Montréal is often hailed as the most "biking-friendly" city in North America. But our research has found that only 2.3 per cent of the city's roadways are allocated to bike infrastructure, with car infrastructure occupying the remaining 97.7 per cent of road space.

We measured the street space allocated to transport infrastructures across Montréal, and contrasted it with traveller counts by travel mode. We found a wide discrepancy: comparing bike travellers with car travellers, bikes represent 4.9 per cent of trips to 95.1 per cent for cars.

Proposals for new or expanded bike lanes are often met with fierce backlash, in a phenomenon dubbed "bikelash," with car drivers reluctant to lose any street space.

Yet our study finds that the current imbalance of spatial allocation is so overwhelmingly in favour of cars that it's possible to make substantial improvements to bike infrastructure without significantly decreasing the space allocated per driver.

Read the complete article