Montréal had its first snowstorm of the season this week, and if you look on X, you'll find images and videos like these😀
What's remarkable is the number of people who, at least from these tweets, continue to cycle in the winter. In fact, in the above video, there looks to be more bikes on the road than cars. Plowed lanes certainly help!
According to the city of Montréal, about 80% of the network is maintained for year-round use (717 km of its 900 km network). But I'm sure that there are a lot of people who still can't imagine anyone wanting to cycle in these conditions. So what is the actual winter usage?
Thankfully, Montréal has bike counters. 55 of them to be exact. And all of the data can be viewed, here. The busiest location is Saint Denis and Rue des Carrières. This falls within their Réseau Express Vélo (REV) network, which is a series of protected lanes intended to do what the name suggests.
The daily average for this counter is currently 4,403 riders, but the summer peak looks to be closer to 10,000. And this year, it has seen close to 1.5 million rides in total. This is a significant number. I mean, imagine 1.5 million more car trips on the road.
Looking at yesterday's data, the daily count was 1,292. If you very crudely divide this by my 10,000 summer peak estimate, you get to around 13%. And this happens to line up with what seems to be the city's generally accepted winter cycling retention ratio.
Not surprisingly, fewer people want to cycle in the winter. But the number is not nothing. If you multiple 1,292 cycling trips by 120 days (roughly December to March), that's still over 150,000 trips (I know, I didn't account for weekends). On top of this, the city's winter cycling retention rate appears to be increasing.
So just because you may not want to cycle to work in the winter, it doesn't necessarily mean that others feel the same way.
Few things go as well together as tacos and snowstorms. And so that's exactly what I did for lunch today given the awesome -- I love snow -- storm that we're having in Toronto this weekend. The garnish you're seeing below is grilled cactus. Dave, the owner of Playa Cabana Taqueria, grows it on location and uses it for special dishes like this one here. If you haven't been, I would highly recommend it. They're located at 21 St. Clair Avenue East.
In addition to tacos, I also spent the morning with Gabriel Fain Architects working on our upcoming laneway suite collaboration. Some of you may remember that our previous laneway project was refused at the Committee of Adjustment back in 2017. Well now that laneway suites are permissible as-of-right, it's time to get going. We are not planning to seek any variances from what is currently allowed.
But if you're thinking about building your own laneway suite, there are still a number of issues that you might run into depending on your property. Servicing, proximity to a fire hydrant, access, and trees are maybe some of the most common. I know that the city is working to resolve / streamline some of these complications, as the objective is truly to build laneway suites across the city.
As Gabriel and I work through our project this year, my plan is to write about it here on the blog. And hopefully when the project is complete, the posts will serve as a kind of guide for homeowners. These suites are really setup to be built by individual homeowners, as opposed to by developers. If you don't already email subscribe to this blog and are interested in learning more, sign up here.
In the meantime, if you have any questions about laneway suites, there are a number of experts in the city, including Gabriel Fain Architects and the folks over at Lanescape.
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