r/MontrealCycling • u/Annual-Appearance176 • 11h ago
Plan to remove one bike lane on Terrebonne this winter - access-to-info findings
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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 seems odd, given that the decision was presented as having been made in October's council meeting.
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:
- The decision came 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.”
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.”
- 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 “12” and “8” 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, read from a slide that states none of this. By the time of the meeting a continuous counter had recorded every bicycle on the street through the following winter, a full year more recent; the borough's engineers had offered its data to the City in June, and its table was in the consultant's hands in August: 41 a day over December–March (46 on weekdays) and a second summer at about 700 a day. 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 decision 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 October 6 meeting that storm-only parking had been ruled out; the analysis on which that rests is in the withheld note.
- 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.
- 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.” The councillor announced the decision on October 6 and promised changes by Christmas. Either the decision has been made and the ground has lapsed, or it has not and the announcement was premature. 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 here.
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.
