This is Wellington Street, this is Sainte-Catherine East, this is Duluth,
this is Saint-Laurent, and this is Mont-Royal Avenue. These are five of the ten Montreal
streets chosen by the city to go car-free for the entire summer of 2022 and for at least two
more summers after that. The city has been doing more limited pedestrianizations for a while now,
but they really took off in the summer of 2020 to celebrate the United Nations’ “International Year
of Plant Health”. Just kidding, it was COVID. These pedestrian streets were hands-down one of
the best parts of living in Montreal, and they’re one of the highlights we're drawn back to each
time we visit. We were lucky enough to live just off Mont-Royal Avenue, which this year is car-free
24 hours a day, 7 days a week — with the exception of delivery trucks in the morning — for a three
month period from early June to early September. Some of the car-free streets prohibit riding bikes
but Mont-Royal is just a “slow zone” requiring cyclists to keep a reasonable speed.
Something really interesting that we noticed in the media and in daily conversation is that people
defaulted to describing pedestrianizations as closing the street or blocking it off. Even when
people liked the program, they still usually described the changes in restrictive terms.
On one hand, okay, the city used barriers to stop cars from entering.
On the other hand, as people who walked on Mont-Royal Avenue nearly every single day,
these car-free streets did not feel remotely “closed”. They felt the opposite of “closed”.
What’s the word? (Open?) Yeah, that’s it. Open. It was actually in September when
the cars came back that it really felt like the street was closing down.
What did we get in return for losing the ability to drive through or park on these streets?
Quite a lot! Removing cars opened up space for so much more: extended patios for cafes
and restaurants, outdoor showrooms for stores, nature and art installations, bouncy castles
and other attractions for kids, seating to just hang out, misting stations to cool down,
and lots of other creative, interesting, and useful things. These streets just became more
enjoyable to move through and be in. We found ourselves gravitating towards the pedestrian
street for every trip we could use it for. Being able to carry our groceries home was wonderful.
You don’t have the constant hum and stink of traffic — instead you hear people laughing
and enjoying themselves with their friends and family. You have much more freedom of movement,
not being confined to sidewalks and not having to wait at as many intersections. You navigate
the space and negotiate conflicts by actually seeing people’s faces — how humanizing!
But don’t take it from us. A report done for two borough governments surveyed people both
on the street and online and found overwhelming support for these projects, with 90% favorable
to the existing streets and 80% wanting to see more of them. In terms of personal behaviour,
majorities said that the pedestrianization made them come to the street more often,
stay on the street for longer, modify their trips to intentionally use that street,
and spend more money at the stores on the street. When asked in focus groups what people liked most,
they highlighted the reduction in car noise and increased opportunities for socialization
with both friends and strangers. They also felt that the streets just had a better look
and atmosphere when they were full of people and art as opposed to cars.
The most common criticism of Montreal’s pedestrian streets that you hear is accessibility. People
bring up disabilities, mobility impairments, and families. There are some valid issues here — the
study found that families with children and people with reduced mobility had concerns about cyclists
not respecting pedestrian priority, as well as disruptions in bus and paratransit access.
Interestingly, none of this really takes us in the direction of allowing cars back onto the street.
To the extent that bikes can be dangerous to pedestrians, they have nothing on cars,
which are faster and heavier and have more blind spots. When you compare the before and
after on these streets, it’s obvious which one offers kids more freedom and safety and which
one might make you feel comfortable enough to send your kid walking or biking on their own.
In regard to mobility impairments, you only have to look at the people in wheelchairs
and mobility scooters who now have the full length of the road instead of being packed
onto a small sidewalk to see the benefits. The Plateau borough also offers a free eBike taxi
service for seniors and others with reduced mobility, and the Mont-Royal Avenue metro
station is currently under construction to add elevators for accessibility.
Sometimes you hear that pedestrian streets are just unfair to anyone coming from further away,
but these streets are clearly serving more people under this configuration.
If everyone here was in a car, you’d have to stack them three or four levels high.
There’s clearly no lack of people able to get here. Being in dense, urban neighbourhoods,
tens or even hundreds of thousands of people live within walking or rolling distance.
They’re also generally very easy to get to on the Montreal Metro, although admittedly the Metro has
a long way to go for elevator access. On top of all of this, you can in fact still drive to
get here. You can’t park right in front of your destination, but suburban shopping malls don’t
allow people to drive into the mall either. You have to park on the outside and walk in.
To the extent that some people have difficulty reaching these pedestrian streets from outlying
areas, the solution isn’t to eliminate what makes them such a nice destination,
it’s to increase transit access and build more pedestrian streets closer to more people.
We can debate exactly which streets should be pedestrianized and how long they should
last — some people think they should last into the fall and even winter and others don’t — but as far
as we’re concerned there’s no serious debate about whether the overall project is good.
That’s refreshing. In a lot of places when you argue for less space and priority for cars
you’re accused of being anti-car. When you have a successful project like this though,
it’s hard to accuse supporters of being motivated by some arbitrary “hatred” of cars. It would be
surprising if anyone using these streets denied that this place is just better without cars.
Cars have their place, but it’s not everywhere — and it’s not here.
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