Montreal is finding that taking streets away from cars pays off.

With wearisome winter a distant memory, this city’s asphalt has been taken over by cyclists and pedestrians this summer — to local and international praise.

The latest installation of bike culture is Bixi, the continent’s most ambitious public bike-sharing system. Launched in May and loosely based on the Vélib program in Paris, Bixi’s 3,000 custom-designed bikes are turning heads. The New York Times and London’s The Guardian have lauded them — a welcome bit of publicity, given that Montreal’s tourism industry is hurting because of the economic downturn and the loss of the Canadian Grand Prix. Bixis — part bike, part taxi — are distributed via 300 self-serve stations and popular among Montrealers and tourists around downtown and adjacent areas. (They are intended for short trips.) In the first two weeks of the program, 26,000 trips were taken.

Mayor Gérald Tremblay, who is struggling in his bid for a third term in November’s election, gets himself photographed on a Bixi bike any chance he gets, especially when foreign counterparts visit: most recently, that included the mayors of Paris and Seattle.

Bixi users can choose from many routes. Montreal just added 60 kilometres to its 500-km bike-path network, meaning that it’s well on its way to its goal of 800 km by 2014.

The expansion was buoyed by the success of a 4-km path on downtown’s de Maisonneuve Boulevard. The path, which attracted 3,600 cyclists daily during its first summer last year, suddenly made it easier (and safer — it’s protected by a concrete barrier) for people to bike to work and to stores. This summer, the traffic’s heavier.

Cycling isn’t a new obsession in this city. This year marks the 25th anniversary of Montreal’s annual Bike Fest, which culminates in the Tour de l’Île, one of the world’s biggest cycling events with 30,000 participants riding a different 52-km route every year.

All this two-wheeled motion cements Montreal’s reputation as one of North America’s most bike-friendly cities: specifically, it ranks in fourth place, according to www.ForbesTraveler.com, after Portland, Ore; Boulder, Colo.; and San Diego. Montreal hopes the recognition, coming as the world seeks to cut car use and encourage healthy habits, will lure in new visitors. The bike initiatives also give the city something to gloat about to Torontonians. “Montreal pedals past us,” read a headline over a Toronto Star article about Canada’s cycling paradise.

On the pedestrian front, big swaths of Montreal are blocked off to traffic to make way for the annual summer festival of festivals. Now, closed-off streets are the main attraction. A small stretch of cobblestoned St. Paul Street in Old Montreal will be pedestrian-only for parts of the summer.

And after a 2008 pilot project got rave reviews from residents, businesses and tourists, this year Montreal extended by a month the summer pedestrian-only use of 16 blocks of Ste. Catherine Street East that includes the gay village. For 14 weeks, the stretch is one long terrace, with buskers, artists and musicians providing entertainment, as will the Divers/Cité gay/lesbian festival and Gay Pride Week. The latter two events are lucrative for Montreal, rated the world’s third-best same-sex honeymoon spot by www.OutTraveler.com, after Hawaii and Provincetown, Mass.

All the cycling and pedestrian projects initially caused controversy. As in Toronto, where the issue of expanded bike lanes is just heating up, critics warned that they would stifle business, exacerbate traffic and cause accidents. They were proved wrong.

It’s not all rosy, however. Montreal drivers, cyclists and pedestrians still treat traffic lights as decorative street art, and “crosswalk painter” remains the city’s most futile job, although police are increasingly cracking down on jaywalkers and scofflaw cyclists and motorists.

And, of course, mention cyclists or pedestrians or motorists to a Montrealer at this time of year and you’ll get an earful about the other two categories and their wanton disregard for basic rules of the road.

The acrimony won’t last. All it will take is a blast of Montreal winter for car drivers to get their streets back. IE