Montreal’s most important “bicycle highway” has been blocked for several days by the pedestrianization of Saint-Denis Street for a festival. And many cyclists are outraged to see the Express Bike Network (REV) diverted towards less safe routes.
What there is to know
- A significant portion of REV Saint-Denis is closed due to a festival.
- Cyclists complain that the alternative routes proposed by the City are not safe.
- Velo Québec is calling for better coordination of measures.
Rue Saint-Denis has in fact been closed since the start of the week for a kilometer and a half due to the BD Festival, from May 24 to 26.
Unlike recent years, the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough has decided to completely prohibit the passage of bicycles on more than a kilometer and a half of the REV, that is, between the axes of Boulevard Saint-Joseph and Square Saint-Louis. It is currently one of the busiest sections of the Montreal cycle network on the island, with an average of more than 7,500 passages per day.
Questioned on this subject, the district argues that during the 2022 edition of the festival, the REV had remained open, but that “this had caused cohabitation issues and was accident-prone since the kiosks were located along” the track cycleable.
In 2023, the Express Bike Network was closed only during festival hours, generally from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., then reopened during the night and in the morning.
“This was a semi-detached solution which, however, left too little space in the tent areas for festival-goers. It was also impossible to extend the tents in the center of the street due to security requests from the Montreal Fire Department (SIM), i.e. to leave six meters in the center of the road to allow fire trucks to pass. supports the spokesperson, Geneviève Allard.
This year, the Festival tents are more spacious and “still cannot encroach into this six-meter zone to respect the prerogatives of the SIM and find themselves pushed back into the REV,” she adds. This is why the borough agreed to “divert the REV route onto adjacent cycle facilities”.
Plan Bs that are not safe
Officially, the City offers cyclists the option of two other paths, heading north via Vélorue Saint-André and, to the south, via the Hôtel-de-Ville or Laval routes. In reality, it’s more complicated.
On TikTok, Wednesday, doctor and public health resident “Michelle MD” deplored that, on rue Saint-André, the “cycle path is not one”. It is more of a single car lane configuration, with simple cycling logos on the ground, but without protection.
We are right in the middle of the street and when cars want to pass, we move to the side to let them pass. There are also intersections without stops or traffic lights that must be crossed. […] I did not feel safe on this journey.
Michelle MD, doctor, in a video viewed tens of thousands of times
In total, the cyclist said she “had to cross three streets where there were no stops in the opposite direction, including two main boulevards, Mont-Royal and Saint-Joseph, where [elle a] had to wait a long time before there were no cars.” “And even then, I couldn’t clearly see the cars coming because of the parked cars,” she adds.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
The Montreal Fire Department demands that the center of Saint-Denis Street be left free, forcing the BD Festival tents to encroach on the REV.
Saying she understands that Saint-Denis Street “can be used for other things”, the Montrealer nevertheless deplores that the alternative options are “dangerous”, while the REV is very busy.
Complicated to move
Vélo Québec shares this opinion. “There are no really recommended safe routes, neither for cars nor for bicycles. This means that many will also end up on Drolet Street, and there it becomes unpleasant and less safe. There could have been ways to ensure that this much-appreciated cycling space was not 100% lost,” says its CEO, Jean-François Rheault.
All this is in addition to the fact “that at the moment, the Christophe-Colomb viaduct is closed for bicycles during the work”. “It’s becoming extremely complicated for cyclists to get around. It is above all the accumulation of all this which, in the end, causes a problem,” he continues.
“For the future, I hope that the City will take stock of all this and try to adopt more comprehensive measures,” adds Mr. Rheault.
Since the closure of this section of the REV Saint-Denis, cyclist ridership has unsurprisingly fallen, we see when reading the ecometers. While at the start of the week, there were 7,700 two-wheeled trips per day at the corner of Saint-Denis and Carrières, there were only 481 on Thursday.