From the urban planning lab in Concordia University’s Hall Building. Click for a larger view.
Photo taken October 31, 2007 (the bike path is just having its lines painted, the trees along the new sitewalk haven’t been planeted yet, and Ben’s is still there).
8 comments
If you’re gonna lose 1/3 of the street to a permanent bike path then you have to lose the parking on the opposite side of the street… typical idiotic planning coming from the city of Montreal in terms if traffic flow. This same problem exists on R-L Boulevard. Is it 3 lanes or 2? No one knows especially b/c of the lack of lane lines. It’s like a free-for-all at times.
I kind of like the buffer the bike path or parked cars put between pedestrians and the street. So no, I wouldn’t be in favour of getting rid of the parallel parking on the other side. Downtown Montreal does need parking after all.
On re-examining that photo, Hotel de la Montagne ought to be blown to pieces.
Yeah, I more or less agree, it’s a butt-ugly building but the remains of an old building on the north side is pretty neat and I’ve heard you can swim in their rooftop pool so long as you keep buying drinks.
I’ve been up there before!! .. I’d really like to go up on the roof
You can’t really see Ben’s on this pic, even though it was not yet demolished when the pic was taken. That little brown building in the center of the pic is not Ben’s.
If you increase the size of the photo in Flickr, you can see a little bit of Ben’s poking out.
Parked cars are fine on smaller side-streets but on the (few) major boulevards that downtown has, they are unsightly. It is as much of an aesthetic thing as it is economic. Downtown needs more, better traffic flow NOT less. The city can seem ghostly and provincial at many times of the day. But don’t get me wrong, i am not a car-centric person – I would like to see wider sidewalks in the place of the parked cars AND better traffic flow. I know a lot of people on this site can be pretty anti-car but let’s get some perspective, Montreal ain’t NYC, Paris, London, Beijing etc…. in terms of cars or pollution.