Jacques-Bizard bridge

By Chelsey St-Pierre
The Suburban

The President’s Cup at the Royal West Golf Club that took place last weekend generated a major increase in car traffic crossing the Jacques-Bizard bridge connecting Pierrefonds-Roxboro to Île-Bizard with 30,000 visitors coming in for the tournament daily for six consecutive days. Some residents argued that the drive-in allowance pass system issued by the City of Montreal, distributed just two weeks prior to the event, posed more problems than solutions. With long wait times at the checkpoints, the drive-in pace was further slowed down.

“The majority of people are pretty frustrated by the way things were organized. The system put in place to manage traffic and the volume of traffic has been a mess since Tuesday,” Renaissance Coiffure owner and operator Julian Brun told The Suburban. “A caregiver in charge of bringing medication to an elderly client was unable to deliver. People visiting their parents had to change plans. Most elderly stayed in, not wanting to be involved in this mess. Children had to be kept home from school.”

With no public anglophone schools on the island, the majority of students affected were those attending anglophone public schools and private schools located off Île-Bizard.

A single entry checkpoint was set up on Pierrefonds Boulevard Eastbound between Hamel Street and Jacques-Bizard Boulevard during the cup except for the afternoon rush where access was also permitted from Pierrefonds Boulevard Westbound. The ferry was reserved for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers who were issued passes. The checkpoint for the ferry was set on Des Bois Avenue in Laval. No access restrictions were applied to pedestrians or cyclists. Street parking was strictly forbidden on the entire Île-Bizard island during the event.

In speaking with The Suburban prior to the event, Ile-Bizard Mayor Doug Hurley expressed his reservations about the access passes planned by the Montreal Agglomeration, suggesting that it would only contribute to complicating matters surrounding the event, not to mention the additional expenditure for a “solution” planned without consulting Île-Bizard. “The main solution is to ban street parking and provide a lane exclusive to shuttle buses during arrival and departure times,” Hurley explained. “There is also the aspect of additional security, which is provided by Île-Bizard, but as this is a Montreal event, they should fork the bill. We are best suited to manage locally, but since we are providing a service for a private event organized by the City of Montreal, our residents should not be paying for that. The tickets given out are sent to the city, it does not come back to us. The city should not be using public money for a private event in either case. We can provide the service, because we have the set-up and capacity but someone has to pay that bill, not the public.”

Following the event, The Suburban contacted Mayor Hurley for comment as the City of Montreal did concede to some of his suggestions such as the no-parking rule on the island throughout the event. “All I have gotten is complaints from people (as predicted), such as doctors and nurses not getting access to homes of patients, deliveries to pharmacies and grocery stores being blocked, even school buses. Vehicle fleets (such as these), are interchangeable as they have many vehicles that serve (interchangeably).”

Hurley advocated against the passes for several months prior to the event taking place. “As a former police officer, I know what is involved in stopping and directing cars. Checkpoints slow things down. The time it takes to check for passes and redirect those who don’t have them into another lane (or towards the distribution point for passes) was unnecessary and unhelpful for this event. This is not Ville-Marie. The people running the committee are not from an emergency background, they are from a tourism background and lack the experience of working with emergency services.”

Pierrefonds-Roxboro Mayor Jim Beis shared Hurley’s point of view and added that “checkpoints at the main artery between the East and West of Pierrefonds-Roxboro and on the commercial strip caused loss of accessibility to businesses on the commercial strip (in that same location) and created more traffic through residential areas.”

Both Beis and Hurley advised the police authorities on-site hired by the City of Montreal to direct traffic on how they could potentially relieve congestion. “After a few days they decided to take our advice and the situation improved,” Beis said.

According to Hurley, nearly 100 SPVM officers were deployed over six days to manage the traffic circulation and bridge-pass verifications. n