City to monitor traffic as plan to limit cars on Mount Royal begins

NDG resident Michael Silas was a regular user of Camillien-Houde Way, the road that crosses Mount Royal. That is, until it was closed to through traffic this weekend.

The city says the stretch is being overrun by motorists, who use it as a shortcut to get across Montreal, but Silas says that's an exaggeration and he has "rarely" dealt with traffic there.

For the next five months, though, his commute to work in the Plateau will take an extra 10 minutes and require the use of a highway. 

But, Silas says, it's not the length of the drive that upsets him. "It's the fact that I don't get to enjoy a scenic route on my way to work anymore," he told CBC Montreal's Daybreak Monday.

A 550-metre stretch of Camillien-Houde Way, which turns into Remembrance Road as it nears Côte-des-Neiges Road, is now closed off to car traffic. Only cyclists, city, school and tourist buses, emergency vehicles and funeral processions will be able to drive on it until Oct. 31.

All other vehicles will be forced to stop at the Smith House parking lot if they're travelling from the east and at the Beaver Lake parking lot coming from the west.

The controversial decision to close the road came after an 18-year-old cyclist, Clément Ouimet, died when he collided with an SUV that pulled an illegal U-turn in front of his bicycle on Camillien-Houde last year.

In February, Plateau-Mont-Royal borough Mayor Luc Ferrandez said the road, which connects the Plateau-Mont-Royal and Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhoods, has become a freeway with 10,000 cars circulating on it every day.

Making Camillien-Houde what it was meant to be?

The city had information agents out on Mount Royal Monday morning informing motorists of the closure.

It will be monitoring what happens to other roads, such as Pine and Doctor Penfield avenues and Côte-Ste-Catherine Road, as a result of the pilot project, said Projet Montréal borough councillor Alain Vaillancourt.

Vaillancourt said while he understands Silas's concerns, there are also people who want the road to be safer, and "what it was destined to be: a park road where you can enjoy the mountain with less cars."

The pilot project still provides "a lot" of access to the mountain, he said, and some people who were initially apprehensive about the plan eventually change their minds once it's explained to them.

Public consultation underway

The body that oversees the city's public consultations, the Office de consultation publique de Montréal, is also collecting information online from citizens about how the closure is going.

The city had originally said it wouldn't hold public consultations on the project under its recently revamped system, but later changed its tune.

Silas says the issue is an important one, and he urged people to get involved and have their voices heard.

He says any decision on the road's future should be based on the result of the consultation process.

"If an issue this big can get forced and steam-rolled through Montreal without Montrealers really having a say, what else is on the chopping block? What else can be done right under our noses without us having a say whatsoever?"