Vélo Festif wants to replace calèches
The Vélo Festif wants to replace calèches in Old Montreal, but isn’t getting any interest from city hall. Curiously, I had a link a month ago to a Journal story about people not liking the Vélo festif, but that story is gone from their site and nobody else has it. I’m still curious how the thing is still running after being declared not street legal in 2015.
Chris 09:04 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
Aren’t those trucks with nothing but a screen for showing advertisements illegal too? They’ve been driving around for longer, and not stopped. Uber flouts the law, AirBnB flouts the law. The law does not seem to apply to businesses, only to us schmucks.
Kate 09:07 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
Indeed, it often feels like this is so, Chris.
ottawaowl 12:27 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
I LIKE the Vélos festifs! More Un-Vélo-une-ville bike-taxis should also replace the calèches in Old Montreal. Even better would be FREE Ottawa-style homemade bike-taxis.
Jonathan 14:04 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
But yet cyclists get 10’s of thousands of tickets for not stopping properly at a stop sign.
Blork 14:20 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
“10’s of thousands of tickets” for stop sign violations? Seriously? FFS.
Jonathan 14:41 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
I’m not sure where that disbelief is aimed at, Blork. Recent news showed that for the last several years more than 10,000 tickets were given to cyclists, and that the majority of them were handed out for failing to stop at a stop sign.
8,890 in 2014, 9,326 in 2015, 11,785 in 2016, 12,644 in 2017, and 12,285 in 2018. That’s 54,930 in 5 years. If the majority of those were for stop violations as have been reported, then you can most probably assume that there were at least 27,466 tickets given out to cyclists in the last five years for stop violations.
Blork 14:47 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
OK. I stand corrected. I didn’t realize the numbers were that high and that most were for stop signs.
Kevin 15:49 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
Running red lights and stop signs, followed by wearing headphones/earphones, then not respecting road signs.
Chris 18:10 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
I wonder how many of those were really “running” the red/stop vs doing an Idaho stop. Cyclists know they are vulnerable, hardly any blindly race through intersections without being able to see first.
Michael Black 18:23 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?
Going through a stop sign probably makes cyclists sloppy, but means little if nobody is around.
But, do they go through the stop sign if there is traffic or pedestrians in the way?
If I’m crossing the street and a cyclist pushes through, either swerving around me or expecting me to jump out of the way, that’s not an “Idaho stop”, that’s a traffic violation. It’s no different from a car driver taking chances as if I’m not in his way.
I’ve never been hit by a car either, but it is that very expectation that I don’t count that I object to many drivers. I would point out that they often act the same way towards cyclists.
So this doesn’t even get to the issue if safety, it’s about consideration.
Michael
Dhomas 21:25 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
If you want to read that missing story, you can find it here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190716160620/https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2019/07/15/velo-festif
Not much of a story, really.
Ian 21:59 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
One way to think is that if there are a gazillion tickets given out to cyclists, cops must be targeting cyclists. Another way to look at it is that if there are so many tickets maybe some cyclist are actually not only breaking laws but riding recklessly.
The truth may be somewhere inbetween, but I just spent a week in Toronto and I can tell you for a bona fide fact that east or west end, bicyclists, motorists, and pedestrians in Toronto really follow the rules of the road a lot more. In Toronto you would never dare to jaywalk in front of a cop or not stop at a crosswalk regardless of whether you’re on a bike or in a car. You will get a ticket and a stern talking to. We need to do that here, too.
Ian 22:15 on 2019-08-16 Permalink
Also @Chris I know I’ve said this before an you consistently ignore it but in some neighbourhoods with high bike volume like Mile End cyclists really do blow through stop signs and crosswalks, much like how high pedetrian volume neighbourhoods like ste Catherine pedestrians get cocky about jut crossing however they feel like it, or on high car traffic streets like Laurier motorists (including cabbies and delivery trucks) ignore crosswalks. People in this city drive, ride, and walk like a bunch of a**holes, I’m happy to see the cops giving out tickets.
@Michael Black
“If I’m crossing the street and a cyclist pushes through, either swerving around me or expecting me to jump out of the way, that’s not an “Idaho stop”, that’s a traffic violation. It’s no different from a car driver taking chances as if I’m not in his way.”
Well put. I have actually had this happen to me many times especially on Saint Viateur. Someone is going to get a hockey stick in his spokes one of these days. This is no better than when drivers do the same thing at crosswalks on Laurier.
dwgs 08:58 on 2019-08-17 Permalink
Ian, I suspect that large numbers of those tickets are handed out in targeted operations. I regularly see the cops set up near an intersection on the de Maisonneuve bike path (usually in Westmount). They hang out behind a tree or a large sign or such and pull over cyclists three or four at a time and write them up. This year they are only doing red lights and no longer seem to be doing the stop signs.
Chris 09:05 on 2019-08-17 Permalink
Michael, agreed. And that’s exactly the thing I was wondering: how many of those tickets are idiots near-missing a pedestrian, vs just not stopping and putting their foot on the floor? The latter being an easy/lazy thing cops can do, like dwgs describes. Surely we can all agree those are very different things, though both technically the same violation of a stop sign.
Ian, I’m not sure we disagree as much as you seem to think. Yes, _some_ cyclists do blow through, of course. We probably disagree on the fraction though. Or perhaps the exact meaning of “blow through”? But the disagreement could be settled by measurement. I’ll see if I can find any studies that have measured. Try sitting on the corner of say Clark and Fairmount (near you IIRC) and watch cyclists’ eyes. They look before crossing, because they know they’re dead if they don’t. Now, this is an independent decision of whether they decide to yield to others. There, indeed, they often fail to yield to pedestrians, which is a shame.
Ian 19:02 on 2019-08-17 Permalink
so what? the cyclists actually breaking the law – one can only hope they learn from the experience & follow the road laws more conscientiously. I don’t see anyone complaining here when the cops do the same with blind corners drivers tend to speed on.
I’d prefer if cops actually ticketed everyone regularly instead of this kind of approach, as now everyone know that the cops are ticketing for specific infractions in specific locations so ignore pretty much everything else as usual.
Chris 22:08 on 2019-08-17 Permalink
And I’d prefer if cops actually ticketed proportional to the dangerousness of the infraction. So for motorists: speeding, ignoring crosswalks, etc. For cyclists, not having lights, not yielding to pedestrians, actually blowing through stops, etc. For pedestrians, well, hardly anything.
Lazily filling ticket quotas by nabbing Idaho Stoppers (that slow and yield) is not on my list. (Not saying that is or isn’t what our police are doing.)
Tim S. 16:40 on 2019-08-18 Permalink
I know it’s a little late to post on this thread, but I just want to point out that the occasional police operation on de Maisonneuve in Westmount that dwgs mentioned and Chris described as “easy/lazy” is something that I specifically pushed for when I lived in the area. Every day I had to cross the bike path to get my child to daycare, and very, very few of the cyclists every yielded to us at stop signs. It was actually the topic of my very first post on the weblog. So I actually resent the “easy/lazy” description, as quite a lot of citizen effort went, and still goes, into making sure that the police occasionally do their job. It’s still an unpleasant area for pedestrians, but my life is a lot less stressful now that I don’t have to directly cross that particular bike path with a child.
Ian 17:27 on 2019-08-18 Permalink
Exactly, I live in a neighbourhood like that too and it drives me nuts that people do what they want outside of the targeted stops.
“I’d prefer if cops actually ticketed proportional to the dangerousness of the infraction” No, that is not what laws are for. You either enforce them, or they are ignored. It doesn’t matter what you think is a proportionately important infraction, it matters that it’s on the books and if it’s not enforced there’s no point in having it or any other law.
Gab 12:08 on 2019-08-27 Permalink
Hey Kate. If you really want answers to your questions, you can contact Vélo Festif directly. Forums et media always cause more confusion than straight answers.
https://velofestifmtl.com/contact/
Btw Chris, you are talking about something else.
Anyway. The article about “people not liking vélo festif” was removed because the Journal de Montreal used a copyrighted picture on their article without consent. And they didn’t bother taking their own. That being said, this “article” was very misleading. The journalist found a 2 month old post on the “dans le traffic” Facebook group (a group where people complain about anything about Montreal). The post was from someone who actually liked those bikes and was sharing a video for this reason. Out of about 20 comments, something like 5 where unhappy people. Most people were defending velo festif. Then, the journalist did a brief article saying that people where not liking velo festif and that he was looking for people to email him about this. The title said that velo festif was making people unhappy. It’s like finding 3 people who doesn’t like chocolate and make an article about that, titled “Chocolate is bad for you”.
About the article in 2005. This article is also misleading. Velo Festif isn’t a big corporation like Uber. If it was illegal, it would be off the road by now. The truth is that it is not simple as the article is saying. Now it would be a long explanation, but you can do your own legal research that will conclude that the vehicle can be on the road with exceptions. But obviously, small businesses face the law like you do.