CITY IS OUT OF STEP
It’s time for a pedestrian to put her foot down, if only there were a safe way to do it: Allison Hanes says the closed sidewalks on Sherbrooke St. are just another example of how little consideration walkers get when it comes to construction planning.
The closure of 10 metres of sidewalk on the north side of Sherbrooke St. in front of McGill University might not seem like a big deal as construction season gets underway in this giant work site of a city.
But this tiny piece of the public works puzzle speaks volumes about the priority given to pedestrians during all the infrastructure work taking place in Montreal — which is to say, very little.
In a move that reaches new heights of absurdity, both sides of the sidewalk are now closed on Sherbrooke in the middle of downtown — albeit for a short distance — as the city constructs a river-to-mountain pedestrian walkway, no less.
During the work, anyone looking to walk east-west has to stop, wait for police to halt traffic, cross to the south side (where there is no sidewalk), walk through an improvised gravel passageway on the far side of the street, and wait for the cops to allow them to cross back to the north side again. After construction hours, pedestrians can walk on the road, separated from traffic by orange cones.
It may only be a short stretch and for a short amount of time — until May 1, the city says — but it doesn’t matter how big or small the obstruction is if both sidewalks are blocked.
This is not some little-used side street. This is a major pedestrian traffic corridor right in front of the main entrance to a university. The hindrance is a symptom of a much larger disregard for pedestrians. Once again, those who walk are an afterthought, even though pedestrians are the most vulnerable road users and almost everyone spends at least some time on foot each day, whether they drive, ride a bike or take transit.
As Félix Gravel of Piétons Québec notes, when it comes to construction sites, pedestrians are usually allotted whatever space is left over once cars, and sometimes cyclists, are taken into account — regardless of safety.
It is hard to find a street in the centre of the city that doesn’t have some sort of barricade along one of its blocks, whether because of a private construction site or a public infrastructure project. And it’s not unheard of to find “trottoir barrée” signs on both sides of a street, although these have not usually been on main arteries.
This double crossing on Sherbrooke over uneven terrain might be a mere inconvenience for some, but for anyone with a mobility impairment, it is a new barrier to access. And when overly complicated hurdles pop up in pedestrians’ paths, some will end up taking risks that could result in injury or death, Gravel said.
Piétons Québec has been trying to get Montreal to have a “pedestrian reflex” in planning safe passage through work sites, but with limited success. During the major overhaul of St-Denis St. last year, Gravel said room was left for traffic and parking, but in some cases there was no room for pedestrians. The city put a red decking on part of St-Denis during the work and is planning to erect an inflatable structure to beautify Ste-Catherine St. during upcoming construction, but these are the exception. They should be the norm.
I realize drivers, too, face these kinds of mind-boggling bottlenecks — like the eastbound highway into downtown Montreal from the West Island being reduced to a single lane for two years as part of the Turcot demolition. But a lot of effort went into alerting people about that closure, and planning mitigation measures.
The $55-million project to build a river-to-mountain promenade and replace sewer and water mains is on an equally large scale as far as pedestrians are concerned. McGill has asked the city to maintain access to campus through the Roddick Gates, which it is also in the process of restoring. This work must be co-ordinated with the city, which is installing the sidewalks. But it would have made more sense to do both last fall, while the north side of Sherbrooke was already dug up.
Maybe we will quickly forget this mayhem on Sherbrooke when the new promenade opens. But in the meantime, spare some space for lowly pedestrians, please.