New road may be built in the West Island
A brand-new six-lane “urban boulevard” may be linking Gouin Blvd. to Highway 40 as campaign promises fly. If you look at the map you’ll see the route is relatively innocuous, but the worrying thing is the MTQ’s idea of eventually turning it into a highway and hooking it onto Laval’s Autoroute 440. This was floated a few years ago as a plan to pave right across Île Bizard (presumably erasing its wetland parks – I doubt they’d go near the hallowed golf courses that take up half the island).
Jack 11:19 on 2012/08/01 Permalink
Wow that didn’t take long extending the 440 is the ultimate goal of this project, which again increases traffic capacity in the 450. Until Montreal becomes politically more coherent and tells off islanders that the saturation point has been reached, we are going to have these urban boulevards extended through our working class residential neighbourhoods. Take a look at this corner besides a school and a Park and know thats the future.
https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&q=Christophe+Colomb+and+Villeray&ie=UTF-8&ei=GFYZUICKCPK10QH8xoC4BA&ved=0CEQQ_AUoAg
I ride past this corner to go to work and it never fails to amaze me.
cheese 12:00 on 2012/08/01 Permalink
The road/highway planning in Quebec is about 50 years out of date, we are still making the same mistakes that other places are already putting in measures to try to fix. This is really discouraging news. Maybe us “socialists” should “move to Sweden” as was jokingly suggested in a recent comment.
Jack 12:17 on 2012/08/01 Permalink
Sorry about that link I am tech challenged and type with two fingers.
Matt 16:26 on 2012/08/01 Permalink
How can this government be taken seriously? One day they’re all green public transit, tolls, higher gas taxes and the next, more roads! Plus, I hate the words “urban boulevard”. I’ll never see a congestion charge or tolls in my lifetime.
Chris 23:45 on 2012/08/01 Permalink
I love how they always sell it: “ease overburdened traffic”. It may do that in the short term, in the immediate area, but when will people get it into their heads that adding roads just encourages more cars, which just adds more traffic to adjoining streets!
Kate 11:10 on 2012/08/02 Permalink
Yes, studies show that you build it and they will come. That road will be crowded as soon as it’s opened for business, and it’ll be gridlock once it’s extended to Laval.
cheese 12:18 on 2012/08/02 Permalink
I think the major issue with this particular road is that is will add more cars to the 40 which is already a parking lot most days (or so I’m told, I try to avoid it). So cars will be able to more efficiently reach the parking lot known as the 40. For that reason I’m not sure that this will actually shorten the commute times as much as hoped.
@Matt has the right idea. The traffic should be reduced not encouraged to increase. Let’s put this money into public transport instead.
Jean Naimard 21:47 on 2012/08/02 Permalink
One has to admit that the Waste-Island is pretty much urbanistically retarded, with only 4 north-south roads from Dorval to Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue… Building that boulevard is kinda 50 years overdue…
But, again, the Waste-Island is the kingdom of NIMBYes.