With Christmas just a few short weeks away you might not expect ‘bicycle paths’ to be a hot topic for anyone. Residents of Dorval north are lighting up social media brighter than a Christmas Tree with their concerns over the new bike path along Cardinal Avenue.
As CJAD800 reported first last week, residents say the bike lane is too wide and that it creates dangerous traffic situations across the neighbourhood. It has resulted in Cardinal Avenue - their primary route to get home - being too narrow.
Dorval north city councillor Margo Heron confirmed to CJAD800 that Cardinal’s bike path is here to stay, but said something might be able to be done to ease the situation. However, she made no promises.
“The car widths are perfectly legal. They are the legal width for any road and the problem with Cardinal is that the bike path is only on one side,” said Heron. “If you drive along Lakeshore Road there’s a bike path on each side so you get the feeling that it’s wider than it is.”
Legal or not, residents say they could see that the width of the bike path was going to be a problem and raised concerns, but Heron wasn’t buying it.
“A problem for people...for change. For people not being used to having it.”
Some residents say the bike path should be moved over by few couple meters so that it runs along the fence next to the train tracks. That’s what was done in Pointe Claire some 30 years ago when a similar bike path was built along Donegani Ave, connecting to Boul. Saint-Jean.
The most popular suggestion is slimming down the median that keeps cyclists safely separated from traffic and Heron agrees.
“One thing we can do is to shave the curb down. Narrow it up. Narrow the curb all the way along," she said.
Dorval’s Circulation Committee will discuss the bike path on Wednesday, December 12th. The review will include the complaints about traffic gridlock on Cardinal; impatient drivers darting through side streets as a shortcut; and the pair of new “no turning” signs that ban turning off Cardinal during rush-hours.
That last one is a particular annoyance to the residents who live on the two streets affected by the new signs. They went up without public consultation and folks are now stuck with a several block detour if they want to go home at rush hour. If a resident gets stopped by police for making a now-illegal turn, Heron says they'll have to show the officer their ID and "hope for leniency."
Heron said she’s kept everybody's email and is going to “make a grid of the complaints” and look at it all.
When construction of the project wrapped up in October 2017, a public notice from the City of Dorval proclaimed “the new configuration of Cardinal Avenue … will reduce the speed of traffic and thus benefit residents while making the road safer for pedestrians and motorists alike.”
That has not been the reality.
Most residents in the social media discussions agree that Cardinal Avenue should have a bike-path, but they also agree that they didn’t get what was promised.
Large trucks still use Cardinal as a preferred route to and from the airport despite posted signs that forbid the practice. Increased surveillance to intercept and fine delinquent drivers is nowhere to be seen.
In the meantime, the Circulation Committee will review the situation and Heron adds residents will just have to be patient.
“Hopefully the traffic will abate on Cardinal with time, but it’s going to take time.”