Suggestion for the day

When cycling around Montreal you find the best route for particular destinations. Over time, you learn the timing of the traffic lights for your routes; knowing when to ease off or speed up in order to get a green light. Unfortunately, this is not always possible.

Take the lights at the corner of Parc and Avenue des Pins. If you are heading downtown along the bike path there is no possible way to get from this intersection down through the next one before traffic lights at the second intersection turn red.

It is fine to say that cyclists, like pedestrians and motorists, need to follow the rules of the road. However, if a system is designed to frustrate a user, the user is more likely to ignore the aspects of the system causing the frustration. In this case, cyclists who diligently wait at the Parc/Ave des Pins intersection because it makes sense due to the high volume and speed of traffic are very likely to go against the red at the next intersection.

The simple solution to this would be to add about six seconds to the length of the green at the second intersection in order to allow cyclists to continue through on the green. This small adjustment in timing would have no impact on motorists or pedestrians except to make the area safer by reducing the number of cyclists sneaking through the against the light.

There are many other places around town where the adjustment to the traffic light timing would provide a marked improvement in the flow of cyclists along bike paths and designated lanes, which would have the benefit of reducing the amount of violations of the rules of the road and increasing the overall safety on our roads by reducing the tendency for racing to catch a green light, rolling through a yellow light or sneaking through a red.