Montreal City Weblog

Kate 17:22 on 2023-02-09 Permalink Reply  

• James 20:40 on 2023-02-09 Permalink

  After the work is done, it will be possible to travel by bike or car from:
  45.475313, -73.549031
  to:
  45.486430, -73.541282
  This will finally allow the use of the newly-built bike path on the south part of rue Gaetan-Laberge. Will be ideal to get downtown from the new Champlain bridge. Currently the best route is via Wellington.

• steph 22:35 on 2023-02-09 Permalink

  Taking Marc-Cantin looks like a detour to get downtown instead of just taking Wellington.

• Kate 10:12 on 2023-02-10 Permalink

  Thanks for the explanations.

• Blork 11:22 on 2023-02-10 Permalink

  There’s also a fair number of vacant lots along there, so I suppose the condo tower developers have some ideas.

• Kate 11:34 on 2023-02-10 Permalink

  The land around there risks being very contaminated for development, though.

• Blork 11:43 on 2023-02-10 Permalink

  True. But nice river and city views from the the 4th floor and higher, so they’d be fancy and expensive. And if they go with the “tall and skinny” trend that’s popular right now the footprint would be small so maybe not so expensive to clean up.

• MarcG 13:25 on 2023-02-10 Permalink

  There’s a gated-off bike path junction here that is curious, although I suppose it might just end up being a very slight shortcut to the Gaetan Laberge bike path.

• nau 16:53 on 2023-02-10 Permalink

  Yeah, it must be part of an extension of the riverfront path between Ponts Champlain and Victoria. Used to be quite different there. I remember biking down the gravel path there early one sleepless morning. Under the bridge to Ile des Soeurs, there was somebody’s found object art shrine. A bit spooky at that time of the day but I pushed on into the rabbits warren of trails in the scrub forest on the other side. Zipping around a corner, I came across a couple leather men in flagrante fellatio. Fortunately, I could veer down another path so as not to have to squeeze past them with an awkward “Top of your morning, good sirs.”

• MarcG 17:46 on 2023-02-10 Permalink

  @nau: What kind of path is that between the Bonaventure and the river, gravel? Here’s an image of the large “multipurpose” untamed green space they destroyed during the recent bridge re-build.

• nau 14:36 on 2023-02-13 Permalink

  @MarcG There’s a plan to turn the Bonaventure into an urban boulevard and at the same time add a walking/cycling path along the waterfront. That I assume will be asphalt. I haven’t been along there for a long time, but it doesn’t look like anything has changed yet from online images. From what I remember, I cut through the now levelled green space, hopped the guardrail and biked along the paved shoulder of the Bonaventure, although it does look like there’s also a wide gravel shoulder on the other side of the concrete barrier that might be bike-able with a mountain bike. Not sure I did it more than once, to be honest; I wanted to check it out but there’s too many cars for it to be a particularly pleasant ride. The view of the river looks fine, so maybe early on a Sunday when traffic is light it could be enjoyable. There’s also apparently some seriously noxious waste discharging from the soil into the river along the area, so not the best place to chill by the water even without traffic noise pollution; not sure if the city’s going to manage to clean that up as part of its riverfront path plans.
  That green space really was multi-purpose. On a couple other early morning rides towards the Seaway path, I remember having to dodge a steady stream of zoned out kids heading in the direction of Canadian Tire, presumably coming back from a rave somewhere in that green space area.