Camillien Houde Way, Montreal

Montreal’s Mayor Reclaims a Famous Road From Cars and Trucks

Camillien-Houde Way, the road that winds up Montreal’s iconic Mount Royal, will be closed to most vehicles, the mayor of Montreal announced Wednesday.

Mayor Valérie Plante presented what she called an “ambitious vision” for the road at a news conference on Wednesday. It will be reserved for pedestrians and cyclists but emergency vehicles will be able to use it when needed, she said. 

“We’re taking out the asphalt and we’re putting in trees,” she said.

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New York City traffic congestion

We’re Taking New York City’s Streets Back — and Then We’re Coming for the Rest of the Country

Over the summer, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority held meetings to discuss how to organize its congestion pricing toll for drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street…

…The fury around congestion pricing is part of a larger debate that has animated a great deal of big city politics of late: Who owns the streets? The public right of way can occupy as much as one-third of the land in big U.S. cities, and various residents have begun to ask if there might be better things to do with all that territory than moving and storing cars.

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Wider Sidewalks Now video opening image

Wider Sidewalks Now Video

In 2020, the Avenue Road Safety Coalition made a video to illustrate the safety issues posed by the narrow sidewalks in the 6-lane section of Avenue Rd. between Bloor Street and St. Clair Avenue. We spoke to many residents, business owners and local residents’ association members about the problems and potential solutions.

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Avenue Road re-imagined Brown & Storey Architects

Fixing Sam’s Road: the urban design disaster of Avenue Road

Avenue Road is the enduring legacy of Sam Cass. Very enduring.

Cass was the traffic engineer hired by the new Metro Toronto government created in 1954 to federate the city of Toronto and 12 other local municipalities. His task was to create a network of roads that would bring people efficiently into the downtown core and take them back to their suburban homes at night. That was the post-war vision of the city.

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