On the outskirts of avenue Girouard, in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district of Montreal, citizens took advantage of the passage of hundreds of cyclists participating in the Tour de l’Île on Sunday to be heard. “Protected tracks”, they chanted tirelessly. The City assures to lend an ear.
The Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district, in the west of the island, has not seen new bike paths grow on its territory for at least a decade. “We feel that Notre-Dame-de-Grâce is excluded”, denounces Sonya Konzak, her helmet screwed on her head.
The City of Montreal anticipated this demonstration by announcing the day before that $500,000 will be allocated to the next borough council for the adaptation of a “local bicycle plan”.
Active transportation officials at the City of Montreal were absent from the tour of the island this Sunday and could not detail this anticipated announcement. The press attaché for Mayor Valérie Plante, Marikym Gaudreault, assures us that “this amount will notably make it possible to launch a major project to secure cycle paths. Some tracks will soon be moved to the curb and we will add bollards on others to ensure safer traffic”.
This “securing” of cycle paths wedged between parked cars and those in motion is of great concern to the demonstrators. Many feel that this is the first step in encouraging cycling.
“I myself was a victim of dooring. It sent me across the street. I was so scared,” says Konzak. This kind of trauma inevitably discourages families in the area from sending their children to ride in the street, she explains.
The first spin of Projet Montréal, with the deployment of the REV, thrilled cycling enthusiasts. But since his re-election, the Plante administration has “slowed down” its momentum to build new bike paths, observes Daniel Lambert, spokesperson for the Coalition Vélo Montréal. “We feel that we talk less about cycling. Whenever we talk about climate change, we no longer talk about bicycles, we talk about the electrification of transport. […] 3% of people travel daily by bicycle in Montreal. Projet Montréal made a commitment in 2017 to increase this 3% to 15% in the space of two terms. You have to build a lot of bike paths to get there. At this rate, we will wait until 2090 to achieve the objectives that the City has set itself. »
Montreal ensures that its “cycling program” unveiled a few weeks ago is only the beginning and that other announcements will follow this summer.
For Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, at the very least, the City plans to add a track on rue Terrebonne, a safe crossing for Décarie and axes connecting the new Canora station to the existing network.