Since they closed one of the lanes to lower weight why don’t they use it as a makeshift bridge. I know it happened in London for one of their bridges but I forgot which one

I was thinking, since they have to close a lane on the Mercier, that they could turn it into a bike path. Bikes weigh very little and it might get some of the drivers out of their cars. Many of us have been waiting for a bike lane across the bridge for years. Could this be our opportunity? I've reached out to the https://jacquescartierchamplain.ca folks who are in charge of the bridge with my suggestion. (Haven't heard back yet.)

The district councillor for Loyola alluded to the plan in the September council meeting for CDN-NDG, stating that any decision would be based on a professional study that was forthcoming at the time. I filed a request with the borough under Quebec's Act respecting Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information. My request was for emails and other documents that might provide insight into the framing of the study and its terms of reference.

The borough refused to release the study itself, on the grounds that they have the right to do so for documents on which a pending decision is based. This means that the plan remains a proposal, not a decision. As the councillor notes in his announcement, the proposal still needs to pass council votes at the borough and central city levels.

At any rate, the emails provided considerable insight and also included the slide deck the Loyola councillor was referring do during the most recent council meeting.

Here are the gory details of what I learned:

1. The objective was fixed before the study. On June 10, 2026 the borough's engineering division wrote to the City's street-design division that the elected officials wished to revisit the 2024 layout “avec l'objectif de redonner la bande de stationnement qui avait été retranchée,” that the borough's engineers had already issued a technical opinion on the two concepts the councillors had sketched, and that the councillors wanted “un avis officiel, neutre et externe.” The mandate eventually given to EXP on August 20 is titled, in part, “évaluer la place du stationnement sur rue, dans le but d'en augmenter le nombre.”
2. The City's own cycling unit warned about safety. The Service de l'urbanisme et de la mobilité returned an express analysis on June 17; the borough's own summary of it, written five days later, says the options “présentent plusieurs compromis importants sur le plan de la sécurité, du confort des usagers vulnérables et de la cohérence du réseau cyclable.” That analysis is withheld. The fire department's opinion of July 13 is redacted in its entirety.
3. The winter measure is described as transitional; the mandate from the mayor's office was permanent. On August 13 the borough mayor's chief of staff set the mandate in writing: a bidirectional lane on one side of Terrebonne, from Loyola to Côte-Saint-Luc, “qui respecte les normes minimales prévues par la loi,” and “le retour du stationnement d'un côté de la rue.” No winter measure appears. The service request a week later added Volet 1, removal of cycling facilities in winter, as “mesure transitoire pour l'hiver 2026–2027,” ahead of Volet 2, the permanent bidirectional lane. The winter conversion announced on October 6 is the first step of a year-round reduction of cycling space that has not been disclosed to the public.
4. The “study” is a six-week, $14,755 technical note with a council date fixed in advance. Service request August 20; offer August 25; purchase order August 26; kick-off September 3; draft September 17; final due October 2; announcement October 6. Borough staff told the consultant on August 18 that “l'objectif de nos élus est de pouvoir agir sur vos conclusions pour un horizon début octobre” and on September 10 that the draft was needed by the 18th “pour respecter notre calendrier du Conseil d'arrondissement du 5 octobre.”
5. The bicycle counts cited at council rest on the weakest data in the file and understate winter use; the file contained continuous counter data for last winter, documenting average winter usage at least five times higher than the cited figure. The more robust data were disregarded in the councillor's announcement. The councillor told the meeting that “we have counters everywhere, we have more counters than before. So we know exactly how many people use it, when and how,” and that “we go from 700 during the good months to 8 … So that's 4 cyclists, right? Including me.” The “8,” and the “12” he cited in answer to a question from the floor, come from the borough's February 2025 count presentation: not bicycles per day or per hour, but bicycles counted using a temporary camera (Miovision) installed at the Cavendish and Grand intersections over six peak-period hours of a single day, January 29, 2025, in the lane's first winter, when clearing was often delayed, and a day on which Environment Canada had issued a winter weather advisory and residents were urged to postpone non-essential travel; the same camera recorded cars on the Terrebonne approaches and pedestrians down by about a quarter from the November count, bicycles by 95%. The slide states none of this. Before the first email in the file (June 10) and the mandate from the mayor's office (August 13), a continuous counter had already recorded every bicycle on the street through the whole of the following winter, a full year more recent; the borough's engineers offered its data to the City on June 10, and its table was in the consultant's hands in August: 4,891 passages over December–March (41 a day; 46 on weekdays) and a second summer at about 700 a day. For the question that bears on safety, exposure, the relevant figure is the total number of winter trips, not the count on one chosen day; that total was in the borough's possession and was not cited at council. The “99%” drop cited at the meeting, 700 against 8, sets the largest number on one slide, Grand in September 2024 counted on all four approaches, against the smallest on the next, Grand in January 2025 on the Terrebonne axis alone; compared like for like, the deck's own slides give 97–98%, label January −95%, and the counter gives about 93% for the seasons entire. The two sources agree that the drop is steep; they differ in the absolute number, and only one of them yields “four people.” Whatever the explanation, a measure presented as data-driven rested on six hours of counting on a single day and ignored thousands of hours of more recent counting over an entire winter.
6. The need for additional winter parking was never measured. Across the 508 pages there is no inventory of on-street spaces, no occupancy count, no survey of residents, and no estimate of the spaces the conversion would create; the “50 to 60 spaces” the councillor gave the APC-NDG at its consultation meeting appears nowhere in the release. The mandate asks the consultant to count the spaces an arrangement “pourrait permettre de recréer” and to measure “l'amélioration de la disponibilité du stationnement”; the offer promises an analysis of “l'impact sur le nombre de places” and lists no field work; the consultant worked from aerial imagery. Whatever the note says about parking is a count of spaces that could be drawn, not a measurement of whether they are needed. Nothing in the file records how many winter nights parking near Terrebonne is actually full.
7. The case for removing a lane rests on a view that the lanes are wider than their bicycle traffic justifies; that view is the councillors' opinion, not the engineers' ruling. The June 10 email reports the elected officials' concern that the lanes' width was “jugée disproportionnée par rapport au volume de cyclistes observé … selon les élus,” and Councillor Teodoresco repeated the point to the APC-NDG at the consultation meeting, though not at the October 6 council meeting. No engineer in the file endorses it. The borough's own engineers describe the alternatives as “une voie de circulation très étroite (moins de 4 mètres)” and “un aménagement bidirectionnel très étroit”; the City's cycling unit found “plusieurs compromis importants”; and the August 13 mandate asks for a design “qui respecte les normes minimales prévues par la loi,” which concedes that the June concepts did not. Lane width is set by the cyclist's operating envelope, by passing room and by the snow-clearing equipment, none of which depend on how many people ride; nothing in the file describes the existing lanes as wider than the standard requires.
8. A storm-only option was within the mandate. EXP's offer lists among the scenarios to compare “la fermeture en période de déneigement seulement.” The councillor told the APC-NDG, at the meeting he later cited at council as his consultation with the Association, that storm-only parking had been ruled out because residents could not be informed of it; the option was not mentioned in his October 6 address, and the analysis on which the ruling-out rests is in the withheld note.
9. The exercise does not follow the City's own published method for reviewing a bike lane. On February 10, 2026 the administration launched its audit of the cycling network on the principle “recueillir les données, analyser et corriger au besoin”: technical analysis, data collection and field observation through the peak season, led by the Service de l'urbanisme et de la mobilité, with results expected at the end of 2026; the same release names Terrebonne among streets where the City is working with the borough on safety. On Terrebonne the objective was fixed before any analysis, the SUM's analysis was unfavourable and withheld, the mandate was to increase parking, no data were collected, and the change was announced while the City's audit was still under way.
10. The withholding of the technical report rests on a ground that expires with the decision. The note and the City's analysis are withheld under section 39, which applies “until a decision is made on the recommendation.” On October 6 the councillor said the elected officials were “now ready to give our orientation to the services” and that the seasonal removal “is what we're going to propose”; his signed statement adds that “one thing is certain: residents will see changes before Christmas 2026.” The Montreal Gazette reported it the next day under the headline “Terrebonne St. will drop to one bike lane in winter to allow more parking, borough says” and the subheading “Councillor justifies decision by noting there's a sharp drop-off in cycling traffic during the winter”; the words are the newspaper's, not the councillor's. Either the recommendation has been decided and the ground has lapsed, or it has not and the outcome was announced before the decision. A review may be sought from the Commission d'accès à l'information within 30 days, that is by November 8, 2026.

A more comprehensive analysis of the disclosed files can be found online in French and in English.

I have put all of the documents released by the borough here.

By far the most interesting read is the file containing emails and slides presenting study findings.

No serial number. Unlocked (with lock in the bar)

If you miss it, or know the person missing it, there it is.

J'ai le hub, mais pas le reste : ((

Since all the gear was sold out at the race - looking to buy a professional/high-quality picture from the race for my home office. Seen a few excellent ones in this group...

Ideally, Mount Royal with the peloton or a US rider - what do you all have!?

One-a-lifetime weekend in Montreal - need to memorialize it with a picture

• Un phare braqué droit devant aveugle les automobilistes, les piétons et les autres cyclistes qui viennent en sens inverse, ce n'est pas sécuritaire. les 30 vélos que j'ai croisé ce matin sur le pont avait TOUTE leur lumière braqué droit devant, incroyablement dangereux et assé innocent si vous me demander.

Mon fils mineur a reçu une amende pour avoir utilisé un Bixi bleu sans casque et a été arrêté par la police (bien fait pour lui!). Il ne retrouve plus la contravention. Est-ce que la Ville envoie un rappel? Ce sera son cadeau de fête, on voudrait régler l’addition.

Comme on ne l’a pas vu, il s’agit aussi peut-être d’un avis qu’il a confondu. À qui je peux demander s’il a vraiment reçu un ticket? Merci.

Hi there

I'm use to commute to my job (Plateau Mont-Royal -> Downtown, ~4km) from spring to early cold days. This year, I'd like to keep going to the job using a bike. I was wondering to get winter Bixi subscirption, but I red that people are riding commute bike like single speed during winter (intersting because of low maintenance needs).

I'm trying to gather as much as informations / feedbacks as I can to get ready for the cold seasons  

If you have any advises, recommandations and so on about what a newbie winter rider should know, it would help more than a lot.

Thanks 😃

I am looking for some very specific shops in the downtown area. Specifically, bike rental shops; someone recommended buying a used bike from this type of shop because they sell them at really good prices.

What reliable shops would you recommend?

I know it’s a long shot, but has anyone had their bike stolen today around the Sud-Ouest?
I found a dark green B’Twin Hoprider with light blue pedals. Looks like someone’s commuter bike.
I won’t post a picture for obvious reasons, but if you think it might be yours, DM me with some details so we can confirm.
I checked Garage 529 but nothing came up.

Hi there, we were hoping to bike the circuit today but not sure where to rent bikes from. Anyone have any ideas?

Found a pair of sport headphones along the canal path around midday today. If you think they may be yours, DM me with the brand/colour, ideally S/N and approximately where you lost them.

Hi,

Does anyone know a secure parking for my ebike in downtown Montreal. Preferably with a yearly or monthly subscription, a reasonable price, and secure access.

I need to leave it there at night or during the day when I am not using it, as I cannot take it with me inside university residence where I live, and the secure university parking spots are full.

Thank you so much in advance.

Salut la gang,

J’ai acheté un roval rapid clii front wheel il y a qq semaines et je suis à la recherche d’un rear wheel mais il semblerait qu’ils soient discontinued. Quelqu’un a de l’info la dessus ? Est ce que vous savez où je pourrais m’en procurer ? Merci !