Ring road around the mountain

Coming home from yesterday evening’s ride up Mount Royal, I decided to scope out the planned route of the City of Montreal’s new bike path around the mountain. Oh, you haven’t heard of the new bike path? Don’t worry, neither had I until a friend forwarded me a link to a Gazette story on the planned expansion earlier this week.

Generally speaking, I’m happy about any addition to the city’s network of bike paths. I’m also afflicted by an innate scepticism about pretty much any endeavour undertaken by municipal government, so I had to find out more about the project, since the Gazette story is a little short on details.

I went digging on the City of Montreal’s website. It’s remarkable the random things you can find on there – a map of the City’s projected tramway network, for example – and also remarkable how difficult it is to find what you’re actually looking for… but I digress. I eventually found the following map:


The red and orange parts are either for bikes, or shared use (cyclists and pedestrians). The blue parts are pedestrian-only. I can’t provide you with a link to the full-size version of that map, because now I don’t know exactly where I found it (of course!). In any case, here is the city’s description of the project, with a link at the bottom of the page to a less detailed map of the route:

Chemin de ceinture du mont Royal

So getting back to my own exploration of the path yesterday evening, I started just below Beaver Lake, and began descending the path as it travels north-west along Côte-des-Neiges. It’s very wide, which is good because it’s supposed to be a shared-use path. And it’s still lined with surveying pegs and stretches of temporary construction fence here and there.

It’s also made of crushed stone for the time being, which is kind of like a larger, more jagged form of gravel.

I thought, as I was riding down the unfinished path, “Wow, this will be amazing once it’s paved!” Except when I got home and looked at the city documentation again, I realized they do not intend to pave it. In fact, it will be covered with poussière de pierre, or stone dust. And what is stone dust, you ask? It's this stuff.

I’m not usually an advocate for paving more green space, especially on Mount Royal, but I think in this case pavement would have been a better option. The City's press releases mention that the path is intended not only for pleasure riders, but also for commuters. I don't think commuters are going to appreciate the lack of traction uphill that you get with stone dust. It's also going to be pretty messy in the rain, even with fenders.

I suppose by using stone dust, the City ensures that cyclists will be riding slower, and will thus be less of a danger to pedestrians who will also be using the path (at least on the shared-use stretches). It will also keep away those pesky rollerbladers. And 10 more kilometres of unpaved bike path is better than nothing, isn't it?

But I’ll withhold my final judgment on the project until it’s complete. Let’s wait and see.