Local transportation plan adopted

From the very start of the transportation plan initiative, in the fall of 2007, Saint-Laurent organized public workshops and focus groups to identify major transportation issues and solution pathways. A second consultation session, attended by more than a hundred people, was held in March 2009 in order to validate the broad orientations being proposed prior to the presentation of the final version of the Transportation Plan.

To achieve its local Transportation Plan, the borough began by asking the consulting firm Tecsult to conduct a detailed diagnostic study of the territory. The study made it possible to highlight the significant number of individual trips made in the borough-400 000 each day, all transportation methods combined.

Trips made by residents, most of which involve travel outside Saint-Laurent, account for 40% of all travel. However, the great majority of trips in the territory are made by people travelling to Saint-Laurent for their jobs. Indeed, Saint-Laurent is a major employment hub within the metropolitan region, the second-largest such hub after downtown Montréal.

It was from this perspective that Saint-Laurent developed a three-year Action Plan stemming from its Transportation Plan. Titled For better sharing of public roads, the Action Plan provides for concrete measures to expand public transit, foster the collective use of cars, improve pedestrian travel conditions, undertake a major expansion, within 10 years, of the bike-path network, better manage truck traffic, optimize use of the road network, improve the way parking is managed.

The local plan includes a bike-path network expansion in the near future, increasing the

number of kilometres of bike paths from 8.2 km today to 82 km within the next 10 years.

Finally, the development of "green" neighbourhoods is one of the solutions being proposed to safeguard the safety and quality of life in residential sectors. This concept involves the installation of specific signage, the development of public space that aims to make travel by foot and bike a pleasant experience, offering easier access to public transit, and restricting automobile traffic to local travel. <@Ri>To consult the complete version of Saint-Laurent's local Transportation

Plan, visit the website at http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/saint-laurent and click on the "Transportation Plan" link.<@$p> (Source: St. Laurent Borough)