Montreal City Weblog

Kate 20:15 on 2022-11-01 Permalink Reply  

• carswell 23:04 on 2022-11-01 Permalink

  Hard to say based on that captionless map that doesn’t show geographic features or major arteries but one of the most glaring gaps in the city’s bike infrastructure, the lack of even a single safe crossing of the Décarie expressway/side roads north of Monkland appears to remain. Look at the huge north-south band of white in the general area. There are regularly used bike paths on either side of the Décarie canyon but apparently it is beyond city planners to link them up.

  In the last decade, I’ve come within inches of being hit by cars twice, once while crossing the northbound Décarie service road at Édouard-Montpetit and once while biking down the southbound Décarie service road between Édouard-Montpetit and Isabella. (Oddly, the two near accidents were only two weeks apart.) Both times, I was fully compliant with the highway code while the reckless drivers weren’t.

  What a failure on the city’s part. No one was talking about the unsafe Parc/Mont Royal intersection until Andrea Rovere got hit by a truck; now it’s a focus of attention. Guess someone’s going to have to die before officials get serious about Décarie. I hope it’s not me.

• Mitchell 07:25 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  @carswell I agree. I hesitate to criticize the cycling network because it has improved since I moved here in 2011. Yet as you point out, there are holes, sometimes dangerous ones.

  It also seems like drivers are even more callous with the 2022 retree: I’ve lost count of how many times in just the past few months when cyclists and pedestrians have had right of way (that is, automobiles had red lights) but drivers ignored the red light and turned onto the cross street — across the oncoming lane — almost hitting myself and whoever else was crossing.

  I was so so pleased, however, to discover the lane down Cote Ste. Catherine had been resurfaced while I was out of town earlier this fall! Although they’ve already started digging it up again . . .

• DeWolf 08:01 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  The city’s press release has a link to a PDF with a more comprehensive list of streets being targeted:

  https://www.newswire.ca/fr/news-releases/vision-velo-2023-2027-la-ville-de-montreal-se-dote-d-une-planification-elaboree-pour-le-developpement-d-un-reseau-cyclable-securitaire-et-efficace-partout-sur-l-ile-809000152.html

  Among them is a path across Bourret Avenue on Decarie, so that’s one more protected crossing across the expressway (along with de Maisonneuve), but it’s a shame none of the main streets are being targeted.

  Some other observations:

  Jean-Talon will be as much of a game-changer as St-Denis, but I expect tough opposition, because it’s an even more car-oriented street.

  Some of the non-REV “inter-arrondissement” projects have the potential to be very transformative. There are paths planned for Wellington across the canal, Darlington/Wilderton in CDN (connects with Canora REM station), Bleury (a natural north-south route through downtown), and Christophe-Colomb (bringing back the very popular VAS from 2020?), all of which are natural cycling routes that are currently hostile to cyclists. St-Urbain is also listed as being slated for an upgrade and I wonder what that means, because it’s currently a very unsafe path that puts cyclists in the dooring zone next to speeding traffic.

  The Lacordaire and Henri-Bourassa REVs will hopefully push the most anti-bike boroughs (Montreal North, St-Leo and Anjou) to finally build some proper infrastructure.

  The devil is in the details, of course. I’ll be very eager to see exactly which of these projects the city will launch first and what they’ll look like.

• walkerp 08:56 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  Already they added a path heading east on Villeneuve between St-Laurent and St-Denis which is a huge improvement. And they did it in a few weeks!

  I haven’t looked at the details but just being able to push this as a major plan, and even getting a provincial thumbs-up is a huge advance compared to Montreal under previous administrations.

• DeWolf 09:32 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  @walkerp Along with the Villeneuve counter flow path, the borough did the same thing on Clark from Rachel to Milton. Both are a huge improvement since they open up routes that were previously illegal (on account of being one-way).

  It may seem like they were done quickly but they have both been in the works for years. Clark in particular was meant to be done in 2019 but it was postponed due to St-Urbain construction and then the pandemic lockdown.

• Blork 09:38 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  If anyone wants the PDF that DeWolf mentioned, the link is near the bottom of the page. It brings you to a new tab where you have to accept cookies and agree to the terms of service. That brings you to another page that has the download link. The link downloads a ZIP file that has to be un-zipped. You end up with two PDFs.

  FFS. Convoluted much?

• Joey 10:02 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  I hate those counter-flow paths, especially on narrow streets. As a driver, if you’re parked on lefthand side with bikes headed in your direction along that same side (imagine Clark between Villeneuve and St.-Joseph, if you’re familiar with it), there is basically no way to see oncoming bike traffic until they are a few feet away – the driver’s field of vision is such that you can’t see past the car in front of you. If you’re pulling out of a space, you need to keep an eye behind you for cars/bikes coming up the block plus bikes headed in your direction. Terrible design that implies a level of safety for cyclists that is completely unwarranted.

  I notice Clark is on the list. I wonder if they are referring to the portion south of Mile-End or whether they plan to dig up the recently installed (and then quickly re-installed) portion north of Laurier,

• walkerp 12:18 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  @joey there are no more parking spaces on the left hand side of Villeneuve. That’s where the bike lane is. Not sure if that changes anything as I can’t visualize the driver’s lack of vision that you explained, but from a biker’s perspective, as DeWolf mentioned, it is ways safer than going illegally against traffic, the way it was before.

• Joey 12:50 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  Thanks @walkerp… haven’t seen it yet beyond Alex Norris’s facebook photo. That stretch has been an informal counterflow path for a while, since the bike lane west of Clark leads you north to Laurier before cotinuing east.

• Jonathan 15:51 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  I love how grumpy pants you are, @blork

• Blork 16:17 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  Thanks! it’s a lot of work but it pays off!

• jeleventybillionandone 17:10 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  @Joey maybe they’re referring to the Clark street bike lanes that are in the process of being installed between Rachel and Milton, alongside the construction on St Urbain? Hard to tell because I can’t find in any of the links a list that includes Clark. “Installing” in the vaguest sense of the words, since it’s just a painted lane in one direction, then a sharrow in the other.

• DeWolf 21:01 on 2022-11-02 Permalink

  The list is for inter-borough projects, so I imagine it refers to extending the Clark counterflow lane south of Sherbrooke into Ville-Marie so that it connects with the path on Ontario. Which will require doing something to improve the intersection of Sherbrooke/Clark, which is pretty terrible for pedestrians and cyclists alike.