(Montreal) The City of Montreal will pedestrianize a complete quadrangle of Old Montreal starting in the summer of 2024 and will transform Boulevard Henri-Bourassa this year into a “true corridor for sustainable mobility”, Mayor Valérie Plante announced on Tuesday. the opening of the second Montreal Climate Summit.
These two measures are part of the transport decarbonization objective that the metropolis has set itself for 2040.
Old Montreal, of which only rue Saint-Paul is pedestrian during the summer, will gradually become “the kingdom of pedestrians”, declared the mayor.
“We are lucky to have a real historic district, a very popular, very popular district; we want to make it more user-friendly”, she explained, citing the examples of Vienna, Brussels, Amsterdam or Montpellier, which have excluded cars from their historic heart.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Valerie Plante
Pedestrianization will begin in 2024, the time to delimit the quadrilateral and “think about what must be put in place for it to be a success”, indicated Mr.me Plant.
Montreal will also undertake this summer the transformation of boulevard Henri-Bourassa to create an axis of the Réseau express vélo (REV) and an axis of rapid service by bus (SRB).
This eight-lane traffic axis has “dozens of schools”, parks are nearby and six fatal collisions as well as 42 collisions causing serious injuries occurred there between 2014 and 2021, underlined Mayor Plante.
It is also the busiest Société de transport de Montréal (STM) route in the city, with 50,000 passengers per day, she added.
It is the recalibration of a boulevard that is key. We want to make it pleasant and safe for all road users.
Valérie Plante, Mayor of Montreal
A first section will be redeveloped this year in the Saint-Laurent borough, between Félix-Leclerc and Miniac streets; a second will be in 2024 in the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville.
More details to come.