City’s road experiments get mixed reviews
A people-friendly summer ‘laboratory’ gets mixed reviews in an early report card
Welcome to Covidtown Street Laboratories, a vast new Montreal experiment in how we use our city, after Hurricane COVID -19 ripped through town.
With many Montrealers planning summer “staycations” in Kitchenland and Balconville, city hall says it wants to make Montreal a people-friendly summer “laboratory.”
It is experimenting with everything from “sanitary walking corridors” and temporary “safe” bike paths to entire streets transformed into outdoor terrasses.
But will it all work? I’ve been testing the city’s new Covidtown creations and here’s an early report card:
Experiment 1: Mont-royal Ave. has now been totally closed to traffic all summer from Parc Ave. heading east, in what a city contractor overseeing it told me is “the longest pedestrian street in the world.”
I spent a night wandering the street, a lively scene filled with strollers, shoppers and bustling reopened restaurant terrasses. It’s got a great festive vibe in our festival-free-festival City.
While there, I also tested my first restaurant terrasse since they started reopening last Monday. It was a bustling Thai place whose patio was filled with diners chattering away as excitedly as prisoners on day parole.
The restaurant’s interior was dark and closed. But their outdoor tables were all safely distanced and had no touchable menus. Instead we lined up to order off a posted plastic menu — where masked waiters took orders.
Later our meals were served to us in disposable cardboard boxes, along with plastic cutlery. But being back on a buzzing outdoor terrasse at last, made it all feel like haute cuisine.
The waiters did their best to be sanitary, but they often handled our glasses, food containers and plastic forks — which is practically unavoidable.
A Dutch video spoof shows a COVID -frustrated waitress standing several feet away from her germ-nervous customers — then tossing them their beer bottles and meals.
COVID -19 experts now say touching things other people have touched isn’t a major risk, but I still sanitized my hands five times during dinner.
So when dining out remember that it’s now BYOP: Bring Your Own Purell.
SCORE: A+
Experiment 2: Vast pedestrian walking corridors have been constructed on many streets like Monkland Ave., Queen Mary Rd. and Ste-catherine St. downtown.
These so-called “sanitary health corridors” are usually separated from car traffic by long ugly rows of construction cones.
They’re meant to give pedestrians more space to keep six feet distant from each other. In theory, it’s a good idea. But in practice the corridors are all practically empty — since most people just stay on the sidewalks. Why?
These social distancing corridors were conceived early in the pandemic. Back then we were all terrified that virus droplets could leap on us in an instant like viral muggers — as we passed one another momentarily on a sidewalk.
Now scientists think the virus spreads far more often indoors, over several minutes or more of exposure. It’s practically impossible to get COVID -19 just walking by someone outdoors — unless they actually sneeze on you.
Many Montrealers have relaxed their outdoor distancing, perhaps by too much. A Léger poll last week found only 43 per cent of Quebecers want to keep a full two-metre distance anymore, while 25 per cent want to change the official distance to one metre — like most of Europe.
Many people are now comfortable again on plain old sidewalks, instead of ugly cone-lined street corridors.
In fact, sanitary corridors set up on Rachel Ave. and Van Horne
St. enraged both businesses and residents who strongly objected to losing parking lanes. So city crews deconstructed them days after construction.
I think that’s a good plan for all of them.
SCORE: D
Experiment 3: Montreal is rapidly creating more than 200 kilometres of “temporary” bike lanes, as painted lines appear on countess streets.
These new paths are filled with hordes of novice biking commuters huffing and puffing away, since we’re still nervous about using public transit.
Many major cities from Paris to New York are experimenting with increased summer bike lanes so I’m glad to see them happening here as well, but with two caveats:
a) They’re truly temporary. I know city hall would love Montreal to be a year round “biketopia,” but most cyclists, especially older ones, just can’t bike in our winter. Please take ’em down in fall as promised, Mayor Plante.
The last thing we need is another Mount Royal-style car vs. bike war.
b) Local merchants must be in agreement. Restaurateurs and shopkeepers on Wellington St., St-laurent Blvd. and Bellechasse Ave. have all protested new bike paths coming their way — or begged for replacement customer parking on nearby streets, often to deaf ears.
Many Montreal businesses are hanging by a thread after months of COVID closure — and they need help from Projet Montréal, not just Projet-bicyclette. SCORE: B+
I’m all for some POST-COVID experimenting to make our city more people-friendly and safe this summer.
But between our never-ending construction, our sanitary health corridors and our temporary bike lanes, I wonder if there will be any room left for people on our people-friendly streets? joshfreed49@gmail.com