Forget EVs. Cycling is revolutionising transport

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. TO UNDERSTAND WHY urban planners like bicycles, stand on a section of Saint Denis Street in Montreal and count the vehicles going by. On a sunny Thursday over a ten-minute period at rush hour, your correspondent counted 132 bicycles (at least a half dozen of which had children on the back) flowing one way.

In the adjacent—and much wider—automobile lane 82 cars (almost all carrying just their driver) and one city bus moved by in a bumper-to-bumper crawl. Any more cars would jam it. Yet there is still plenty of space in the bike lane, which on a single day in June was used by more than 14,000 cyclists.

Over the past decade or so, and particularly under Valérie Plante, the mayor since 2017, Montreal has become North America’s leading cycling city. In the Plateau neighbourhood, bicycles account for a fifth of all journeys, only slightly less than cars. Across the city more than a third of the population cycles at least once a week.

Use of the city’s bike-share scheme, Bixi, has doubled since 2019, to 13m trips last year. Montreal’s bike boom is just one example of how a new disruptive transport technology is rapidly changing cities across the rich world. It is highly energy-efficient, costs almost nothing, reduces congestion and pollution, and obviates the need for huge car parks.

Yet it is not the self-driving electric car, as tech moguls and car industry executives imagined. Rather, it is the humble bicycle. And as with any disruptive technology, as the use of bicycles rises, and cities do more to make riding them pleasant, bikes are polarising people and setting off culture wars.