Since the beginning of the summer, every week, the situation has been repeated in the Old Port of Montreal: traffic congestion, safety and cohabitation issues, air pollution 1. No one comes out a winner in such a situation. For the visitor, the quality of the discovery experience is partly spoilt. For residents, the quality of their living environment is directly affected.
Posted yesterday at 10:00 a.m.
It is obvious that the status quo is no longer tenable; we need a new vision for the sector and a new sharing of space. The reflection cannot be limited to the Old Port, but must cover all of Old Montreal. It is by adopting a broader territorial approach and through concerted work by all stakeholders that we will be able to transform this emblematic sector of the city in a sustainable and exemplary way.
Montréal has set itself ambitious targets with its 2030 Climate Plan. To achieve them, each intervention, each development must contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and increase the resilience of living environments. While projects to create islands of freshness are multiplying, asphalt is still omnipresent in the sector. Let us think for example of the Quai de l’Horloge, with its mineralized parking spaces, which has all the assets to become a real window on the river where nature would occupy a central place.
The future of the sector
Currently, automobile access to the Old Port and Old Montreal is detrimental to the quality of the urban environment. The future of the sector must go through a significant reduction in the place of the car and the reallocation of space to sustainable mobility as well as the creation of quality public spaces and islands of greenery.
All you have to do is walk down Mont-Royal Avenue to see how pedestrianization can totally transform the quality of the experience, for both visitors and residents.
The momentum is there as several steps are underway: the Old Port Corporation has begun the initial phase of its Master Plan, the City of Montreal is working on the Old Montreal 2030 Action Plan and on the implementation of a new governance structure. All of this while the development of Montreal’s new urban planning and mobility plan is in full swing.
The main challenge now is to ensure a coherent alignment of all these plans and to bring about concrete and structuring changes quickly. To achieve this, we must collectively show ambition and innovation so that the transformations live up to the emblematic character of the places and that they contribute to improving the quality of the experience both for the tourist than for the resident.
* Co-signatories: Linda Collette, co-founding member of the Friends of the Quai de l’Horloge; Catherine Fernet, President of the Association of Landscape Architects of Quebec; Véronique Fournier, Executive Director of the Montreal Urban Ecology Center and Treasurer, Piétons Québec; Sylvain Gariépy, President of the Order of Urban Planners of Quebec; Jean-François Rheault, President and CEO of Vélo Québec