Looking north for city biking inspiration

Visitors to Montreal will notice them right away: paved bike-only lanes that move riders unhampered through the canyons of downtown as well as the cobblestone squares of the old city.

Add to that a successful European-style bike-sharing program unveiled this spring, with 3,000 Bixi bikes available at 300 stations across the city.

"You can't go a block without seeing a cyclist here," said Dan Rona-Hartzog, 31, a Montreal student who rides his bike to campus every day. "Biking became very much a part of our culture."

It's a bicycle-lover's dream city, and one that other cities, including Philadelphia, are looking to for inspiration.

"Montreal is definitely a city to look at as a model," Philadelphia's Alex Doty said as he used his cell phone to show off photos from a visit to Montreal in June. "I was really impressed."

Doty, executive director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, dreams of turning Philadelphia into a "world-class city for cyclists," a place so well-equipped for pedaling "that people from all walks of life don't have to think twice to take the bike instead of the car or the bus."

Philadelphia will take a huge step forward today when Mayor Nutter officially opens two cross-town bike lanes on Spruce and Pine Streets in Center City, a pilot project that supporters hope will become permanent.

Doty said Montreal's path to being a bicycle-friendly city can help because it is in many ways comparable to Philadelphia: "It's our size, it has a similar traffic volume, and the winters are even more difficult than ours."

How did Montreal manage the transformation over the last two decades to pedal town? "Certainly not overnight," says Andre Lavallee, vice chairman of Montreal's executive committee, who is responsible for urban planning and public transportation.

"In the beginning, the mid-'80s, there was a lot of doubt and heavy resistance," Lavallee recalled.

"Drivers feared that giving up space for riders would slow down traffic, cause congestion, and cost parking spots."

Now, drivers and riders have adapted to each other, and complaints are minimal, Lavallee said.

Activist groups played a vital role in educating road users. "You have to give people time to change their mentality in favor of bicycling," said Lavallee. Today, he said, many locals take pride in biking "as a symbol for the green city we hope to create."

In Philadelphia, cycling doubled from 2005 to 2008, according to surveys by the Bicycle Coalition. The end of Kelly Drive, for example, has 30,000 cyclists a week. More than 3,000 riders turned out for a recent Bike Philly event in Center City.

There's also a growing awareness that bicycling helps the environment and saves money otherwise spent on gasoline, said Doty. "And biking is often more reliable than taking the car or the bus," he added. "Plus, you get some exercise."

Philadelphia, he said, "has tremendous potential for biking - the way William Penn laid it out, very flat and very clear." The Schuylkill River Trail and other recreational paths are as attractive as any in the country. But Doty acknowledged, "There was neglect in the past, and that's why we still have a very long way to go."

Philadelphia has 215 miles of bike lanes (and an additional 32 miles of multiuse trails without cars), but only four miles are in Center City. And this is only one of the gaping holes of the network.

But the city is making progress.

"The city will be much more bike-friendly 10 years from now," said Charles Carmalt, the city's pedestrian and bicycle coordinator. "The times don't allow for one giant leap, though, but rather a series of incremental changes."

The city has installed 1,400 new racks in the last 18 months to ease the shortage of bike parking. By December, the city expects to turn 1,600 old parking meter poles into racks, said Andrew Stober, director of strategic initiatives in the Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities.

The League of American Bicyclists, an advocacy group in Washington, recently applauded the "great strides" Philadelphia has made and designated the city a "bike-friendly community," even if it lags far behind cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, or the top-ranked Boulder, Colo.

One of the things missing in Philadelphia is a bike-share program that would encourage more people to take up bicycling. An estimated 100 cities worldwide have introduced such a system, starting with Amsterdam in the mid-1960s. One of the largest programs is Paris' Velib system, which features more than 20,000 bikes.

In the United States, the first program began last summer in Washington, but with only 120 bikes.

Boston and Minneapolis are gearing up to start larger-scale operations possibly as early as next year, with 2,500 and 1,000 bikes, respectively. New York, Portland, Ore., and other cities are examining the idea. Each is looking to duplicate Montreal's success.

Under the Bixi system (the name is a contraction of bicycle and taxi), a rider can unlock a bike from one docking station with the swipe of a membership or credit card, then drop off the bike at any other location. Subscription fees range from $72 per year to around $5 per day. The first 30 minutes of each trip are free - clever riders change bikes in time and don't pay. An annual membership entitles a rider to unlimited access to the system.

Bixi, which won two prestigious awards for the design of its sturdy and comfy bike and the solar-powered docking stations, has 100,000 users per day on average. "We are personalizing mass transit," said Lavallee. "This is a vital part of our transportation concept for the city."

In Philadelphia, a feasibility study by the William Penn Foundation on starting a bike-share system will be completed by the end of the year. Among the biggest concerns are vandalism and theft, but Bixi's high-tech aluminium bikes have proven to be "secure and robust enough for an American urban environment," said Doty. While Bixi does not operate during Montreal's harsh winter, Philadelphia's milder winter could allow riding nearly all year, Doty said.

Whether Philadelphia can embrace a bike-share program depends on funding. Montreal has spent $14 million in designing, producing, and installing the bikes and the docking stations, and after five months, officials say they are confident the system can sustain itself with the revenue from usage fees.

While Stober called a bike-share program appealing for Philadelphia, the city's fiscal crisis rules it out right now.

Doty is undeterred. "Nobody said it would be easy."