The Bike Path of Champions
“I am now betting this bike path will change radically the lifestyle and quality of life of many Montrealers.”
- André Lavallée, member of Montreal’s executive committee, quoted in the Montreal Gazette, November 7, 2007
“It could turn downtown into a ghost town.”
- Sal Parasuco, retailer, quoted in the Montreal Gazette, September 10, 2007
« Assez vite aussi, j’ai eu l’impression que ce que ces flèches au sol disaient au fond aux cyclistes, c’est ” Par ici, la mort “. »
- Rima Elkouri, columnist in La Presse, September 20, 2007, on the St. Urbain bike lane
According to the United Nations, it was this year that the world became a place more populated by city dwellers than country folk. Today’s world is an increasingly urban place.
Of course, cities are inherently complicated, layered entities. More than their inhabitants, more than their buildings, people have over time built themselves a vast transportation infrastructure to connect themselves to each other – these may be streets, of course, but also include underground metro systems, freeways, maglev trains. Indeed, cities around the world are defined by elements of their transportation systems: what is Paris without the Champs-Elysées, or London without its Tube, or San Francisco without its trolley lines?
It is clear to me, as it must be to the vast majority of Urbanphoto readers, that the Montreal of only ten years hence will bear the imprint of, and perhaps be wholly defined by, what is perhaps the most important transportation development in the Western world of the twenty-first century: the de Maisonneuve Bike Path.
