Advocates push for wider adoption of cargo bikes in Montreal

With the annual Go Vélo bike festival, which includes the Tour de l’Île, just over advocates want to draw attention to another green solution: cargo bikes.

“In the city, in the very dense areas such as centre-ville or Plateau-Mont-Royal, it’s really essential to go towards these kinds of solutions,” stated Magali Bebronne, programme director at Vélo Québec.

That shift is already taking place. Some parcel delivery companies, like Purolator, have already ditched some of their trucks in favour of E-cargo bikes (two-wheeled and three-wheeled).

“It’s very productive for us,” Sean Doherty, the company’s senior director of operations in Eastern Canada, told Global News. “I mean, it takes away a lot of the concerns we have with high-density delivery in high-traffic areas, where there are a lot of parking concerns. Parking tickets are a huge issue.”

Purolator started using cargo bikes in Montreal in 2019 thanks to the city-backed Colibri “mini-hub” initiative, which started out as a pilot project that year. The process involves having delivery trucks drop off parcels at a central location — a mini hub — then, instead of vans, e-cargo bikes are used to deliver parcels door to door. The city estimates, on average, companies will end up using one truck instead of five.

“Last year it was just one or two companies that were using bikes here, and now we have four companies,” said Caroline Marie of Co-op Carbone, which operates two mini-hubs: Colibri Maisonneuve and Colibri Iberville.

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Doherty said the bikes, of which there are four in Montreal, save the company money on gas and truck maintenance, and make it faster and easier to get to clients.

“These cargo bikes can carry 40 to 60 packages at a time, so it makes it very very productive,” he said.

While cargo bikes may be new to most Montrealers and Canadians, they are much more common in places like New York and Paris. Marie-Astrid Leray is co-president of the 300-plus-member Boîtes à Vélo France, a union of businesses in France that use e-cargo bikes. For her, the cost benefits to companies are clear.

“It costs five times more to have a diesel truck than a bike, and it costs eight times more to have an electric truck than a bike,” she pointed out.

Bebronne also noted that cargo bikes are good for families, and could even replace a second car. The group is launching a month-long campaign in June to spread the word. She said, however, that with micro-mobility growing in popularity, cities have work to do.

“We need to adapt the infrastructure for that as well,” she said. “We need wider bike paths, bike paths that are going to allow safe overtaking of users at different speeds.”

She believes the more cars and trucks that can be removed from the roads, the better.