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Mount
Royal Ave. green team plans workshops
Kazi Stastna
The Gazette
Sunday, February 1, 2004
page A3
The cold weather may have chased the cyclists
off Mount Royal Ave., but the activists behind the monthly bike rallies
there are as determined as ever to turn the Plateau artery into a no-car
zone.
The Committee for a Green
Mount Royal Ave. is holding two public workshops this month on its plan
to restrict a three-kilometre stretch of the street to pedestrians, bicycles
and public transit.
The six-member group of Plateau
residents formed in June 2002 and has since been developing a blueprint
for the pedestrian zone and studying similar models in Europe and the U.S.
The current two lanes of
parking and two lanes of car traffic mean only 33 per cent of Mount Royal
is reserved for people, says Owen Rose, the committee member who will be
leading the workshops. The group’s proposal is to dedicate 66 per
cent of the street to pedestrians and the rest to a bike path and a centre
bus lane or, eventually, a tramway.
Rose, an interning architect,
dismisses fears a car-free Mont-Royal would create traffic jams on surrounding
streets. Mont-Royal is not a major east-west artery like St. Joseph
Blvd. or Rachel St.
Delivery of goods won’t be
a problem, either, because alleys exist along the whole length of the avenue.
Fixed-delivery hours are also an option.
In December 2002, the committee
presented the Plateau Mont Royal council with a petition calling for public
hearings on the feasibility and benefits of such a project. Despite
gathering 85,000 signatures, 75 per cent of them from among the borough’s
roughly 100,000 residents, Rose said, all the group got was one meeting
with the borough’s director of public works.
Nicolas Pelletier, of the
Société de développement de l’Avenue du Mont-Royal,
said the association of businesses between St. Hubert St. and De Lorimier
Ave. has no official position on the project and would wait for the city
to study it before commenting.
kstastna@thegazette.canwest.com
Workshops will take place
tonight (in English) and Feb. 9 (in French) at the Urban Ecology Centre,
3516 Park Ave. at 7 p.m. Call (514) 282-8378 or visit the Web site
at www.montroyal-avenueverte.org/
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