Bicycling is part of the mobility culture of Montreal, but whether Montreal is actually friendly to bicyclists is open to heated debate.
Cars dominate the topology.
Cars dominate the topology.
Also, Quebec is not a city. The city is called "Quebec City" just as how New York and New York City are very different places.
The thing is: after a snow fall, they prioritize the bike roads/lanes before taking care of the roads used by cars.
When I was living in Switzerland, I kept a set of spare wheels with studded tires for those days with risk of ice. Riding on packed snow is perfectly fine on regular tires and ice is not dangerous when you have studded tires.
That's proof that there's either a lot of progress to be made, or the local culture just isn't as tolerant to the cold.
Cycling around -10 works just fine if the roads have been taken care of (which, in your example, doesn't seem to be case, as apparently they're covered in ice).
With decent infrastructure, the difference between cycling 10 degrees above and 10 degrees below freezing is a matter of outfit.
Granted in a bona fide blizzard like today, i am choosing the bus instead. But this is the biggest snowfall in several years, not exactly a frequent problem.
That's a very {Plateau,reddit,no-kids}-centric view.
But if your point is that North American cities all tend to have the same downtown/suburban contrasts, you are quite right.
People who live $Downtown usually have walkable neighbourhoods and perhaps even access to underground transit. People who live outside the centre of the city mostly end up depending on a private vehicle.
Bicycles are part of the mobility culture in Montreal. But Car Cancer has the same effect everywhere.
They do. Also people who use bicycles in Montreal are disproportionately males and mostly of the certain age group. That's very apparent if you stay for ~10 minutes near Grande Bibliothèque for example or any other relatively busy piste cyclable. If you call it a 'mobility culture' it a very niche one. Bicycling is a thing for very specific demographics in Montreal in comparison with Amsterdam and even with Eastern European cities.
Interestingly that high schoolers are not biking that much in Montreal, again in comparison. Biking to school was/is an exception where I live(d) in Montreal, i.e. Le Sud-Ouest, NDG.
And yet it is relatively successful in Montreal (as TFA says). If we are completely honest, bicycling could be called a niche activity in most of North America.
> Bicycling is a thing for very specific demographics in Montreal in comparison with Amsterdam and even with Eastern European cities.
For students, for example.
I did say, "Bicycling is part of the mobility culture of Montreal". I did not claim more, and I also said that it's a controversial topic. On the positive side, Bixi has been a relative success compared to other Canadian cities.[1]
(You know Bixi, so I'll add a link for others to read.)
[1] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixi_(bicycle_share_system)