The Gazette: Cyclists call for link with Laval: 12,000 signatures. City petitioned to build bike path from Marche Central - 26 September, 2006

Velo Quebec representatives and a sporting goods retailer deposited a petition at Montreal city hall last night asking for a new bicycle path. The petition, with 12,000 signatures, asks the city to build a new path in a north-south direction to link Laval and Marche Central to downtown.

The signatures were collected over the summer at sporting goods retailer Mountain Equipment Co-op’s outlet at Marche Central, at various cycling events in Montreal and as as recently as last Friday at Car-Free-Day when a portion of the downtown core was closed to cars and trucks.

Patrick Howe, spokesperson for Velo Quebec, which organizes events like La Tour de l’Ile, said that there is currently a bike path in Laval that runs parallel to the Canadian Pacific train line, but there is no link from that path to downtown.

Howe said that the proposed path, which was first floated as an idea by the city of Montreal 28 years ago, would also run parallel to the CP tracks. It would cover a distance of 7.1 kilometres from the Ile Perry train bridge, which spans Riviere des Prairies at the north, to the western tip of the Rosemont-Petite Patrie district at the south.

For many years, Velo Quebec has been pushing for this north-south link, he said.

“The infrastructure is there, the train tracks exist, so the problem is not cost, but politics, and that’s why we took this (petition) to the city hall,” Howe said.

If completed, this link would allow cyclists to hook up with bike paths running east-west and to the network across the river in Laval.