Montrealers support separated bike lanes more than other urban Canadians, poll suggests

It's a hot-button topic that's raged in municipalities across the country and divides Canadians like few other issues: who is to blame for the unruliness on the roads — car drivers or cyclists?

A new poll from the Angus Reid Institute suggests that most urban Canadians surveyed say there isn't much conflict on the streets between two wheels and four, but of those who have witnessed clashes between the two, most blame cyclists.

When it comes to the question of separate bike lanes, the majority of drivers and cyclists say they're a good idea.  

Not surprisingly, cyclists are more enthusiastic about separate lanes, with 85 per cent backing the idea, versus 64 per cent of motor vehicle drivers.

Montreal backs separate lanes 

Montrealers, more than people in any other city in Canada, say separated bike lanes are a good thing, with four out of five of Montrealers surveyed behind them.

Separate bike lanes are least popular in Calgary, Edmonton and in Toronto's outlying suburbs.  One in three Toronto suburbanites say separate bike lanes are a bad idea.

The findings could prove to be good news for Mayor Valérie Plante, whose administration is committed to building a 140-kilometre network of bike paths through the most heavily travelled parts of the city.

"If you really want to make sure that cyclists, pedestrians and car drivers feel safe, you need to do separate bike lanes," Plante said during last fall's municipal campaign. 

Only 11 per cent of Montrealers polled say there are too many separated bike lanes, with half of those surveyed saying the city had too few and another four in ten people saying the city has just the right amount.

Looking at other surveys that have been done about biking safety, "there is perhaps a sense that if cyclists are separated, it's safer for the cyclists — also, possibly, for everyone else," Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute, told CBC News.

Cyclists to blame?

Montrealers' support for separated bike lanes doesn't mean that most believe cyclists are usually in the right.

When asked who is to blame for conflicts between drivers and cyclists, two out of three Montrealers polled said when there is a conflict, cyclists are to blame. 

However, it is a shifting mindset right across the country, said Kurl, and one that is very much linked to age.

"Younger people are much more likely, in questions of perceived conflicts between drivers and cyclists, to say it's actually drivers that are at fault," she said. 

"There is a mindset among younger people that is a little bit more pro-cyclist, whereas Gen Xers and baby-boomers and people older than that are thinking more like drivers, and channeling more of a driver's mindset."

The poll is based on a randomized sample of 5,423 Canadians who are members of the Angus Reid Forum. That number included 555 Montrealers.

For comparison purposes only, a probability sample of the same size would yield a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points, 19 times out of 20.