Frankly I haven't paid too much attention to car-free streets outside of my neighborhood, where other than a few pilot projects nothing much has materialized. Given the progress in other aspects of the city though I wouldn't be suprised though. I do know much of the downtown central road was redone to make it go from 4 lanes to 1 with the rest being given to pedestrians.

for the language thing if you move in to a more anglo neighborhood like mile end you can get away with not knowing any french for a while, and there are good (free!) french tutoring programs available to immigrants. You will need to learn french within like two-ish years though because then the Quebec government will stop sending you english versions of paperwork.