Montreal was the third city I visited in a two-week trans-Canadian bike and train trip. To find out why I took the long – and slow – way to New York read my very first post. Also see my first and second stories about Montreal.
Culture
In the center of town and around the university, I saw few helmets and almost as few lights at night. Which surprised me – I think of mature bicycling cultures as being low on helmets but heavy on lights. And while there are a few select neighborhoods in Portland where I might feel comfortable without a helmet (and since this Canadian trip I’ve been to Copenhagen, where wearing a helmet while biking would have felt like wearing a life jacket in the bath), in Montreal I definitely wanted that styrofoam layer between me and traffic.
And this was mostly because of the culture of the road there. On the west coast we like order, taking turns, waving one another through, clear rights-of-way and signaling and all that. But I think that on the east coast, including Montreal, drivers and bicyclists alike just take the right-of-way (whether it’s technically theirs or not) and hope the other party gives it up. Like a game of Chicken.
For example, when I was biking through intersections in a cycletrack the drivers turning across my path would often make eye contact with me, but would continue crossing my path. They KNEW I had the right-of-way, and if I insisted on keeping it they weren’t going to run me over, but they’d try and steal it if I let them!
I’m not saying this kind of road culture is unsafe, for all I know everyone’s agro-vigilance could make for fewer crashes. But it felt scary to me, and just in terms of personal style and comfort, it really ticked me off. (I found its North American epicenter in New York a few days later; more on that to come.)
A Walking City
There is actually a big part of Montreal that is car free – because it’s underground. Feeling like a cross between a shopping mall (think Pioneer Courthouse Square, on the very bottom level) and a subway station, the network of underground commercial alleys stretched like a net below the central city. Unlike a shopping mall, there were a few decent stores down there too, not just junk food and teeny bopper clothing.
The subway trains, by the way, had rubber wheels, which made for a very smooth ride:
And bikes were “allowed in the first car only,” as we were reminded by copious posters and floor stickers (below), but of course the older stations had neither elevators nor ramps so bike access (and I would guess handicapped access) was challenging.
And while it felt icky to be underground on a beautiful spring day, and the tiled corridors didn’t attract the sitting-around and checking-one-another-out that is so pleasant on above-ground car-free streets, I can imagine that when it’s bitter cold and slushy, being able to shop and eat and change trains all without going outside (and getting slushed by passing cars) must be pretty nice.
Even on this nice spring day, the tunnels were packed with pedestrians. The sidewalks about were also shoulder-to-shoulder, so I suppose the underground development is a way of increasing pedestrian space and commerce without shutting down all the roads to cars.
Right turns on red lights are 
illegal in Montreal (I saw a big sign on the highway saying so on my way into town) which makes walking so much more comfortable and easy. (Right turns on red are also not permitted in New York City and in much of Europe; here’s some background on US policy on right turn on red.) It took me a few days to connect the wonderful pedestrian experience I was having with that sign I’d seen on the highway.
Since then, when I walk in downtown Portland I notice how often I am held up at a crosswalk by someone starting or finishing their right turn on red – it happens about every third crossing at lunchtime, probably more at rush hour. Portland is on it’s way to becoming a real bike city, maybe we should make it a real pedestrian city too? This was the biggest idea I took away from Montreal.
Well, second biggest. The biggest was actually my discovery that in addition to “Dairy Creamer”…
…there is such thing as synthetic “Dairy Milker”!
I tasted it. It was disgusting.
Departure
At the end of my stay in Montreal my mother and I checked out of our awesome feminist hotel (the Y des femmes) and boarded the Amtrak train for New York.
Twenty minutes outside of Montreal I spied yet another cycletrack from the window of the train – I thought they were a city thing, but here they was one all the way out in the suburbs:
The train took eight hours (at about, oh, 30 mph) and followed the Hudson river for much of the way. The scenery was lovely, but after crossing the country on Canadian trains the contrast in service was apparent! While the Canadian trains were not perfectly punctual, the staff was very friendly and helpful, and the food was good. The staff on our Amtrak train was clearly unhappy that anyone at all was riding the train that day, especially annoying people like us. But we all had to spend 8 hours together (one hour with border patrol joining us for the party) and after some initial clashes, got along alright.
Next and last post: New York: I am way too sensitive to bike in this city
I have taken part of that Amtrak route… I rode from Rennsallear (Albany), NY – down into NYC, along the Hudson and into Penn Station.
Recently I had also had a similar experience with the Canadian vs. American congeniality. I was selling a vehicle in Vancouver, BC and had to cross the border several times for various reasons or signatures or paperwork during the course of the morning. Almost all on foot. The American border crossing guards were almost universally intolerable – with the exception of the very final one I dealt with in the whole day. Their Canadian counterparts were very friendly and helpful (although they clearly have very tedious jobs for the most part).
We should probably work on that here in the states… We need to be more friendly…
And Minneapolis, Minnesota has a network of “skyways” which sound a lot like the tunnels in Montreal (well except for the subway transit). People can walk all over Minneapolis in pathways and bridges that are all inside. Not so important in the nice parts of the year, but when it is -20 degrees outside they are quite nice!
Here in Portland, I think we could do more with our “awning system”, perhaps more coordination between buildings and tenants and designs and such so that we can have more consistent and continuous awnings during the rainy season.
I know, not much of this at all has to do with Bicycling, but a livable city is a bikable city!
Ahh the life of a traveller. My Daughter leaves Brisbane at 7.00 am Wednesday Dec 02 for a month in Canada and New York. Lucky Lucky Lucky! As long as she can find a Harley shop for a souvenir or 2 and perhaps a nice custom bike. Guess what she has been talking about the past 6 months???? Her friend who was an exchange student at Uni from Canada, and Canada. Canada? Where’s Canada?. In fact 24 and a half hours to take off.
One gooey old biker Dad