Crosswalks and class

The city attempts to curb road
accidents, which occur four to six times
more often in poorer neighbourhoods

SPACE FOR PEDESTRIANS: Good (Laurier), bad (Hochelaga)

by MATT JONES

With Montrealers getting increasingly flummoxed about the possibility of being wiped out by pig-related viruses, residents might want to start paying attention to a more probable cause of injury: crossing the road. Worse, stepping out into the street could be especially perilous if you happen to be less than loaded with cash.

Patrick Morency, a doctor specializing in public health issues and a director of the Montreal Public Health Department, says poor areas of the city face four to six times as many road accidents as wealthy ones. “It’s not a negligible amount: we’re talking about 1,000 injuries per year,” he stresses.

Morency will be addressing this in a lecture next week, as part of the lead-up to the fifth Montreal Citizen Summit, which takes place June 5-7 at UQÀM.

According to Morency’s research, poor areas not only have more pedestrians and cyclists, they’re also more likely to have non-local traffic passing through them. “One problem is ‘through streets,’ which have larger vehicles, such as Papineau, Parc, St-Urbain, Hochelaga. Another problem is streets near highway exits, or streets that connect to highways, like St-Laurent, St-Denis, Jean-Talon, Sherbrooke.”

Two approaches to dealing with these problems are to decrease the volume of traffic by developing public transit or to reorganize streets to give priority to pedestrians and cyclists. These traffic-calming measures can obstruct traffic in three ways.

Vertical deviation impedes traffic by forcing cars up. “An example of this is speed bumps, like you see on Hutchison,” says Morency. But this could be taken further. “In Paris, they actually have raised crosswalks that cars have to drive over, instead of pedestrians stepping down into the street.”

Horizontal deviation includes measures like extending the curb at intersections so that no cars can park there, as was introduced recently on Bernard.

Thirdly, traffic can be blocked altogether with a dead-end street or a median that gives pedestrians a refuge while crossing. Morency finds Montreal’s medians need some work: “In many places, the median is too narrow for a mother and child to stand on.” A more successful example is the flowerpots on streets like Laurier, which give pedestrians more space.

In the last year, the city has expanded its network of bike paths, but the result is far from perfect. “A simple white line on the street is not ideal,” says Morency. “The ones on Henri-Bourassa and Côte-Ste-Catherine are better because they physically separate the cyclists from the traffic.”

This week, the city launched its public bike system, Bixi. What happens if roads suddenly fill up with inexperienced bike riders?

It’s not really an issue, says Morency, because the risk is posed by cars and trucks, not cyclists. “Studies from other cities show that having more cyclists on the streets is actually safer because it pressures the city to make improvements to bike transit networks.”

But one great irony hangs over Montreal’s traffic-calming measures. The most successful projects have been in areas like Outremont, Westmount and the Plateau: not exactly the poor neighbourhoods that actually need them. “Of course, wealthier neighbourhoods have more money, so they can afford to pay for these things,” says Marie-Josée Corriveau of social housing advocacy group FRAPRU. “You have to remember that poorer neighbourhoods also have to fight for green spaces, good lighting, social housing. So this is just one part of that larger battle.”

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