As part of 375th celebrations, the City of Montreal gifted Dorval North residents a new separated bike lane, but it's been causing all kinds of problems for residents and many hope the city kept the receipt.
Residents like Sarah Campeau have been telling elected officials that the bike lane is too wide and that it's creating new problems on top of existing challenges and the sometimes dangerous traffic situation. Cardinal Avenue is now too narrow, say local residents.
“You saw how that bus had to turn into two lanes?" asked Campeau, pointing at a school bus. "It had to turn into two lanes and those cars had to stop as he was turning onto Cardinal. That’s the problem!”
The new bike lane is wider than a dump truck (with room to spare on both sides) and the median that protects cyclists from motorists is almost the width of a full sidewalk. This has reduced the overall width of Cardinal and left larger vehicles like buses and delivery trucks with little or no room to maneuver.
Cardinal Avenue and the bike lane run in a straight line, parallel to highway 20, between Sources Boulevard and the airport. Google Maps says it's a three minute drive, but the same stretch at rush hour can be a 30-minute ordeal.
"There's also a lot of traffic from the airport that is by-passing 'the (Dorval) circle' to get to the airport," added Campeau. "If they know about (the shortcut along Cardinal), many are not going to take the circle."
As the airport has grown so has traffic along Cardinal, including large transport trucks and motorists trying to avoid the confusion of the Dorval Traffic Circle. Dorval's response was to add a series of stop signs along Cardinal to try to slow down motorists and keep residents and their families safe.
Campeau and other residents say there are now too many stop signs along the two kilometre stretch. They're causing impossibly slow traffic jams road rage, and frustrated motorists have started turning off Cardinal in favour of zipping through side streets to reach Sources or the airport.
Recently, Dorval added to residents' frustration by installing new signage forbidding any turns off of Cardinal during rush hours. Like the creation of the bike path itself, there was no consulations with residents before the new signage was installed.
Campeau has poured over recent minutes from Dorval City Council meetings and was frustrated to see the traffic issues and the new signs had not even been discussed.
"The mayor said that he had 'private meetings' with the residents on these roads. So, that means the rest of the Dorval North community who uses these roads to access their homes, can't, because there is some sort of 'secret meetings' happening that we don't know about or what was said or why."
A pedestrian along Cardinal who spoke with CJAD 800 said he wrote a letter of complaint to the city over the summer, but has not heard back yet or seen any improvements. He said "it is utterly ridiculous" that Dorval went along with the bike lane project without first looking at how it might impact the neighbourhood.
With Montreal's first big snow storm about to hit, residents are also worried about the fact the bike lane isn't cleared in the winter. That means cyclists will resort to using Cardinal and that will further frustrate motorists.
Campeau stressed that a bike lane is a good idea along Cardinal, but its implementation could be used as a lesson in how not to do things.