please post this video widely. Also please like the Alliance des Pietons et Cyclists
We’re also 30 years later, and don’t have nearly the same cycling culture. They had a large population density before cars became mainstream. Over here, when you do a die in or a critical mass, you have a tiny number of people, so it doesn’t have the same weight. Moreover, the automobile industry now has a huge lobby working very hard to keep people driving. They have been at the forefront of pushing for restrictive security measures for cyclists (such as helmet laws), which they much prefer to bike paths since it discourages people from biking.
So we have to work on the cultural shift 
Let people know that tons of their tax dollars are going to pay to treat people for breathing diseases strongly correlated to car emissions, that they are directly suffering from those same breathing diseases such as asthma, that parks are way prettier than parking lots, etc. Also, the same corporations lobbying the government are a major marketing force driving the “green” products add, but “green” cars are no more than an antithesis. The overall pollution generated over the whole lifetime of the product is not orders of magnitude smaller.
And everytime we enrage a driver by making him/her feel impotent, we prove that there are faster alternative transportation options And it’s up to us to make them realize that if they find they have to wait behind us, we find that we have to wait behind them. Ever been stuck behind a long line of cars blocking a 10m wide street, plus one lane of parking!!! which all in all only is moving about 12 people? You could have 150 cyclists blowing by in the meantime…
but… the title… had nothing to with the video
Seriously though, what I got from this is either the Dutch are terrible drivers or that we are more OK with people dying.
yes it does: give cyclists their own space away from cars and everyone stays happy. and I think regarding the latter part of your post, it’s that the dutch are more effective protesters than north american cyclists have been up to now. or maybe we are just as effective but our governments are more blockheaded.
I do love nothing more than zooming past the people on St-Denis at rush hour. I only wish people standing in crowded metro cars could feel the same delicious burn in their souls.
My only worry is that mainstream bike lanes would be SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO slow. If the average speed was 20, I’d shoot myself or just go draft behind cars on the freeway instead.
Also, winter biking in Montreal fucking sucks. Just saying.
What about the war on the car?
From the responses in this thread I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re more OK with people dying
bike lanes are a great example of ‘build them and the people will come.’ In the Netherlands it’s no exaggeration to say that you can bike from any point A to any point B in the whole country, including downtown centres, riding exclusively on bike paths. These paths usually run parallel to roads, or through wooded areas, or at the back of farmers’ fields making for great leisure riding where cars can’t even go. At intersections with roads, the bike path often goes under the road. There’s nothing better for commuting, and my gma did her groceries on bike well into her late 80s.
It’s true however that i does get slow as hell on the paths, so training is usually done on open roads, and since drivers aren’t used to cyclists anymore all that much, as opposed to say Montreal drivers, it’s often a pretty dangerous affair.
In any case we can’t deny that Montreal has been doing great things recently. A bike path like the ones along Cote Ste-Catherine, Rachel or again Maisonneuve, or St-Urbain (this latter not being a REAL bike path…), are simply unimaginable in Toronto.
A worthwhile read:
http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/early/2011/02/02/ip.2010.028696.full
I personally think the Maisonneuve bike path between McGill at Atwater is dangerous as fuck, but that’s just me, and may have no bearing on the reality.
And the last link in the article: http://www.20minutes.fr/article/1026880/velos-passent-rouge