You Deserve a Montreal Bike Weekend
Experience the bliss of bike lanes, pedestrianized streets and people everywhere.
If you haven’t been to Montreal recently, do yourself a favour and go visit. Take your bike or get yourself signed up for the Bixi bike sharing program.
Do it as a weekend. Or for those of us in the 613, you can even do it as a day trip.
See how a city comes alive as streets are pedestrianized, as the bike network reaches a level of completeness, and as people are prioritized over cars.
Best weekend for urban biking in North America
Hands-down the best weekend in North America for city biking is the Go Vélo Montréal Festival, organized by Vélo Quebec.
For 2024, it happened this past weekend. It will be back in 2025 in early June.
As a family, we’ve been doing this for the past three years. We’re now at the point where the kids are bringing their friends along.
Friday Tour la nuit
While the Go Vélo Montréal Festival is technically a week long, it culminates in two big rides on the final weekend.
Tour la nuit happens on the Friday evening. It’s a 25km ride through the streets of central Montréal, starting at 8pm and continuing to about midnight. This year, 17,000 riders took part in the ride.
It doesn’t take long before you are riding in the dark surrounded by the chaos of others on bikes, most decorated with lights. It’s a surreal experience biking around a major city after dark on streets that are fully closed to cars.
Saturday in the city
The next big ride takes place on Sunday. So Saturday is for goofing around in Montréal’s bike lanes. And checking out pedestrianized streets. And stopping at cafés.
This year, we cycled to the borough of Verdun. Its rue Wellington (see photo later in this post) has been called the coolest street in the world by Time Out magazine. Wellington is now fully pedestrianized for the summer.
You can get there by cycling along the Lachine Canal — perfect for a relaxed ride far from traffic.
Montréal is living proof that build it and they will come applies to bike infrastructure. Montréal is approaching a network that can be considered ‘complete’ in certain parts of the city.
The sheer number of people in the bike lanes is astonishing. And from my experience, those numbers are increasing quickly every year.
The number of people using bike share is also remarkable. Lots of locals signing up for the $22/month subscription.
But also tons of tourists using the Bixi bikes to see the city.
I’d like to know how much tourism to Montréal is now due to people flocking to the city as one of the few North American destinations where bike lanes + bike share make cycling around the city not just a possibility but a delight.
Sunday Tour de l’île
The festival’s Tour de l’île wraps up the festival on Sunday morning. This year, the event had about 18,000 riders. It was a picture perfect day for riding.
For most people, it is a 50 km ride, although it had a shorter 28 km version this year. The entire course is on roads fully closed to cars.
There are also longer Discovery versions — at 68 or 96 km lengths — which include riding on streets open to car traffic.
We ride up at the front — hence the wide open roads in the photo below of Wellington Street. If you ride in the pack, that would be a road completely filled with bikes.
Until next time
Without a doubt, we’ll be back for the 2025 Go Vélo festival. I’m sure we will also find ourselves in Montréal for another day trip or two this summer.
Cycling around a major city that has awesome bike infrastructure and delightful pedestrianized streets just never gets old.
