{"id":593288,"date":"2026-04-09T21:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T21:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/593288\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T21:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T21:07:10","slug":"montreal-suspends-publication-of-bike-traffic-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/593288\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal suspends publication of bike-traffic data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Montreal bike-traffic data will not be available over the coming months after the city stopped paying the company tasked with collecting and sharing the data.<\/p>\n<p>Eco-Counter, which installed dozens of bicycle counters across the city and hosts the data-sharing platform, <a href=\"https:\/\/villedemontreal-sum.eco-counter.com\/?siteId=300020478\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">stopped updating the site March 18<\/a> as a result of the cut funding.<\/p>\n<p>The city says it now plans to install its own bike-counting technology and publish figures on <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/donnees.montreal.ca\/en\/?\">its open data website<\/a>, but a spokesperson said data isn\u2019t expected to be available until this summer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not really a logical decision,\u201d said V\u00e9lo Qu\u00e9bec CEO Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Rheault. \u201cChanging the technology isn\u2019t a problem,\u201d he said, but \u201cit\u2019s a bit weird not to have continuity\u201d from one technology to the next.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to have a hole\u201d in the data, he suggested, which he said will make it difficult for his group and others to monitor bike traffic in Montreal.<\/p>\n<p>Civil servants under the previous administration made the decision to suspend payments to Eco-Counter, city spokesperson Hugo Bourgoin said in an email.<\/p>\n<p>The civil servants recommended the city avoid paying for the platform, he said, and to remove the 59 \u201cinstrusive\u201d counters installed directly on city roads. The city plans to install the new bike counters higher up, Bourgoin said, including on existing structures.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom now until the new detectors are functional, we will continue to collect and analyze data from the current detectors,\u201d he said, adding that the city plans to publish the data this summer.<\/p>\n<p>Even once the city publishes the data, Rheault said using the open data site will be a downgrade from the current Eco-Counter platform. The open data site \u201cisn\u2019t updated regularly,\u201d he said, and presents data in a less readable format than the Eco-Counter site did.<\/p>\n<p>Elected officials should \u201caccept leadership\u201d on the issue, Rheault said, calling on city councillors to intervene.<\/p>\n<p>Contacted for comment, a spokesperson for Ensemble Montr\u00e9al reiterated the information provided by Bourgoin.<\/p>\n<p>Eco-Counter and Projet Montr\u00e9al did not respond to The Gazette\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/montrealgazette.com\/author\/jawilson\/\" class=\"postmedia-author-card__image-link\" rel=\"author image nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Profile picture of Jack Wilson\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/jack-wilson-2-e1774792320471.jpg\" class=\"avatar avatar-96 photo\" height=\"96\" width=\"96\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tI&#8217;ve reported for The Gazette since 2024. I love covering a good politics story, but any day I tell Montrealers something new about the world around them feels like a good one. Got a tip for me? Email me at jawilson@postmedia.com\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Montreal bike-traffic data will not be available over the coming months after the city stopped paying the company&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,635,2338],"class_list":["post-593288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}