It\u2019s as big as the Olympics, says Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada. The UCI Road World Championships is coming to Montreal next September, just five months from now. Yet the administration assures Montrealers that the city\u00a0\u2014 and its roads\u00a0\u2014 will be ready to handle 1,000 cyclists from 80 different countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have a choice,\u201d says Executive Committee Vice-President Christine Black. The Montr\u00e9al-Nord borough mayor is responsible for family, seniors, youth, sports and recreation.<\/p>\n
This past February, Martinez Ferrada was navigating some of the worst pothole-ridden streets in town, when she found herself with \u201cdeux flats.\u201d Even she has admitted that Montreal\u2019s roads are the worst they have been in a long time.<\/p>\n
No problem, says Black. Measures will be put in place \u201cto ensure that the roads are beautiful, not only for the athletes who will be using them, but also for the citizens,\u201d for the race routes, and for the surrounding areas. In 2017, when then-mayor Denis Coderre brought in the ill-fated Formula E race, he had the roads paved but only around the race route. Granted, the city\u2019s streets did not look as bad then as they do now.<\/p>\n
This will be the second time Montreal has hosted the event. The first was in 1974, the first one held outside Europe. By all accounts it was a success. Jean Drapeau, the man who built an island and a subway system for Expo \u201967, and a village for the 1976 Olympics, was mayor.<\/p>\n
The annual bicycle race, organized by the Switzerland-based Union Cyclist Internationale, consists of several events, with athletes competing on national teams. It is expected to bring 500,000 spectators into the city, with another 200 million around the world watching on television \u201cwho will be able to see and learn about Montreal,\u201d says Black. \u201cAnd some of them will probably say \u2018That looks good, I want to go visit\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The race routes will cover seven boroughs plus Westmount, and eight towns in the Mont\u00e9r\u00e9gie.<\/p>\n
There will, of course, be road closures\u00a0\u2014 a section of Parc Avenue from Sept. 5 to Oct. 4, temporary street closures two hours before the race opening as soon as possible afterwards, and also bus route diversions and \u201cparking solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of work to do,\u201d Black says, \u201cbut we are making the effort to ensure that we can meet Montrealers\u2019 expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lest comparisons be made with the 1976 Olympics, and Drapeau\u2019s clumsy assurance that they could \u201cno more run a deficit than a man can have baby,\u201d Black says the event is supposed to bring in $76 million in revenue.<\/p>\n
Inasmuch as Val\u00e9rie Plante had always been characterized as anti-car, at least one commentator has accused Martinez Ferrada of being anti-bike (based on the city\u2019s plan to either dismantle or hide its bike-counting program). And while the mayor did make the campaign commitment to audit the city\u2019s bicycle paths, in January her administration budgeted nearly $565 million to maintain the existing ones.<\/p>\n
Cycling enthusiasts are encouraged by the event. \u201cThe UCI Road World Championship, like all major cycling events, can help spark greater interest and enthusiasm for cycling,\u201d says Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Rheault of V\u00e9lo Qu\u00e9bec. \u201cBut it\u2019s also about the tangible improvements made to host the event. For example, the resurfacing of Voie maritime will create an even better playground for cyclists. And the fact that citizens can ride the same courses as the professionals is incredibly inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n
If hosting the event ends up raising the profile of cycling in Montreal, it could become even more of a cycling city than even Plante had imagined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s as big as the Olympics, says Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada. The UCI Road World Championships is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,22491,635,22493,2338,2882],"class_list":{"0":"post-621120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cycle-sport","11":"tag-cycling","12":"tag-land-transport","13":"tag-montreal","14":"tag-transport"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621120","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=621120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}