After weeks of debate on Facebook and the launching of petitions both for-and-against the contentious bike path on Cardinal Avenue, the issue was finally brought offline and discussed by Dorval City Council on December 18th.
At the meeting Dorval Mayor Edgar Rouleau made it clear that the Cardinal bike lane is not going anywhere, but that there may be room for improvement.
Resident Sarah Campeau tabled a petition from citizens asking Dorval Council to reopen discussions on the bike path and to try and reach a mutual agreement on measures that would reduce congestion and increase safety for motorists and cyclists.
"My commute should be five minutes and it's taking me half an hour," Campeau told CJAD800. "I have a problem with that."
Cyclists showed up at City Hall in large numbers to defend the need for the bike path. Campeau said cyclists were "very respectful and really passionate" about keeping the bike lanes, which she thinks had a lot of influence at the Council meeting.
"What (city council) suggested is that they're going to look at reducing the cement median to allow for the lanes to be widened on Cardinal for traffic, which will help with buses and emergency vehicles and snowploughs going up and down Cardinal."
Other suggestions included improved public transit, the aforementioned changes to the width of th ebike path and its protective median, improved signage, as well as better controls of heavy truck restrictions that are already in place, but rarely enforced.
In fact, it's increased truck and passenger traffic to the airport that forced the addition of several stop signs along Cardinal to try and ease the situation, but this only created a new and dangerous problem.
Impatient motorists started turning onto adjacent residential streets looking for shortcuts between the airport and Sources Boulevard. The city then installed "no turning" signs on the two streets closest to the airport and that became the 'last straw' for several residents.
Dorval City Council intends to contact residents on Thorncrest and Westwood to find out whether the new no-turning signs are working and Campeau wrote on facebook, "if you live on one of those two roads and don't like the no turning signs, speak up."
As for the ban on truck traffic along Cardinal, residents shouldn't hold their breath for a solution.
"If a truck is going to break the law the Mayor can't stop that," said Campeau. "The trucks are going down there knowing that they're not allowed to go down that road."
However, it's unclear just how much flexibility the City of Dorval has to make changes along Cardinal Avenue because the road is actually under the jurisdiction of the City of Montreal's Agglomeration Council.
A request for additional information about the bike path was made to the Agglomeration Council office, but a response was received by the time of publication (likely due to the holiday period).