This series of images taken from the 1976 film Una Magnum Special de Tony Saitta proves that it's entirely possible and indeed highly-enjoyable to drive straight down the St. James cliff to the area near where Highway 20 sits below.
You don't have to be an Italian stunt driver to do this but it probably doesn't hurt.
Why is this important to know you ask? (Who asked? I didn't hear anybody ask - Chimples)
Traffic in The West End has been crippled by a series of traffic planning decisions made by the former Charest government that have made it difficult to reach Highway 20. (Charest himself has not been inconvenienced by these carbound calamities, as his drive from Victoria and the Boulevard to Peel and Sherbrooke still takes 12 minutes).
Perhaps most dramatically, the eastbound ramp from near Girouard has been forever removed, turning two traffic-light, seven minute drive downtown into a eight-light-or-more, 19 minute drive through many already-overburdened streets.
Transport Ministry authorities have suggested that a less-useful ramp may or may not be built in about five years time somewhere from Pullman. Don't hold your breath.
Other highway accesses have been shut for four years, which makes the area way less accessible.
What we need is a new road down Cavendish to hook up with Highway 20 below.
Now, many people have been calling for the St. James cliff to be defended as green-space habitat, which seems like a reasonable idea,
But adding one extended road down to it wouldn't do much to bother the wildlife that lives along the three-km linear area.
My philosophy on green spaces? I love them and want plenty more in the city but not in remote or dangerous places and the St. James cliff is both.
Large-sized and difficult-to-reach parks create the illusion that Montreal has a lot of green space, whereas it actually has very little accessible by foot.
We need parks and green spaces where you live, even if it means expropriating and demolishing existing homes, not on scary and dangerous hills where bodies get dumped.
You can see in these photos that the cliff was largely barren and covered with rocks in 1976, that was largely because construction work expanding St. James required tossing loads of detritus over the hillside.
My father claimed that this sort of thing was done for many years before as well, which greatly increased the size of his land, thus increasing the size value of the land he rented out considerably.
I've always been a bit short on details of how this worked exactly so anybody with information please pass it along.
Meanwhile if we all do extensive yoga and visualize this road down the cliff, it will eventually get built.