"They (Kirkland) put up the signs and they figured, 'this will shut them up so we don't have to do anything else'," said D'Urso.
The signs installed 14 months ago prohibit motorists from turning left onto Harmony Street or Brunswick Boulevard from Henri Daoust between 6 and 9:00 a.m. An independent study conducted Sept. 2010 by CIMA Engineering found that between 5,000 and 6,000 cars use Henri Daoust daily as an alternate north-south conduit to bypass heavily congested St. Charles Boulevard.
"It's not an easy fix," said City of Kirkland director general Joe Sanalitro. "Yes, there are a lot of cars on that particular street. The implementation of the no-left-turns has reduced traffic by about 1,400 cars and during the peak morning period, it's actually a 40 to 50 per cent reduction in the number of cars."
D'Urso said the signs were the first phase of Kirkland council's initial traffic plan that originally included synchronization of the traffic lights at the corner of St. Charles and Brunswick Boulevards to make left-handed turns onto Brunswick from Henri Daoust less attractive to drivers. An alternate proposal to erect no-entrance or exit signs on Henri Daoust is not possible according to Sanalitro. "The first 100 feet (of Henri Daoust) is owned by Pierrefonds," he said, describing how the borough would not comply with the proposed signage. The only option would be to place the signs at Kirkland city limits and though the city's lawyers verified the signs legal, Cmmdr. Sylvain Doucet of police Station 1 said they could not enforce any infractions, as any tickets issued in that situation would amount to entrapment. "The driver turning from Antoine Faucon would only see the sign 100 feet in," Sanalitro said. "At that point, there's no way to turn back."
D'Urso remains unimpressed with the explanation.
"First of all, why did they present something that was not doable?" he said. "And then they took 14 months to tell us it was not doable."
Fabian who moved to the street from Beaconsfield in 1998 said the voluminous traffic coupled with regular Société de transport de Montréal (STM) buses has taken a structural toll on his home.
"The floor in my basement is full of hairline cracks," he said describing how his house shakes every time an STM bus crests the hill and applies the breaks. "It wasn't like that 13 years ago."
Sanalitro said presently there is no ideal solution as there are no other avenues to open up until the Ministère des Transports du Québec (MTQ) commits to building the proposed 440 corridor between Gouin Boulevard and highway 40 – a venture currently stalled by existing municipal infrastructure repair costs.
"Montreal has made this their number one priority because of the possibility of building so many more homes," he said referring to Pierrefonds' plan to develop an additional 5,000 to 6,000 houses. Sanalitro pointed out the project's viability given the projected tax revenue generated for all levels of government by adding additional housing.
Montreal, Pierrefonds and Kirkland are waiting for a 'protocol d'entente' from the MTQ, an agreement signed by all parties agreeing monies will be committed to the project. Sanalitro said that newly appointed Quebec transport minister Pierre Moreau has expressed interest in the housing development project and gave a rough estimate of a three-year time frame for the 440 completion.
"It is moving forward," Sanalitro said, though acknowledged that it won't happen as quickly as the Henri Daoust residents would prefer.
