Pedestrianization notes for the Plateau
Plateau mayor Luc Rabouin has announced on Facebook:
- Mont-Royal Avenue will be fully pedestrianized between St‑Laurent and Fullum from June 20 to September 15.
- St-Laurent will be partly pedestrianized between Sherbrooke and Mont‑Royal from July 2 to September 6 – wider sidewalks with one traffic lane in the center.
- Duluth will be pedestrianized weekends only between St‑Laurent and St‑Denis from July 2 to August 22.
Joey 15:48 on 2021-04-13 Permalink
Mont-Royal and Duluth seem obvious. St-Laurent will be interestig… curious to see if the lane of traffic ruins the vibe…
Tim S. 15:55 on 2021-04-13 Permalink
Given the weather now, in April, I’m not sure why they think people will only want to be outside in July and August.
DeWolf 17:21 on 2021-04-13 Permalink
I’m a little perplexed by Duluth. I thought the shared street arrangement last summer was perfect. It’s how the street was designed to be, anyway…
Spi 18:45 on 2021-04-13 Permalink
So this means that through the entire territory of the Plateau, the only roads that will have more than 1-lane going north without taking a convoluted zig-zag route will be Parc and Frontenac/Iberville.
PM sure loves giving their critics more ammunition to feed the “anti-car” narrative.
Kate 09:15 on 2021-04-14 Permalink
Papineau? De Lorimier? It’s probably more a Plateau idea to not have their roads be de facto mini-highways. If drivers are in such a rush to get out of the city northwards they can go west to Decarie or east to the 25, no?
Chris 09:23 on 2021-04-14 Permalink
Spi: it’s funny how so many people (on this blog and elsewhere) advocate for strict anti-covid measures, curtailment of civil liberties, etc. to fight the pandemic, which has killed about 3 million so far, but loosing a few km of car space, to help fight against the 1.4 million who die by car collisions and the 8 million that die from air pollution **every** year, well, that’s just too much.
So many of us are accepting these limitations to freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, but god forbid we accept a 1% reduction in the allocation of space to cars!
DeWolf 09:58 on 2021-04-14 Permalink
One lane of moving traffic is still one lane of moving traffic. If it takes 20 minutes to drive across the Plateau instead of 15, so what? Why do we expect people living in central boroughs to be okay with living next to racetracks? Suburbanites don’t have a god-given right to speed 60km/h down densely-packed residential streets.
Kate 11:26 on 2021-04-14 Permalink
Chris, you’re equating apples and oranges, as is your argumentative approach in general.
Deaths in traffic are a side effect. Like it or not, our society is based on moving people and stuff around in motor vehicles. For good or bad we accept the collateral damage as an ongoing social cost.
Deaths from an illness are not comparable. We didn’t create the illness, it has no upside, and it has nothing personal against us. But we also cannot negotiate with it. You can’t make deals with a virus, you can only plan around it, make adjustments to limit the damage it can do.
Anyone who feels that sanitary rules are an attack on their freedom is an idiot. The opposite is true. We need to adapt in the short term to ensure that the largest number of people remain alive and free of illness until enough of us are vaccinated, or the pandemic burns itself out as they are known to do.
Chris 14:12 on 2021-04-14 Permalink
>Chris, you’re equating apples and oranges
I’m not saying they are equivalent, I’m saying there are things to learn from the comparison.
>For good or bad we accept the damage as an ongoing social cost.
Indeed. We *could* similarly choose to accept the damage from the virus as an acceptable cost of having open businesses, freedom of movement, etc. (I’m not personally advocating this, though some do; I’m saying there are pros and cons here too.)
>Anyone who feels that sanitary rules are an attack on their freedom is an idiot.
I wouldn’t say “an attack” but the measures *do* impact our freedom. That’s not to say they aren’t justified, especially as they are promised to be temporary.
My point is not that the tradeoffs we’re choosing for the pandemic are wrong. My point is that the tradeoffs we’re choosing for air pollution, global warming, and motor vehicle crashes are wrong. So many people advocate doing *so much* to reduce covid deaths as much as possible, but so few people are willing to do 1% as much to reduce environmental deaths. There’s a hypocrisy and shortsightedness there that really irks me.
Blork 15:18 on 2021-04-14 Permalink
I have no skin in this game, so nothing I say on this topic is anything more than noting of facts. That said, DeWolf’s comment is a bit off the mark in terms of the numbers. Cutting down to a single lane would not add five minutes to a 15-minute cross-Plateau ride, it would probably add 20-30 minutes to it on busy days, because that’s the way congestion works. If it takes 10 minutes to go from A to B with two lanes, it doesn’t take twice as long when you remove a lane, it takes three times as long because now every variable (people stopping to load/unload passengers, people stopping for pedestrians, people stopping to park, etc.) affects all traffic, not just the lane they’re in, and there is no “go around” option.
I worry that this plan will cause a lot of traffic backups, making drivers irritable and thus (in many cases) less cautious. It will also divert a lot more cars down side streets that normally don’t get much traffic, and many of those cars will be racing to make up lost time or just because douchebag.
I’m not saying this to be car-positive; I’m just pointing out possible hazards.
Ephraim 15:58 on 2021-04-14 Permalink
Chris… the numbers would be VERY different if we didn’t have these measures. In the US, the death rate is over 1700 per million from the pandemic. It’s over 1900 per million in Italy. Imagine if no measures were taken.