Comes more cycling - and I’ve been out rather a bit this week.

Saturday, though it was a bit chilly and windy I got on my bike and headed northwest out of the city along the Corridor des Cheminots trail - part of a pair of dedicated car-free trails leading almost 80 km out of Quebec City. All it took was about a km of on-road cycling from Old Quebec before I was on the path. There’s definitely a fair bit of cycling infrastructure here. The trip north was relatively easy taking me first through some gritty industrial areas and the railroad yard.

After about 5 km things cleared up and I saw more trees and fewer buildings.

Unfortunately after about 15 km, I found that there was a fairly large construction project on the trail and the ride was over. Looking at a map later, I found that I could’ve taken some streets and bypassed it. Perhaps this weekend.

I noticed a couple of things as I rode the trail. The first was that there were a few ‘billboards’ from Desjardins on the sides obviously targeting cyclists. I wonder if that was part of how revenue for the trails’ upkeep is generated. Another is that at least one business saw the advantage of catering to cyclists by creating a dedicated cyclists’ entrance and parking area for their dairy bar.

The trip home was a bit more difficult. Though I hadn’t noticed on the way there, there was apparently a 30-50 km/hr wind blowing. I cursed it as I rode into it on the way back.

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Starting Friday I have been using a number of dedicated bicycle resources to get myself to/from work. I now ride about a km and a half to a dedicated bike trail, then about 5 km on that trail which leads me to about a km of shared road before getting back on another 5 km of bike lane (unlike in Toronto, I never see cars parked in it). At the end of that, I take a quick km or so on a residential street before getting on another dedicated trail that takes me within 500 metres or so of work.

These past couple of rides have been extremely pleasant. Today, in particular, was really nice with 19 degrees C, sunny weather, and a small tailwind. The dedicated trails are particularly nice. The one I take for the first 5 km or so is particularly nice.

This one is mostly this well taken care of the entire way (there’s a bit of mud under one bridge where we had flooding last week). The trail works much like an expressway with on/offramps to major streets and otherwise going nonstop the whole way. The result is that I was able to make incredibly great time today as I could keep a good pace and rarely needed to stop for signals or any other reason.

It made me wonder - what would it be like if we had a series of these in Toronto. Maybe we support them with ads along the way, or usage fees like on the 407 (but perhaps with a sliding scale). I feel confident that if we had a good network of trails like this in Toronto more people would commute by bike as it would clearly be faster than a car, but without much of the stress and conflict we currently experience on the roads.

What I also notice about the trails are the number of people of all ages there. I see everyone from people in their 60’s-70’s all the way down to 2-3 years old. Again, remove the risk/conflict with cars and it seems like a much more viable option.

This weekend if the weather cooperates I will likely head north again and see if I can’t get more than 15 km out of town. Meanwhile, it looks as if cycling to work every day but Thursday is a very viable option.