Malaka Ackaoui’s husband was the one who told her about the accident Thursday that put an 84-year-old woman in the hospital. The woman later died of her injuries.
“Not again,” she said when she heard the news.
The urban planner and landscape architect has been fighting to get the intersection at the corner of Decarie and DeMaisonneuve reconfigured for close to a decade.
In November 2019, when Ackaoui found out that an elderly man was killed while trying to cross the street at the same intersection she tried to take action again.
“I went to the December borough council meeting in person and I told them, listen, this is dangerous. We don’t want people to get killed. To be honest, I wanted to tell them that if you know of a problem and you don’t resolve it, and it could create a deadly consequence, it’s like criminal negligence.
“You know how they responded? They said ‘The old man didn’t respect the lights…the man was old, maybe he didn’t have good eyesight, you don’t know,’ ” she says.
Ackaoui says she made suggestions on how to improve the intersection but nothing was done.
“I asked them to do tentative experimental projects just to see, something they could try and undo afterwards. Trial and error is the way tactic urbanism is done, but they never did it,” she says.
The borough of CDN-NDG is responsible for work on its residential streets. The city of Montreal is responsible for major arteries like the intersection of Decarie and DeMaisonneuve.
In June 2019, the city of Montreal drew up a plan to fix the intersection. In their report they noted there had been 18 accidents at the intersection in the space of only two years.
By August, the plan had been scrapped.
According to an email sent to borough staff, the city of Montreal ” decided to postpone the major work at this intersection to an indeterminate date…This work was expected by the population and the news could generate discontent on the part of residents.”
It was just a few months later, in November, that the elderly man died trying to cross at the intersection.
Borough mayor Sue Montgomery says it’s not surprising fixing the intersection isn’t a priority for the city of Montreal.
“It was in the budget in 2019. I am very disappointed. Downtown really doesn’t care about NDG, nor do they care about safety,” she says. “They have this vision zero policy. The goal is zero traffic accidents. Decarie and DeMaisonneuve is one of the most dangerous intersections in the city.”
“I personally raised this issue with Mayor Plante. I told her the intersection is very dangerous. I told her it was a priority for residents of NDG,” says Montgomery.
City councillor Peter McQueen says he would have liked to see the intersection made safer years ago.
“This goes way back, obviously it’s a dangerous intersection for cyclists and pedestrians. When they rebuilt the railway, that was 10 years ago, as part of the MUHC project, they built that rail bridge over Decarie Boulevard and at that time I pushed so hard to get them to include a little a bicycle bridge,” he says.
But that didn’t happen.
“Perhaps the current layout, though odd, is the best that can be done,” says McQueen. He says he’ll be renewing his push to have the traffic lights at the intersection recalibrated.
“What that section needs is an all traffic stop just like Claremont and DeMaisonneuve has. On the corner of Claremont and DeMaisonneuve, it’s a bit of a complicated intersection but they’ve managed to find a way that the cars, bikes and pedestrians all have their time to stop. So, it’s time to do that at Decarie and DeMaisonneuve. It is time to give 20 seconds on all those pedestrian signals,” he says.
Jason Savard of the Association for Pedestrians and Cyclists of NDG agrees. He says his organization has also been saying for years that this intersection is dangerous.
“We wanted to see a 4-way pedestrian cross light; however, the excuse was always the Turcotte traffic. But the Turcotte construction has subsided and we’ve yet to see any safety measures added to this intersection.”
“In our experience, any measures that impact drivers, such as parking or slower driving has always been difficult for our city councillors to act on,” says Savard.
Montgomery says a lot more than new traffic lights is needed to fix the problem.
“A dedicated pedestrian light is a start, but it’s patchwork. We need a complete redesign of the intersection. From 2012-2019 engineers worked on technical studies to completely redesign the Decarie and DeMaisonneuve intersection. We’ve done the studies. Now, we need the funding,” says the mayor.
Ackaoui says the city needs to admit the intersection is a disaster.
“What we have to do is change DeMaisonneuve again. I think the ministry and the city should be courageous enough to say that we made a mistake,” she says.
“I see it every day. People don’t even stop at the stop sign. They are all lined up one behind each other blocking the pedestrian crossing,“ she says.
According to Ackaoui, the time for studies is long past.
“Let’s try things. Let’s say we block this exit and we try and let cars drive westbound. That’s one thing that I think would resolve many, many problems. I don’t think closing upper Lachine to traffic is the solution. I think what they did there is a mistake. It’s a planning and engineering mistake in my opinion, and it doesn’t work.”
Ackaoui’s grandchildren attend the daycare located on the corner of DeMasionneuve and Decarie. The same building houses a physiotherapy clinic that caters to a lot of seniors.
“We have to take care of the most vulnerable pedestrians. The oldest and the youngest. If you respond to the safety and the needs of the oldest and the youngest, you make it safe for everybody,” Ackaoui says.
