Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:54 on 2020-07-31 Permalink Reply  

• Ian 09:03 on 2020-07-31 Permalink

  While I don’t doubt this, I do question how these numbers are being presented…
  “Les voies dites «actives et sécuritaires» ont vu leur achalandage de vélos bondir de 36% cet été alors que le trafic routier a chuté de 20% depuis le début de la pandémie”

  Well duh, of course roads that are closed to cars are seeing more traffic in other modes.

  FWIW most of the people I know that have cars & work remotely have been doing their best to be at a cottage throughout the entire summer – I’m sure that is also contributing greatly to the lack of drivers in town.

• walkerp 10:03 on 2020-07-31 Permalink

  You can see how single-issue, lobby-driven ideology has infested so many brains. It’s a meme that has become the accepted truth for many that not having cars means businesses die. Hello, we are in a global pandemic that has caused the greatest economic downturn since the depression.

  The car lobby and its adherents are becoming more and more like the NRA in their tactics. Anything that might limit at all the power of the car even the tiniest bit is attacked hyper-aggressively as a destruction of all freedom and wealth. And then they paint people who just want to have a slightly quieter, less polluted and safer city as extremists.

• Kevin 10:37 on 2020-07-31 Permalink

  Do we want a city where nobody leaves their neighbourhood is shaping up to be the question of the next election.

• MarcG 10:56 on 2020-07-31 Permalink

  My wife and I regularly walk or bike from Verdun to Lasalle, Lachine, St-Henri, Little Burgundy, Westmount, PSC, and Old Montreal. Even in the winter it’s easy and fun to walk to different neighbourhoods if you’re physically able. When we ate at Joe Beef many years ago, guess how we got there? We haven’t purchased a car because we know what will happen if we do: we’ll start driving places we could easily get to on our own steam and before you know it, we’ll hate PM and street sales and moan all day about traffic and shovelling snow like everyone else.

• Andrew 11:15 on 2020-07-31 Permalink

  There were a lot of complaints from locals in the St-Henri Facebook group, not about the parking spaces but making it one-way seemed to have a lot of issues. It was poorly marked so a lot of drivers were just going the wrong way in the single lane, the bus routes were diverted all the way to St-Antoine, and the number of cars being diverted onto smaller residential streets.

• Kevin 11:36 on 2020-07-31 Permalink

  One note: we don’t actually know if walking and cycling are more popular. Projet Montreal is presenting a single data point as an increase.

  Sue Montgomery and Marvin Rotrand have been squabbling on Twitter about the Terrebonne bike lane, each throwing out photos, and I’m just looking at this going: this is stupid and useless. A snapshot doesn’t tell you what’s going on with *flow* — and without collecting data before something starts, you can’t tell afterwards if the changes made had a positive or negative effect.

• Chris 19:00 on 2020-07-31 Permalink

  >Well duh, of course roads that are closed to cars are seeing more traffic in other modes.

  Duh indeed. But maybe their point is that there’s *twice as big* an increase in cyclists as there is a drop in motorists?

  >…without collecting data before something starts…

  At the street-level, yes. But we’ve collected enough data already for the planetary, country, or city level: less cars and more bikes would improve many things.

• j2 01:23 on 2020-08-01 Permalink

  Re : terrebonne, as I represented my family’s interest earlier, the bike path starts after the school so we are pleased with how it turned out, safer for kids, maybe cars and bikes can pass. It would be great if it was because of my partner’s and other parents’ advocacy but in any case, we’ll take it.