Mont-Royal Avenue East

This guide to Mont-Royal Avenue East in Montreal opens with a 1970 newspaper warning that only radical measures could save the city from traffic paralysis, and the pedestrian mall the city built here that same October. You'll hear how shoppers loved it, how merchants complained about the planters, and how a brutal Montreal winter put the experiment to the test. It then jumps to the avenue's modern summer closures, with sidewalk tables and cyclists claiming the street each year. Best walked in the warm months, when the road belongs to pedestrians again.