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Bicycle culture off to a slow start in Laval

Myriam Boulianne
Thestar.com
June 15, 2021

LAVAL, Que. - Despite tens of millions in investments to build 113 kilometres of bike lanes since 2015, Laval residents are slow to hop on their bikes for commutes. According to numbers obtained by La Presse, cars still dominate the third-largest city of the province.

Friday, 8 a.m. While car traffic increases on Saint-Martin Boulevard, traffic on the bike path flows smoothly. Carlos Cardenas was biking home from work.

“I only ran into one bike this morning, but it wasn’t on Saint-Martin. Usually it’s one or two cyclists that I meet on the boulevard,” he said.

Built in 2017, the bike path along Saint-Martin Boulevard (between Le Corbusier and de l’Avenir) attracted a daily maximum of 258 users on weekdays in 2020, according to a report by Vélo Québec and the City of Laval, which will be made public on June 22.

Cyclists were slow to try out the other new pathways in the city of nearly 500,000 inhabitants. Bike paths on Bellerose Boulevard and Louis-Payette Avenue, both built in 2018, boasted a maximum of only 238 and 146 daily weekday cyclists last year, respectively.

“I don’t know why there is so much resistance,“ said Vasilios Karidogiannis, the Laval municipal councillor responsible for active mobility.

While overall there is “an increase in both commuting and recreational biking using the network,” Karidogiannis said that it “is not sufficient.” The challenge is to change bicycle culture, he said.

“In Laval, it’s not easy. The city is made for cars, it was built like that. The vision was to take your car to go shopping a stone’s throw from home. (…) It really is a long-established lifestyle that we are trying to change,” Karidogiannis said.

Transportation accounted for 69 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Laval in 2020, according to the city. In 2016, according to the Statistics Canada census, 0.5 per cent of commuters were biking to work in Laval. In Longueuil, this number was 1.4 per cent, and in Montreal, 3.6 per cent.

However, Laval has gone to great lengths to encourage active mobility. A master plan for the cycling network, adopted by city council in 2019, aims to create 475 kilometres of bike lanes by 2031. Since 2015, 113 kilometres have been built. Investments in a three-year program from 2017 to 2020 amount to more than $15 million per year for active mobility projects and traffic reduction measures.

An “underused” network

Laval resident Catherine Pilotte has been cycling with her children for several years but said she has not noticed an increase in the number of cyclists on the paths. “The only change I see is that the old paths are used more, but I don’t see more people on the new ones,“ she said. ”Usually, when I take the new paths, I’m all alone.“

François Lareau, who bikes to work, agreed. “In summer, the network is clearly underused,” he said. According to him, a culture of speed and immediacy, difficulties sharing the road with motorists and inadequate planning on some sections are to blame. He does not believe, however, that the city has missed its target.

“To say that (the paths) are not being used and that it’s a failure, I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. However, he added that the city needs to do more outreach about the bike paths.

Despite the “modest figures” presented in Laval’s report, Jean-François Rheault, president and CEO of Vélo Québec, is certain that “over time, things will improve.”

“It takes time for new behaviours to take hold, for a new infrastructure to realise its full potential,” he said. He added that the increase in people working from home due to the pandemic should be considered in the count.

Raising awareness among citizens

Georges Schneller, Laval resident and founding member of the cyclist group Groupe de réflexion sur le vélo à Laval, believes that there is not enough awareness among citizens.

“When we think of building new paths, we must also have promotions, awareness campaigns, events bringing together cyclists to discover the new infrastructure. It goes without saying,” he said.

“Laval does more (promotion) than Montreal. There is also more work to do in Laval, since in Montreal, the cycling culture already exists,” Rheault added, citing the city’s subsidy program for electric bikes, as well as the addition of six BIXI bike rental stations.

There is no magic solution within reach, Karidogiannis said. “Even if we inject millions into advertisements, it will not be enough. (…) We don’t want to force people to use bicycles,“ he said.

“I think it starts with young children. The facilities are there, that’s a bonus. We started off on the right foot with that. Education and promotion will follow,” he said.