No more ice, ice baby: Montreal moves forward on heated sidewalk project
MONTREAL — A bout of freezing rain that recently swept across Eastern Canada had some Montrealers reaching for skates and sent many a pedestrian crashing to the ground.
But what if icy, snow-covered sidewalks could be a thing of the past?
Since announcing the project in 2015, Montreal has been slowly moving ahead with a plan to install heated sidewalks on one of its key downtown arteries.
According to the plan, a snaking network of garden-hose-sized tubes will circulate a mixture of water and glycol, warmed by an electric heater, under a 670-metre stretch of Ste-Catherine Street.