Montreal City Weblog

Kate 19:22 on 2020-09-15 Permalink Reply  

• Dhomas 19:43 on 2020-09-15 Permalink

  So, they claim no one is shopping on account of the pandemic. What better time to build? You won’t be stopping the shoppers, they’re already not there! Is it better to impact the flow of shoppers during good times?

• Benoit 20:43 on 2020-09-15 Permalink

  There’s only 2-3 weeks of work left and then it’s done. They’ll have their parking spots back.

• j2 22:52 on 2020-09-15 Permalink

  The city destroyed businesses on Saint Laurent for worse reasons than this.

  RIP Mondofrites

• JoeNotCharles 02:59 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  On the one hand I normally roll my eyes hard at “we’re losing parking!” arguments, I’m all for a bike path on St-Denis, and I agree that now while fewer people are using the street anyway is the best time to put in a bike path…

  But on the other I have no idea what they’re doing on St-Denis. Why does a “bike path” require digging up odd-shaped holes all over the road? Just put up a divider like on Laurier!

• walkerp 07:42 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  This is the thing. Plante gets all the blame but the way actual construction is carried out here is so inefficient and likely corrupt. Now the administration must bear some of the responsibility but I suspect they have very little control over the actual execution of the plans. These companies probably increase scope as much as they can to maximize profits. And they just don’t work efficiently.

  I come from the west coast and there is a culture of competence in the trades out there. Now everybody complains about construction projects there as well and there have been many fiascos but it’s visibly shocking to see how badly the work is done here when you first move out here. Twenty goons standing around and acting tough while somebody accidently digs into a gas line or weeks and weeks where nobody is working at all. It’s crazy.

  I imagine the mayor and her administration have very little control over that.

• Ian 08:08 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  I really don’t understand why they couldn’t have just painted bike paths. In the email bulletin from Plateau Mont Royal it said construction on St Denis is supposed to last 6 weeks – I’ll be surprised if it’s completed by first snow.

• walkerp 08:29 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  My understanding is that painted bike paths are not actually safe and show little reduction in accidents. You need a real barrier between the bikes and the cars.

  But also see my post above about scope creep. I bet the contract has some language about lateness and overtime where the construction company gets more money up to a certain point and they probably push it right to the limit on every job.

• Ian 08:32 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  Be that as it may, here’s the quote from the bulletin:

  “Travaux du REV dans Le Plateau
  Les travaux d’aménagement du Réseau express vélo (REV) débuteront le mardi 8 septembre le long de la rue Saint-Denis dans Le Plateau.

  Les travaux devraient durer de cinq à six semaines et entraîneront la fermeture de la direction SUD de Saint-Denis, entre Saint-Joseph et Roy Est. Le détour devra se faire par la rue Saint-Urbain. La circulation sera toutefois maintenue vers le nord.”

  So six weeks minimum of St Denis being down to one lane through the main business district. At the tail end of one of the worst retail summers in memory.

  Oh well who knows, it only took about a decade for Saint Larry to mostly bounce back. Small price to pay for an essential bicycle highway.

• Spi 08:45 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  For the most part the REV is 80% painted lines. It’s not going to be like Rachel where there’s a concrete divider between the bicycle lane and the car lane the whole length, what will be separating the bikes and the cars will be the parked cars with nothing stopping the parked cars from impeeding onto the cycle lane.

  Most of the difficult work consists of digging up holes and pouring concrete “islands” at intersections to protect the start and finish of the bike lane with a handful of mid-block pedestrians crossings on st-denis.

• Kate 08:49 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  It’s been emphasized before, but St-Denis is basically a mini highway. Most people are using it to cut through the Plateau, not to meander along and shop with their car.

• Ian 09:06 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  While this is true, a 6 week (minimum) construction site taking over most of the street and sidewalks seems excessive and can’t possibly not hurt business. Go down and take a look for yourself. I did, it’s pretty obvious.

• walkerp 09:10 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  The problems of businesses dying has been going on on St-Denis for years now. And it started before that last big construction project. These issues are structural and demographic. The construction is a big factor for sure, but not the main one.

• Joey 09:23 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  The corresponding traffic jams are a real hoot too. Too bad our construction industry is so rotten. We elect political parties who want to driver nice things, well built. And we get shitty work that doesn’t last and takes too long to execute. Shame this work couldn’t have been done in spring when everything really was quieter. My hunch is the value of the St Denis REV will be clear as soon as it’s up and running, and most of us will forget the poor planning around the construction.

• DeWolf 10:35 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  As Spi said, most of the “odd-shaped holes” being dug on St-Denis are concrete islands that will serve as bus stops, which will prevent buses from cutting into the bike path. The same thing was done at a few corners on St-Urbain. Others will serve as pedestrian islands for new mid-block crosswalks, and a few others will be planters with greenery.

  All of these details were made public in May when the city released detailed maps and renderings. There were also several information sessions held on Zoom during confinement.

• DeWolf 10:37 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  Here’s a PDF with all sorts of information:

  https://ville.montreal.qc.ca/documents/Adi_Public/CE/CE_DA_ORDI_2020-05-20_08h30_REV_presentation_CE_20200520.pdf

  BTW, “paint some lines on the street and call it a day” is exactly the approach that has gotten so many cyclists killed over the years.

• Jack 10:49 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  “The haze over Montreal on Tuesday is smoke from the raging West Coast wildfires. It’s high in the atmosphere so it should not affect our breathing”…..freaking bike paths !

• Kevin 11:04 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  Striving to declare that the street is failing because of just one thing is as nonsensical as the anti-masker covidiots believing Trump is waiting for the right moment to round up and execute millions of child-trafficking cannibal pedophiles.

  It’s the disappearance of unique destination stores and the construction in neighbouring areas and the rise of online shopping and the changing demographic and the pro-bike anti-car administration and some other je ne sais quoi.

  If it were in Manhattan, St. Denis would be one way with parking on both sides and divided bike lane — and residential high rises up and down the street.

• Ian 11:51 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  Yes of course, painted bike paths kill people! How could I have been so foolish? I expect they will remove the painted bidirectional bike path from my street posthaste as soon as I inform my elected representatives of this terrible mistake on their parts.

• DeWolf 12:00 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  You’re being disingenuous, Ian. A residential side street is not the same as St-Denis. You’re also ignoring years of research that has produced actual evidence that painted bike lanes are much more dangerous than bike lanes protected by bollards or other barriers.

  https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/more-than-a-stripe-of-paint-needed-to-keep-cyclists-safe

• Joey 12:37 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  @Ian in fact your street is a great example of the futility of painted bike lanes. I would like to ask my Hasidic cousins (who may not even acknowledge our shared heritage) what piece of scripture their respective rabbis have identified as allowing them to break every rule of the road known to man. Double-park your minivan in a bike lane while on your phone? It’s God’s will!

• dhomas 13:52 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  I live on a street with painted bike paths. This is what you get with those:
  https://mtlcityweblog.com/2020/07/08/caught-doing-175-km-h-on-the-new-bridge/#comment-143091

• Ian 15:08 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  @Joey yeah they seem pretty cavalier for sure, but their kids all ride on the sidewalks so they obviously aren’t too concerned with the people that use the bike lane. We also have speed bumps, which are way more effective than pretty much anything anyhow. I always laugh when some tough guy in his fancy muscle car bottoms out as I’m hanging out on my stoop.

  FWIW the only accident I have every seen on my street was this summer when an older guy on the bike path heading south ran into two kids that darted out from the alley on their scooters in front of him, he hit one, and he went over his handlebars. Fortunately nobody was injured too badly, just shaken up.

  @dhomas yes of course therefore everyone drives 175 on streets with bike lanes, I’d better notify my elected representative right away.

• MarcG 15:44 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  I’m sure your elected official is quite aware that painting lines on the road doesn’t prevent people from crossing them…?

• dhomas 16:00 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  @Ian I never said *everyone* speeds through bike lanes. Clearly, as I also mentioned the law-abiding driver directly in front of the maniac. What MarcG says is true. It’s much easier to cross a line of paint on the ground than it is to cross a concrete median. Remove the option and you get near 100% effectiveness at removing cars from bike lanes. Just like it’s much harder to speed over speed bumps, as you mentioned.

• Ian 16:16 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  So put in speed bumps &/ or concrete turnpikes. They didn’t have to close Remembrance for 6 weeks to install those. Even on Bellechasse the dividers are just posts bolted directly into the road surface. Besides, I thought the median was just at the bus stops… they need to leave curbside for the delivery trucks, I think.

• MarcG 16:19 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  Those bolted posts are useless, you often see them folded over or knocked right out and chucked on the roadside.

• Ian 17:41 on 2020-09-16 Permalink

  Are you suggesting the implementation of the REV on Bellechasse was a waste of money? That’s how they did it. If you sincerely believe it to be ineffective and or unsafe I guess PM needs to be alerted, stat! Clearly they don’t know what they are doing!
  😉

• Raymond Lutz 19:24 on 2020-09-20 Permalink

  I can’t hold back reviving this old thread (the establishment against bike lanes). In France there’s a big manufacture closing, Bridgestone. There’s some commentaries on TV, here on TF1

  “Les «pistes cyclables en surnombre» invoquées dans le commentaire sur la fermeture de Bridgestone.
  Et en conclusion: «Moins de voitures, c’est moins d’usines et moins d’emploi. Un chômeur qui roule à vélo, c’est d’abord un chômeur»

  Sounds familiar?