Monday, July 25, 2011

Camillien Houde repaved!

The city is repaving the entire Camillien Houde climb up the east side of Mont Royal.

Yes, the entire thing.

They are digging up the old asphalt (it gets recycled), and laying down new pavement from the bottom to the top, the complete width of the road.

Amazing.

It's not quite finished, but it's already much appreciated by cyclists.

A few Camillien Houde facts:
  1. Camillien Houde was mayor of Montreal four times between 1928 to 1954.
  2. After his death, Mayor Jean Drapeau named a new road over Mount Royal after Houde, an act many considered ironic, as Houde and many others had long opposed building roads over the city's famous mountain.
  3. The road that is now known as Camillien Houde was previously only a streetcar route, there was no street and the canyon on top of the climb was a tunnel originally.
  4. The Camillien Houde climb was in the 1976 Montreal Olympic games.
  5. More at wikipedia.

Enjoy!

3 Comments:

At 8:29 PM, Blogger Geneviève said...

That's great news. Do you know if we cyclists are getting a shoulder on the entire length too? That first turn after the light near Avenue du Parc scare the heck out of me, 2 inches of asphalt then crumbling rock on a tight turn...

 
At 6:58 AM, Blogger moni said...

This is great. I was up there on Sunday and noticed the road was torn up. I wonder what they're going to do about the bike path/lane situation though. Last year they had a line painted on it... this year nothing. I really wish we had a dedicated path up and over the mountain.

 
At 8:47 AM, Blogger moni said...

Rode it again yesterday (Aug 8) and it still has no line markings.

 

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