets to the bigger bridges) but that is kilometers out of the way. In Gatineau-Ottawa the bridges all have a dedicated path for bikes, nice and large not squeezed between the railing and the cars.
We are always talking about how people take their cars to work instead of using their bikes or the transit system. Well if you have an alternate system that works then people will use it. If there are safe paths then people will be more likely to use their bikes. In Ottawa there are there are thousands of workers who bike to work. In fact all the government buildings have bike racks, enough for all the workers who wish to bike in. They also have showers and a place to change. Quite a different mentality.