Speed bumps aim to slow cyclists down in the Plateau

There are new speed bumps on Mont-Royal Avenue in the Plateau but they're not for the cars.

The street is closed to cars for the summer and pedestrians take priority so the speed bumps are to slow down the cyclists.

The Plateau-Mont-Royal borough decided to install the speed bumps as a pilot project, which has already been done on Wellington Street in Verdun.

In the summer, Mont-Royal Avenue is what the city calls a "slow zone," where pedestrians always have priority. The city says people on bikes, skateboards, scooters are welcome to ride along Mont-Royal, as long as they go slowly and yield to pedestrians at all times.

Plateau-Mont-Royal Borough Councillor Marianne Giguere said there have been complaints from pedestrians and business owners who say some cyclists are just going too fast to the point that it's dangerous to pedestrians.

Speed bumps for cyclists on Mount-Royal Avenue as part of a pilot project. (CTV News)

Giguere says most cyclists ride at a reasonable speed, and respect the signs placed in the middle of the street, but she says the borough felt that adding physical obstacles were necessary to slow down the people who are racing through the pedestrian zone.

"Sometimes, you know when you ride your bike you kind of forget you're there and you naturally go a little faster, especially on the west part of Saint-Denis Street where there's a small hill going down from Saint-Laurent to Saint-Denis, you know, it's easy to let your bike go and gain some speed. So this helps people to remember to slow down," Giguere said.

Vélo Québec says speed bumps are not the right approach and they can actually make things more dangerous.

"We have had incidents reported to us where people on bikes fall because of these specific speed bumps and got into very serious debilitating and permanent injuries and I don't think that's what the city wants," said Vélo Québec Program Director Magali Berbonne.

"So slowing down cyclists is always tricky because it's about getting them to slow down without creating a risk that's going to destabilize them. The moment you put in something like this it's a trap. It could be a trap in certain conditions."

But Beberonne says cyclists have a responsibility to respect the rules of the road when they're sharing it with pedestrians.

"It is a privilege for cyclists to be using a pedestrian street and they need to be aware about that and they need to adapt their behaviour. It's never up to pedestrians to have to signal their intentions or be overly cautious when they're enjoying a pedestrianized street."

However, on Friday, CTV News noticed many cyclists didn't ride over the speed bumps. They simply bypassed them by riding in between them and, in some cases, they didn't slow down at all.