[fbelzile]

Both directions of the bike lanes on St-Denis take up about one car lane. The street has 2 lanes for car traffic and 2 more lanes for street parking on most sections of the road. I think that's a fair trade-off for the very high traffic the bike lanes receive on non-snow months. Not all public infrastructure needs to be used at capacity all the time (like public swimming pools, playgrounds, tennis/basketball courts, un-plowed walking paths, etc).

Although Montreal is leading the way to sustainable transportation, I don't think Montreal is copying European cities enough. Most of the biking infrastructure around the city is paint on roads making it a patch work system that kids and elderly people can't use safely.

[mardifoufs]

I don't think it's fair to say that crucial roads should be underutilized, especially for crucial main streets! I agree with you that saint Denis is very very heavily used by cyclists in the warmer months, and I agree that the "paint a line" types of bike lanes are a cop out. But I think that Montreal should've explored convertible, semi permanent infrastructure. Not simple painted lines, but not inflexible set in concrete paths either.

We could've even set a new "standard" for cities that face the same challenges! That way, there's no trade off. We could use it in the winter for bus/priority lanes, and have the very useful and safe bike lanes in the summer. Sure, I don't know of anywhere else that implemented something similar, but that's the point :)