UPDATE (Nov. 3): Isabelle Tremblay, spokesperson for the Société de Transport de Montréal (STM), says there have been no complaints from either drivers or passengers about this particular intersection, but that the STM would send someone to evaluate its safety. She said the STM accepts complaints from users and follows up on them, and anyone seeing a similar situation who feels their safety might be threatened should contact them that way, as well as their borough.

I was also contacted by the office of Lisette Lapointe, MNA for the provincial riding of Crémazie, which covers the western corner of this intersection. (Viau covers the part east of Papineau, and Laurier-Dorion includes the part south of Highway 40 and west of Papineau.) Lapointe's attaché Catherine Berbery said this description of the intersection was "interesting but mostly scary" and that they are also looking into the matter with the city.

Spokespeople for the city of Montreal said they are looking into OpenFile's questions.

Imagine a bus stop on an island inaccessible to pedestrians.

Go to the intersection of Papineau Ave. and Crémazie Blvd. and you can see six.

The intersection, which is in the form of a large circle under Highway 40, has four sets of traffic lights, each with a right-turn shortcut that bypasses it. But there isn't a single pedestrian crossing. Anywhere. No crosswalks, no pedestrian signals, no signs indicating pedestrian crossings. Not even lines in front of traffic lights indicating where pedestrians should cross.

And yet, pedestrians have to cross to get to any of six bus stops at this intersection.

I was curious why the city allows this intersection to exist in this way. A search through news archives shows it has been this way since 1990, when Crémazie was widened from two to three lanes of traffic.

I wanted to know, in particular, whether the city thinks there's a legal, safe way for pedestrians to access these islands. (Only one has a sidewalk that leads to a crossing, 100 metres away.) I asked the city about it last week, and am waiting for a response.

A map of the circle at Crémazie Blvd. and Papineau Ave. Purple zones are traffic islands, blue dots denote bus stops, yellow lines are traffic light stop lines and red lines are where pedestrians cross without any way to stop traffic. (Satellite image from Google Maps)

I discovered the dangerous design of this intersection when I started shopping at the Maxi grocery store on the north side (one that caused a lot of political hay at city hall when it was approved in 1997). The trip for a pedestrian is hardly straightforward. After getting off the bus, I need to walk a block out of my way to the next traffic light to the east, then double back once I've crossed under the highway. On the way back, I jaywalk across five lanes of traffic to get to the bus stop for the trip home.

I don't want to do this, particularly not with a heavy bin of groceries in tow. But there is simply no legal way for me to get to my bus stop. My only other option is to walk another 100 metres out of my way, cross halfway at a different intersection, then walk along the tiny median (about half the width of a standard sidewalk, with light support poles in the middle), and then through the grass. I can't possibly believe this is how the city expects us to get there.

These bus stops aren't in the middle of nowhere, though they might have been when they were first installed. Besides the big-box grocery store to the north, there's a giant office building to the west, opened in 1986, and residential neighbourhoods to the south and east. In fact, on the east side, the closest building to the intersection houses a daycare.

Even after months of using this intersection the way every other pedestrian does, and learning the patterns of traffic flow to maximize my chances of making it across without being run over, I still feel I'm putting my life on the line every time I use it.

It takes five or eight seconds for the average person to cross, depending on the width of the street, and it can be as little as four seconds, and no more than 10, between the time a car is spotted and the time it reaches the average crossing point. (Yes, I timed this with a stopwatch.) This is a tiny margin for error, and gets worse if the person is a slow walker (to say nothing about how a person in a wheelchair might handle this).

Thankfully for pedestrians, drivers are generally reluctant to run people over, and there's nothing to obstruct a driver's view. But that seems to be the only thing keeping pedestrians safe when they're crossing these streets.

A group of people cross a traffic shortcut on the north side of the circle to access the parking lot of the Maxi store. The alternative to jaywalking here is to walk an extra 200 metres to and from the next block north. Photo: Steve Faguy

A woman waits for a break in traffic to cross from the stop for the 45 south and the stop for the 192/460 east on the south side of the circle. There is no safe time to make this crossing. Photo: Steve Faguy

A man crosses the street between the bus stops for the 45 north and 192/460 west on the north side of the circle. There is no safe time to make this crossing. Photo: Steve Faguy

Steve Faguy is a local blogger, freelance journalist and copy editor.