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Vanier’s McArthur Avenue is poised to get new bike lanes this year intended to make it easier for cyclists to travel between downtown and points east.

At an open house next week, the city will unveil plans for a functional redesign of McArthur between North River Road and St. Laurent Boulevard.

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The city plans to use paint, signs and large concrete planter boxes to reconfigure the road and travel lanes, in part as a response to concerns about excessive speeding on a street with two elementary schools.

Vehicle traffic would be reduced to two lanes for much of McArthur, but some left-turn lanes and on-street parking spaces would remain.

Donald Street, located south of and running parallel to McArthur, was initially slated to get painted-on sharrows to advise drivers to share the roadway with cyclists, but the idea wasn’t warmly received, said transportation planner Zlatko Krstulic.

McArthur offered a better opportunity for actual bike lanes because it’s wider, he said. It’s also the closest east-west cycling corridor in the vicinity of Montreal Road and offers better connections to neighbourhoods east of St. Laurent and the Aviation Parkway multi-use pathway.