Why build bike lanes — shouldn’t we focus on public transit instead?
There’s a criticism we’ve seen that bicycle urbanism is a niche obsession and that urbanists’
attention should instead be on public transit as a more robust, reliable, and realistic
alternative to driving.
You can kind of understand where this comes from.
Transit is more “established” in most bigger cities, in the culture and in the infrastructure.
It’s easy to feel like trains and buses are the natural workhorses while bikes are
just a distraction.
One reason we think this is wrong is that transit and cycling aren’t interchangeable
just because they’re both “not cars”.
They have different strengths.
We’ve lived near some of the best transit in North America and we’ve never thought
that it somehow negated the usefulness of bikes.
Transit wins out for speed and comfort over longer distances, but cycling is faster and
more convenient for shorter trips.
Transit is really strong on common routes that lots of other people travel, but cycling
shines for less common routes or directions and going “off the beaten path”.
Transit is more comfortable in bad weather, but cycling has better cargo potential.
Another reason it doesn’t make sense to discard bicycle urbanism is that bikes are
great at complementing transit and expanding its reach.
Bikes and other micromobility like eScooters are a perfect solution to the “last mile”
problem faced by high-investment transit lines like metros, subways, and regional rail, namely
the question of how you get from your home to the train station or from the station to
your destination.
This is Panama station on Montreal’s new express metro system, the REM.
If we draw a circle spreading out 750 metres from the station — roughly a 10 to 15 minute
walk, depending on how direct of a route you can take — we get coverage of about 5,000
people.
Much of the circle is taken up by shopping centres and a highway interchange, not homes.
But if we extend that circle to 2.5 kilometres out, roughly a 10 to 15 minute bike ride,
we get almost 70,000 people.
Bikes increase the reach of this station by 14 times.
Obviously the bus is another good option to get to the station but these short trips just
beyond walking distance are where bikes really shine.
The trip from this residential street to Panama station takes 10 minutes by bike compared
to 16 by bus, except that the bus comes every 20 minutes on weekdays and every hour on weekends.
Obviously buses can provide better service than this, and it depends a lot on where exactly
you live in relation to the station, but in general we find cycling the fastest and most
straightforward option for local trips like this.
In theory, at least.
It depends on bike infrastructure and options for what to do with your bike at the station.
Fortunately Panama Station is in Brossard, a suburb of Montreal that’s actually pretty
bike-friendly.
It has multi-use pathways through power transmission corridors plus an interesting configuration
you often see in Quebec where one side of the road has a sidewalk and the other side
has a multi-use pathway that cyclists can use, usually set back a few metres from the
road.
This isn’t the latest or greatest of bike infrastructure design by any means but it’s
fundamentally very usable, especially when the pathway is a comfortable four metres wide,
although the experience does get worse when you hit some of these monster suburban intersections.
At least they built a bunker to protect us on this two-stage crossing.
These pathways are on half or maybe more of the main roads and they make an enormous difference.
Biking down Rome Boulevard on a separated pathway is so much better than Taschereau
where you have to choose between riding on an eight-lane semi-highway or uncomfortably
and illegally sharing the narrow and bumpy sidewalk with pedestrians.
This goes to show that it’s not actually that hard to provide basic but functional
bike infrastructure in the suburbs.
Another nice aspect of cycling in Brossard is the cut-throughs where pedestrians and
cyclists are given shortcuts through the residential road network.
Panama station also created a new pathway under the highway to the station and beyond
for pedestrians and cyclists.
The other ingredient to biking to a train station is options for what to do with your
bike at the station.
Both Panama and the nearby Du Quartier station have multiple areas for bike parking that
were getting good use on just the second day the system was operating.
Panama has 200 total spots and Du Quartier has 76 — they should probably consider installing
more.
Of course, depending on your bike, you might not be comfortable leaving it out in the open
at a public rack all day.
In the city we typically get around this by using BIXI bike share to get to a station,
but that’s not available here in Brossard, at least not yet.
Brossard was invited to join the program but the mayor said they wanted to study it and
run consultations, explaining that their goal is to be considered an ideal bike city but
that they don’t want it to cost too much.
Some of the future REM stations will be in existing BIXI zones, though.
And wherever you’re leaving from, if you end up downtown, you obviously have BIXI available
for the final leg of your trip to your office or anywhere else.
Finally, the last option for what to do with your bike at the station is actually to take
it on the train with you.
Traditionally this was allowed only outside of rush hour on the metro but the metro and
the REM have been doing a pilot allowing bikes at all times.
It’s limited to two bikes per train car though so it’s not exactly a scalable solution.
Another option is a folding bike, which we assume would count as luggage instead of a
bike if you want another option to have your bike at the end.
eScooters and other small or folding micromobility are great options too.
Exactly how much cycling helps the reach of a train station depends on land use around
stations.
Panama station was on the extreme end because it has malls and parking lots around it, so
opening it up to people living just beyond helps a lot.
Transit-oriented development like we’re seeing at Du Quartier right now, and that
should happen at Panama at some point in the future, has the potential to add a bunch of
people in very close walking distance to the station.
All in all, if you add up the 26 stations on the REM that will open over the next few
years, based on current population numbers, we get about 150,000 people within walking
distance of a station but almost 900,000 people within easy cycling distance.
That means bike infrastructure has the potential to increase the reach of the REM by six times
compared to walking.
On the other hand, the SkyTrain in Vancouver is pretty good for dense, transit-oriented
development that puts people within walking distance of stations, so cycling “only”
increases the reach of SkyTrain stations by about three times, from 430,000 people to
1.2 million.
That’s still pretty good though, and most cities are higher.
Bikes can increase the reach of Calgary’s light rail by about 4 times, from 170,000
people to 650,000.
Cycling has a similar multiplier on Atlanta’s MARTA system, from 130,000 to 570,000 people.
Cycling expands San Francisco’s BART by five times, from 420,000 people to 2.2 million.
Chicago’s impressively long METRA commuter rail system has about 740,000 people within
walking distance of a station but a massive 4.2 million people within cycling distance
of a station, an increase of almost six times.
Toronto’s GO Trains actually get the biggest cycling boost of any city we’re looking
at here, with bikes increasing the reach of stations by 8 times, from 300,000 people to
2.5 million.
Of course, there’s another way that people currently get to a lot of these stations,
and that’s driving.
Toronto’s GO Trains and San Francisco’s BART have lots of parking, for example.
But parking at transit stations is slowly getting chipped away and replaced by transit-oriented
development, like at a few BART stations in Berkeley, California, despite the strong objections
of many neighbours.
And the new REM stations that recently opened have modest amounts of car parking or none
at all, with the exception of a bigger lot at the Brossard terminus at the edge of the
city.
So while transit-oriented development puts more people within easy walking distance of
a station, by eliminating parking it also increases the need for cycling and bus connections.
What we’re talking about in this video is basically “rail and bike” urbanism, as
described by Reece Martin in a recent post on his Substack.
Characteristic of Japan and the Netherlands, it’s basically how we get around in Montreal.
The flexibility of cycling handles short-to-medium-distance trips, including trips to a train station,
while the metro, exo, and now the REM handle most of our medium-to-long trips within the
region.
In the end, it’s always a little strange hearing people use the importance of transit
as a reason not to invest in bike infrastructure.
As people who don’t own a car, transit and cycling are complementary, both in the sense
that we use them on different trips but also in the sense that cycling is really useful
for increasing the reach of transit.
Thanks for watching through to the end of the video.
Don’t forget to bike and train… and subscribe.