REV on Bellechasse: a problem?
A dozen people with businesses on Bellechasse have written a letter to the mayor complaining about the Réseau express vélo (REV) planned for their street.
This is such bullshit.
Do you know Bellechasse at all? I’ve walked and cycled along parts of it, and have just gone along it on Streetview to remind myself what it’s like. It is not a commercial street. For blocks and blocks it’s just sort of nothing much – duplexes, small apartment buildings, a few parks and schools. You’re lucky to spot a dépanneur on a corner.
Whoever got up this letter would have had to drive for blocks – I’m willing to bet they neither walked nor cycled – to find a dozen businesses, let alone a dozen businesses whose owners could be talked into signing a complaint.
Ab so lute bullshit.
mare 23:09 on 2020-09-13 Permalink
Well, I currently am or have been a client of at least 10 business on Bellechasse, so your Google Streetview trip was very cursory. Two deps, a dog groomer, a pizza place, a bike shop, two garages, a coop-café, a laundromat and a hair dresser. And then there’s also a gym and dance school, another garage, another hairdresser, a Hindu temple and many other places in blocks further away from me.
At the moment they’re also doing major roadwork, started after the REV was made (water and electric /fibre conduits) so the situation is even worse. I love the bike path, but I can also understand they’re annoyed and worried, especially after many months of lockdown.
mare 23:34 on 2020-09-13 Permalink
4400 citizens complaining about parking? Of course people are complaining about parking, there’s never enough of it, especially in the winter during street cleaning. Signing a petition is cheap.
Another annoying thing is that those 4400 people now use the ruelles to circle around until they’ve found that elusive parking spot, because Bellechasse is a one way street now. Getting around by car is objectively more complicated, there are not many places were both the North-South and East-West streets are one-way, and it requires some readjustments to your mental map. For example if I want to get from the front of my house to the house of my neighbours in the adjacent street I’d have to drive between 6 to 10 minutes including two traffic lights. One minute by bike, 2 by foot.
Ian 23:58 on 2020-09-13 Permalink
That’s my regular morning bike ride, I go from one end to the other. There aren’t tons of businesses but there are enough to complain, 800 parking spots removed is a lot regardless of how you slice it. The Dairy Queen has it’s own parking but if I recall correctly it’s certainly one of the few businesses on Bellechasse that does. Besides the strip by st Hubert I imagine most business on bellechasse would be locals or drivers since there’s no bus or metro nearby for most of the street.
It seems kind of hand wavey to dismiss the concerns of people that are actually there.
DeWolf 01:19 on 2020-09-14 Permalink
Bellechasse is the east-west street in Rosemont with the smallest number of businesses by far. Bélanger, Saint-Zotique, Beaubien and Rosemont all have plenty of shops and various other mitigating factors that make them less appealing for the REV. So totally either you scrap the idea of having a safe cycling route or you deal with the fact that some people will be inconvenienced.
Remember when entire neighbourhoods were torn down to build highways? Now we’re talking about a bicycle highway that sacrifices 800 parking spots on a *six kilometre* stretch of road with thousands more parking spots on cross streets. Rosemont isn’t exactly downtown. Maybe all the parking spots are taken in the middle of the night, but I certainly see no shortage of places to park when I pass through.
Ian 08:26 on 2020-09-14 Permalink
Smallest number perhaps but it doesn’t mean they aren’t there, and haven’t been there for decades as an integral part of the neighbourhood. Like I said, if you live there it probably matters to you more. I’m sure the residents of lower Westmount were none too pleased that half their neighbourhood got razed for the VME. I’m none too pleased that happened either, especially now that that the the VME was falling apart so badly the neighbourhood got screwed up for 10 years repairing it and is still screwed up even now.
…but that doesn’t mean that somehow we need to enact a 4 lane “bike highway” (your words) on Rosemont to get revenge. That’s a really weird way of looking at things. Let’s be real here, none of this really has to do with bicycles. Removing residential parking is to make it less convenient to own cars, because those in charge feel that there are too many cars and can’t think of any way to reduce the number of on-island cars other than with punitive infrastructure. PM is all stick and no carrot in this and many other ways. I think to some extent this “punitive progressiveness” frame of mind is endemic to Quebec politics, not unlike how the OLF thinks the best way to promote the French language is to suppress other languages.
In any case, I stick by what I said – if it’s not your neighbourhood, it seems kind of hand wavey to dismiss the concerns of people that are actually there.
ant6n 10:48 on 2020-09-14 Permalink
Wait, so the REV is not an carrot to encourage bicycling?
DeWolf 11:43 on 2020-09-14 Permalink
Ian, I’m not sure how you got the idea that I think the REV is some kind of revenge against highways. My point is that it’s 2020 and we can make significant, eco-friendly infrastructure improvements without major disruption – instead of losing a neighbourhood, some people have to walk a little bit further to their cars.
I’m not sure how you can say “none of this really has to do with bicycles.” That’s your own weird idea that this is some kind of calculated attempt to punish Rosemont drivers. The REV was conceived as a way to encourage cycling through international best-practice cycling infrastructure. That means it needs to fulfil certain basic criteria: it has to be protected from cars, it needs to be wide enough for faster riders to pass slower ones, and there need to be two unidirectional lanes because the bidirectional ones (eg Rachel) are notoriously dangerous and prone to overcrowding. That’s the basis by which parking was removed, because east of Papineau, Bellechasse becomes quite narrow.
So what’s your solution? Give up on promoting cycling to anyone who isn’t comfortable riding 30km/h in mixed traffic? More half-measures like the janky bidirectional paths that Montreal has relied on for so long? Reduce the REV lanes by half to accommodate a row of parked cars at the expense of cyclist safety?
We’re in the middle of a climate crisis. That may sound like a cliché at this point but it means we’re at a crossroads: either we give up and forget about active mobility, and consider cycling some kind of eccentric hobby like in so many other North American cities, or we put the necessary infrastructure in place to bring the cycling modal share up to 20, 30 or 40 percent in central neighbourhoods, so we have a chance of reducing carbon emissions and improving public health.
Ian 12:07 on 2020-09-14 Permalink
Cycling is great if you are fit and relatively close to wherever you have to go and never have to carry much.
That said, I don’t really care about a world-class bike path. What I suggest to get rid of cars is simply make them unnecessary by having a world class public transit system. If I wanted to get to Bellechasse and St-Michel, for instance, it would take 42 minutes by public transit – or a 15 minute drive. I could also bike there in 20 minutes, but I’ll tell you what I won’t be doing when it’s -20 out and I have a delivery to make.
And that’s just Bellechasse. There is no reason that if I want to go north of the 40 an into VSL by transit it should take me an hour… but it does. it takes a full hour and a half to get to Ste Anne by transit at best.The annoying part is that I have reasons to need to go to those places – but I do. And I know I’m not the only one.
The thing is that there may be this world class bike path on Bellechasse, but that’s not going to make people ride their bikes as tehir main means of transportation more unless they live right in that area, are healthy, and the weather is good. Getting rid of 800 parking spaces is great optics but climate crisis or no for somebody with limited mobility that relies on public transit it’s no better than greenwashing – the only way that it actually makes the city better in any meaningful way is by reducing the number of cars -which is admittedly desirable but in no way improves our urban infrastructure as those roads are still there for things like delivery trucks and buses and even bikes – and if there is no improved public transit to go along with making it hard to have a car, it’s insulting to expect people to simply accept it.
The thing that I suspect a lot of the bike-infrastructure-solves-everything folks don’t get – for those of us who are neither pro bike nor pro car, you’re not helping by insisting that all the city’s efforts go into bikes and traffic slowing corridors and the like – you also have to figure out how to help people get around. God forbid anyone out there dare work more than 10 km from where they live or ever have to get that far for an appointment or have stroller-age children or be ill or have limited mobility or need a walker or be blind… stay home, losers. This city isn’t for you.
I know the city only has limited control over public transit but it’s pathetic and unreliable. You can build a bike path from here to Mars and it won’t solve that core problem – but everyone gets to go around patting each other on the back for doing a great job? Ridiculous.
DeWolf 12:56 on 2020-09-14 Permalink
Ian, literally nobody is suggesting that bike infrastructure solves everything, or that cycling is a panacea. Who on earth suggests building bike infrastructure at the expense of improving public transit? You make it seem as if transit is being compromised but it has been improved in tandem with active transportation investments. Cycling is just one part of active mobility. Before the pandemic, buses were finally becoming reliable once again, and the metro was operating at frequencies I’ve never seen before.
And improvements in cycling infrastructure almost always come in conjunction with improvements in the pedestrian environment. I know you grumble about corner bulb-outs but they exist specifically to make it safer to cross the street while also adding greenery that makes streets more pleasant to walk down. The planted medians that have been built on Clark and Rachel make it infinitely more pleasant to walk down both of those streets. The REV on Saint-Denis is being accompanied by mid-block crosswalks and pedestrian islands in the middle of the road that make it easier to cross.
As for the bit about only young, fit people being able to ride bikes – that’s easily disproven by looking at who is actually cycling around Montreal. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the number of cyclists in Montreal has exploded over the past 10 years in direct response to the improvement in cycling infrastructure, and cyclists are more diverse than ever before. I’m out every day and I see way more kids than I used to, and no shortage of grey-haired, pot-bellied people riding bikes at their own pace. And there are plenty of people on mobility scooters and in electric wheelchairs who seem happy about the new REV and other protected bike lanes.
I don’t really get how you can be so sweepingly dismissive about bike infrastructure if you’re concerned about alternative transportation. It’s not the only tool in the kit, but it’s an important one.
Ian 16:28 on 2020-09-14 Permalink
I think you’re missing my point – I’m not suggesting transit instead of bikes, but rather that there needs to be a focus on transit, too.
There are lots of older folks riding bikes, but not people who are infirm. Can you imagine trying to ride a motorized wheelchair to a hospital appointment at St. Mary’s? I am happy that you are healthy enough and close enough to whatever you need to get to that you can get by with biking, but be aware that predicating your urban planning on the notion that there is nobody old or infirm anywhere in town is seriously problematic given the notion of universal accessibility that the city has been working towards for decades.
Also worth noting I worked in the garment business for many years, in light manufacturing, and I was literally the only person in the whole factory employing hundreds of people that bicycled to work. I’m not saying bicycling is a bit classist but I don’t see bike racks at the manufacturing plants so I get a feeling there are a lot of assumptions about how the world is by some of the readers of this blog.
I’m not pretending that I know what all the solutions are – but bicycling is not the only solution, and it appears to be the only idea (for different reasons) that Projet has.