François Cardinal on St-Denis
François Cardinal considers the decline of St-Denis as a commercial street and its merchants’ perverse rejection of a bike path. As a footnote, a CBC piece on five ways bike paths benefit cities, based on actual evidence from other places.
david100 20:45 on 2019-06-09 Permalink
Saint Denis is a very heavily trafficked arterial, and the top thing that merchants should be campaigning for, in my opinion, should be that traffic is significantly slowed with timed lights, longer east/west pedestrian crossing lights, and the introduction of a green center median and narrowing of the traffic lanes. Another great thing that they’ll bitterly reject would be an extension of the sidewalks the entire width of the parking lanes, along with a row of trees and planters (and poles) to protect pedestrians on those sidewalks. The reasoning: Saint Denis could be a great walking street, a true destination like it used to be before all the other neighborhoods saw improved main streets.
I hate to say it because I’m a pretty hardcore anti-car person, but probably the city would be justified in putting a parking garage in somewhere to help all these businesses. My recommendation would be to retool the Berri underpass – excavate and build a mechanical parking garage where there’s now road, and run the road over top and down the hill like it ran decades ago. The superfluous side roads could be running on either side of Sherbrooke could be sold to developers to help pay for it, or used for social housing or something.
Kate 23:28 on 2019-06-09 Permalink
david100, that location is too far away from the area in question. On the map the distance is nothing much but there’s a whole dead block and a possible uphill walk from there. Not going to help, especially in wintertime.
Maybe you could just get away with putting in a multi-storey parking garage behind the Très Saint Sacrement, next to Mont-Royal metro. It’s already a parking lot, and although there was some loose talk about the borough building a new library there, I haven’t seen anything about that for some time. I’ve a feeling that nearby residents would kick up a fuss because those things are always ugly and they’d massacre property values on adjoining streets.
david 18:29 on 2019-06-11 Permalink
I know the area well, lived on Square Saint Louis for 10+ years, it’s really not all that far. But I take your point that some people are unlikely to want to walk so far, if their main goal is some shop near Mont-Royal. Plus, yeah, there’s that psychological gap with that Cherrier/Pine/Roy block and the government building, makes St. Denis feel like it hasn’t yet begun, though I wouldn’t call it a “dead block” per se, they should definitely build on those goddamned parking lots like they were making noises about a few years ago.
I don’t think putting a parking structure makes a lot of sense just outright, I think it does make sense though if you take out street parking on St. Denis. My idea with Berri was because it would be salutory for the neighborhood to rebuild that underpass, and it’s already mostly excavated, saving big money.
Jonathan 09:27 on 2019-06-12 Permalink
I don’t understand why Cardinal doesn’t propose just disallowing parking on each side of the street during the respective rush hours. This is done on so many roads in the city. It would create a lane in the direction of rush hour and still keep available parking during the majority of the day. I also agree with David but have reservations about the underground parking.