Mount Royal traffic consult heard us and did its job

If you try hard enough, they say you can move mountains — and Montrealers just did!

Over a year after city hall tried to unilaterally close Mount Royal to through traffic, the mountain is everyone’s again.

Several months ago, I criticized the city’s public consultation bureau for its Mount Royal website which I described as “a bureaucrat’s dream and citizen’s nightmare.”

I apologize. In the end the bureau did a huge amount of work, scouring through some 13,000 comments, questionnaires, diatribes, rants, screeds and Post-it notes, and came to the right conclusion.

Banning through traffic on Mount Royal last summer made life difficult for many, especially cemetery visitors, people with mobility problems and hordes of picnickers lugging barbecues and coolers.

The mountain road should remain a crosstown artery, recommends the bureau, but should also be transformed into a narrower, slower, safer scenic road that’s not ruled by cars.

Bravo! We spent a year in divisive fights, duelling petitions and wasted energy. The city only agreed to consultations after some 30,000 people signed a petition demanding one.

But it turned out to be the largest consultation in Montreal history, with almost as much traffic as the mountain itself. Most people participating felt similarly about the pilot project: it caused too much pain and no gain.

It didn’t add bike paths to make life safer for cyclists; it didn’t stop cars from speeding, or making dangerous U-turns. In fact people made more U-ies to escape the huge road block in the middle, making things worse.

The project didn’t improve public transport to make up for less private car access, added the report. It just made it harder to get around Mount Royal, so fewer people visited.

In a way city hall sabotaged its own project by doing almost nothing creative to make it sing. The only winners were hard-core cyclists who train on the steep eastern slope that’s a Mount Olympus for most bikers.

The report often blasted city hall but ironically, it may be a gift to Mayor Plante. The mountain dispute has hurt her popularity with large numbers of Montrealers and sapped her credibility elsewhere.

Now that she’s promised to obey the consultation, she can finally get this albatross off from around her neck.

In fairness to Plante, she has filled the mayor’s chair far better in recent months. She’s passionately defended Montreal’s diversity against Bill 21’s religious symbol-bashing.

She’s denounced the province’s plans to slash much-needed immigration. She’s handled herself with gravitas during the flood — and lost the perpetual smile she wore her first six months.

She looks the part of Her Worship and has showed she’s the mayor — not Plateau boss Luc Ferrandez. With the mountain debate resolved, and over two years until next election, the only albatross she has left is Ferrandez himself.

He’s the real loser here. He rushed his pilot-project through like a sanctimonious bully and showed scorn for all opposed — including those who manage the cemeteries and Les amis de le montagne, the mountain’s two best buds.

Ferrandez’s rudely-timed recent Facebook rant about people with flooding problems “deserving their misfortune” was another reminder he’s one of those ideologues who show more concern for humanity than for actual humans.

Meanwhile, another winner is the consultation bureau itself. Before this drama it was an unknown nonentity to 99.9999 per cent of the city. Now it’s a hero that’s gained Montrealers’ trust.

Its report was sensible and sensitive standing up for pedestrians, motorists and cyclists’ concerns alike. Let’s give the bureau a Ste-Catherine St. renovation consultation next, and then maybe a global consultation on how to fill a better pothole.

If there’s a bright side to this draining year-long battle, it’s reminded us all how much we love our mountain, whether we bike, hike, jog, walk or take our 90-year-old mothers for a pretty weekend drive.

The consultation bureau’s recommendations should only increase our attachment. They include creating an attractive gateway to signal we’re actually entering a park, not a mountain expressway, and letting 100,000 roadside trees and flowers bloom, instead of ugly concrete barriers.

It would also make the mountain safer for cyclists by slowing traffic and discouraging rushhour commuters. Ever since Google Maps discovered the mountain road, it’s become a recommended “alternate route” — a short cut for platoons of harried drivers cutting through the park.

Our mountain deserves better. It’s our tiny Swiss Alps — or Alp. It should be a scenic way, not a throughway for those in a rush: a chance to pause and admire.

That said, I still think the best way to slow down mountain traffic is by digging up and installing thousands of potholes transported from other streets where they aren’t needed.

Finally, the whole affair gives hope to those who think you can’t fight city hall. Tens of thousands of Montrealers proved that wrong by protesting, signing petitions or writing to the consultation bureau to make their voices heard.

It gives others hope that sometimes you can fight city hall and win — and the city wins too.