Plateau residents want safer streets
People living on the section of St‑Hubert north of Mont‑Royal, which is a narrow residential street in that area, say that the pedestrianization of Mont‑Royal is putting them and their vehicles at risk because large trucks keep using the street.
I don’t actually get “cars and large trucks have nowhere to go and end up taking smaller streets” because there are other north‑south streets. This is just a few blocks east of St‑Denis and not all that far from Papineau if you’re driving. Obviously something has to be fixed but I don’t think it’s the pedestrianization at fault.
DeWolf 10:46 on 2023-07-19 Permalink
The only way this has to do with the pedestrianization is that trucks that would have turned onto Mont-Royal are now heading onto St-Hubert. In doing so, they are ignoring a flashing sign at St-Hubert/Marie-Anne warning them not to proceed, and somehow negotiating a series of plastic bollards at various intersections on St-Hubert meant to slow and divert traffic.
Le Devoir had an article on this yesterday that notes that it has always been illegal for heavy vehicles to use St-Hubert between Mont-Royal and St-Joseph. It also notes that this is an issue that predates pedestrianization, it’s just that the pedestrian street has made things worse.
This is a very legitimate complaint from the residents and their proposed solution is the best one: make St-Hubert one-way to the south from Gilford to Mont-Royal. That would completely eliminate any through traffic on this extremely narrow residential street. The only reason it is treated as a through street in the first place is because traffic engineers in the 1960s dreamed up a way for commuters to travel through the Plateau at high speeds north from the giant Berri tunnel.
Kevin 10:50 on 2023-07-19 Permalink
Google Maps (or whatever service drivers are using for directions) need to implement a “driving a big truck” button that eliminates the option of taking narrow streets.
Kate 10:55 on 2023-07-19 Permalink
It spins off from the bad intersection where the wider, southern section of St‑Hubert meets Mont‑Royal then suddenly turns into a narrow residential street. They should consider renaming that small section because it really is not a continuation, it’s a discontinuity.
DeWolf 11:13 on 2023-07-19 Permalink
Exactly.
Incidentally, this is from an article in La Presse about the spot in St-Michel where the young woman was killed while crossing the street recently:
“Hélas, la décision d’installer un simple panneau d’arrêt serait devenue fort complexe en raison de la Loi sur les ingénieurs entrée en vigueur en septembre 2021. « Il faut maintenant un plan de marquage scellé par un ingénieur, plan qui découle lui-même d’une analyse de circulation coûteuse effectuée par un ingénieur en circulation », a expliqué sur Facebook le conseiller municipal Sylvain Ouellet en réagissant au texte de La Presse sur la mort de Dilan Kaya survenue dans son district de François-Perrault.
L’administration municipale a d’ailleurs mandaté SNC-Lavalin pour évaluer la possibilité d’ajouter des arrêts, dont certains dans la rue Bélair.”
Yet another provincial law that makes it more expensive and time-consuming for the city to do anything about making public space safer, with the added benefit of lining the pockets of SNC Lavalin!
mare 11:59 on 2023-07-19 Permalink
What makes St-Hubert a beloved through-fare is that the lights at intersections are all very favourable for traffic driving on it. The wait times at stoplights for traffic from side streets are often twice as long. I don’t know why this is, it might date to the 60s as @DeWolf writes above, but it’s a very weird thing. As a driver taking St-Hubert and crossing the Plateau to the North is faster than taking St-Denis, until you reach Plaza St-Hubert, where you have to drive 20 km/h. I did it all the time when I still had a car, and do it often even now on my bike, despite the lack of a bike path.
This is for all side streets, with a notable exception the complicated intersection of Mont-Royal where the grid shift of St-Hubert and traffic from rue Resther complicates things. It’s especially very noticeable as a cyclist, at crossings with St-Hubert of bike paths, like the REV on Bellechasse, and the bike paths on Villeray, Rachel, Cherrier and De Maisonneuve.
Next time you drive or ride and cross St-Hubert, please notice how long you have to wait, and how short the traffic on St-Hubert has to stop for a red light. Those times are ridiculously slanted in favour of St-Hubert, even though there isn’t actually much traffic on the street. I’m a very law-abiding cyclist, bit even I am often tempted to just go and ignore the red light there, because it’s weird to wait for minutes when there is absolutely no traffic on St-Hubert. And I confess, sometimes I even do, and follow the many other cyclists. (You can report me again Kate.).
As a side note, I was riding in Laval last week and I encountered several crossings where, after you pressed a button as a pedestrian or cyclist, you had to wait just *five* seconds before you had a green light. The inconvenience of having to press a button almost outweighed getting the royal treatment. St-Hubert would be a prime candidate for something similar, but preferably by induction sensors in the bike path. In the Netherlands they are very ubiquitous.
Blork 12:43 on 2023-07-19 Permalink
What mare says is true; St-Hubert is the preferred way to go north in that part of town. It’s faster, and the street is wider most of the way, as opposed to St-Denis, which crawls and has much more pedestrian crossings. If you’re a delivery driver who is downtown or in Old Montreal and you need to get up to the Plateau or Petite-Patrie, you’ll probably take St-Hubert.
The pedestrianizing of Mont-Royal is only a minor obstacle for these delivery drivers. (And remember, these are just working class people trying to do their job; don’t blame them.) If you’re making deliveries in a big panel truck and you’re going up St-Hubert and you see that flashing light at Marie-Anne that says to not proceed… you roll your eyes and proceed, because you have a job to do and a schedule to stick to. What are your options? Are you going to pull a U-turn on St-Hubert and go back down to Rachel? Are you going to go left on Marie-Anne and inch along on a street that’s too narrow for a truck and then try to make that tight right onto St-Denis? Probably not.
I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just trying to put myself in the shoes of those truck drivers, and the result is, as usual, “it’s complicated.”
Nicholas 13:19 on 2023-07-19 Permalink
There are a few things wrong going on, and a few fixes. Truck drivers should have truck GPS devices that have truck routes built in and don’t suggest using non-truck routes except for local deliveries. Many truck drivers have this, it’s your business, you can’t just rely free software and then blame it when you don’t follow the no truck signs.
It’s also true that with the pedestrianization the no trucks sign should be at Rachel, not Marie Anne, which is too late. Really, though, trucks should be taking Cherrier to St Denis, or Sherbrooke to Papineau.
But St Hubert really needs a redesign. The entire section through the Plateau is badly planned, with sections far too wide both south of Mount Royal and north of Laurier. I understand truck drivers will want to go through, but they don’t fit on the Mount Royal to Laurier section. Either they need to remove a lane of parking from Mount Royal to St Joseph (like is done from St Joseph to Laurier) so trucks can fit, or, better, they narrow the rest of the street and ban all but local trucks, forcing through trucks to use St Denis or Papineau. This local residential street shouldn’t be a through route. We could also force the issue by flipping some sections of St Hubert and Resther to one-way in conflicting directions, as suggested, so it’s impossible and illegal for any traffic to use it as a through route. The whole neighbourhood around Bienville should be like Milton Park, with only a few ways out so it’s really just local traffic.
Lastly, the cult of the traffic engineer continues. Engineers should be there to calculate turning radii and construction designs. Traffic generation and modelling is largely a pseudo-science that traffic engineers have used to gain a veto over too many parts of our streets. Keeping cars moving quickly is an option (that many disagree with), not a commandment from God that everything else must conform to.
Blork 13:32 on 2023-07-19 Permalink
Another thing, and this might be too much to ask… But WTF are trucks as big as the one shown in the CBC article even doing in residential areas of the city? Do we really need such gigantic vehicles just to deliver a few flats of drywall or whatever?
You don’t see trucks like that going through most cities in Europe. Even the garbage trucks are smaller. Why do we still think it’s normal to drive such huge vehicles around residential areas?