Cyclists are feeling the pain of potholes, with falls and damage on the rise.
But it’s not only motor vehicles and bicycles. There’s a big pothole in the middle of a pedestrian crosswalk near my place, where I nearly twisted my ankle the other day, and I can’t be the only one who’s fallen foul of it.
Half a million people are expected to visit Montreal in September for the Championnats du monde de vélo sur route, described here as the biggest sporting event the city has hosted since the Olympics.
It’s a pretty time of year here – people will be charmed.
I don’t really care about cycle racing but this is a huge event, potentially on par with Grand Prix.
Don’t we always had a cycle race here in September?
It’s been announced that the branch of the REM towards the West Island will open on May 18.
Looking at the map, it seems the stations on that branch are far apart. Shouldn’t there be a station at St‑Charles at least?
A station at St-Charles would be nice.
I live fairly near the Fairview station. And I live a bus ride away from the Roxboro-Pierrefonds station. So I don’t live right next to any REM station, but I live near enough to some of them that I’ve been using the REM sometimes.
I somehow only recently discovered that if you’re travelling between REM stations on the island, you can just use your OPUS card with the monthly STM fare for the bus/metro.
There should be more stations, but stations are expensive and every extra station increases the travel time and the number of trains needed to achieve the same frequency. The REM is bundled with the highway because that land was already in government control, but CDPQInfra and Ivanhoé Cambridge probably want (much) more land around a future extra station so paid parking lots can be built and they can develop commercial or residential buildings. That’s where the money is made, public transit is just a conduit. That land needs to be acquired first and I’m not sure a private company can appropriate land as easily as the government can. So they probably have to pay market prices.
They also could have put the Fairview station near St John and the current bus loop. But instead they put it far away, meaning the STM has to build a new loop and all of their buses on St John have to detour further west and then back, adding time to trips and costs to the STM. Typical planning in a silo rather than for a network.
At some point this summer, I’ll take the REM to Des Sources and wander around Pointe-Claire. I’ve been there a number of times before, but only by car, which limits the kind of open-ended wandering you can do by foot.
My dad moved there as a kid from the Maritimes and went to St. Thomas, so it would be cool to check it out. I’ll have to ask if he still remembers the address of where he lived.
All the station locations west of Sources are meant to create development opportunities, not serve ecisting populations. Anse a l’Orme is a 20 minute bus ride from Ste Anne.
The list of services to be maintained during the three‑day strike by city blue collar workers is so complete that I doubt anyone would notice a thing. The only standout is the promise that nobody will be ticketed for not moving a car for street cleaning.
These “essential services” are the kind of thing you’d miss if the strike went on for weeks, but over three days – pfft.
Concert promoter Donald K. Donald has died. He was 82. The notices about him are brief, social media giving terse accolades about how he brought major acts to town.
How much are the tickets? And how much are the scalpers charging?
Hard to overstate how strongly he seemed to run the entire concert/sports/event promotion scene in Montreal for decades. Feels like the kind of person who would have a really interesting obit in the Globe or the Gazette, which has not reported his death yet.
(BTW am I obtuse or does the Gazette’s website not have a search function?)
Joey, I can’t find a search feature on the frontend either and it seems like they also intentionally disabled WordPress’s built-in functionality. You can do it with google though, querying like this: “[search-term-here] site:https://montrealgazette.com/“.
I was wondering if search is only available for subscribers.
@MarcG, that’s what I did, but it’s kind of insane that they wouldn’t have an obvious search function. At least the ad blockers I used worked reasonably well…
The federal Liberals have locked down a majority till 2029. Even Terrebonne, which was teetering between the PLC and the Bloc, went red for Carney.
Ok great so this means they cam stop skewing right in policy since there’s no further need to woo Conservatives?
The SPVM has given its first “police chief emeritus” honour to Jacques Duchesneau, who was chief from 1994 to 1998. The description of how he created community police stations (most of which were amalgamated and have vanished in the ensuing years, an example of how bureaucracies have cycles of centralizing and decentralizing) and tried to get cops out of their cars to encounter the community were really an attempt to re‑create an older style of policing which died out with the car.
The National Assembly will be honouring four people tomorrow, three to get the Medal of Honour and one, a posthumous President’s Medal. Jean Lapierre, whose incisive political commentary would’ve been nice to have throughout the CAQ’s administration, was killed in a plane crash ten years ago, along with other members of his family.
The other honourees are Tommy Kulczyk of Sun Youth, Louise Otis, a judge and chair of the CNESST, and Françoise Sullivan, only surviving signatory of the Refus global at age 102.
No driver will receive a ticket for parking on the wrong side during street cleaning hours, from Wednesday to Friday this week, while the blue collar strike is on.
It’s a minor pain in the ass. Last week, somebody parked right outside my place on the day, so the machine had to detour around it. I was pleased to see a ticket on the car afterwards, but that didn’t make up for having our patch of the street remain dirty.
One of many reasons I don’t drive, is that it’d be complicated for me to try to figure out all the rules around parking.
I had this problem once where week after week, cars were parked on the street during street sweeping times so the dirt and garbage were accumulating and getting really bad. They were never getting tickets so people must have thought there was no use moving their cars. I reported it through 311 and the next week, every car got a ticket which continued through the summer. Sure enough, the cars started moving.
CF Montreal has sacked head coach Marco Donadel after six losses in seven matches. Two assistant coaches have also been let go.
Soraya Martinez Ferrada is discovering the difference between political promises and reality, as she asks the public to have patience with the slow pace of pothole repairs.
// Selon la mairesse, la situation actuelle « démontre qu’on a pendant des années mis énormément d’argent dans l’aménagement du territoire, mais pas dans le maintien ».
« C’est exactement ce qui arrive en ce moment », a insisté la mairesse, dans une attaque à peine voilée contre l’ancienne administration de Valérie Plante, connue pour avoir investi en aménagement. //
How many of the streets rebuilt in the past 10 years — not just by the Plante administration but also by Coderre — have recurring potholes? In my experience, none. Pine Avenue (2020–21) looks great. Saint-Hubert (2019–20) is still perfectly smooth. Saint-Denis (2015–16) is showing some wear and tear but is generally okay, even with the changes made for the REV that reopened parts of the street.
The only way to really fix potholes is to rebuild streets. In other words, l’aménagement du territoire. But maybe Soraya is hoping that if she makes enough excuses, people will overlook the fact that she slashed the road maintenance budget while also postponing several major street reconstructions that were due to happen this year and next.
Avenue du Parc between Mont Royal and Bernard wants a word
Parc between Mont-Royal and Bernard was last rebuilt in the 1980s…
Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki scored his 100th season point on Sunday, joining a small list of four other Habs who have achieved this pinnacle.
Only took him another 28 second to score his 101st.
The Port of Montreal, which dismissed its CEO last week, has now lost its chief financial officer too.
CBC looks at how Quebec’s parties stand as a new premier is chosen. Christine Fréchette will be sworn in soon.
(Does anyone know whether the PQ and QS MNAs ever took the conventional oath?)
The Quebec Solidaire MNA’s took the oath in 2022. The National Assembly then passed a law (of dubious worth) allowing MNAs to instead take an oath to the Quebec People which is what PSPP and the rest of the PQ did.
At issue is whether or not this was a valid law, since swearing an Oath to the Crown (which, legally and symbolically, IS the people of Canada) is a Constitutionally-required prerequisite for any politician wanting to pass laws or debate in parliamentary halls.
I’m sure that at some point, some lawyers will challenge the validity of any law that was passed only because of the participation of those few PQ MNAs.
Every politician knows that when people swear an oath to the Monarch, they’re aren’t swearing an oath to the *person,* they’re swearing an oath to democracy and our judicial institutions as physically manifested in a corporeal being. https://www.ourcommons.ca/procedure/procedure-and-practice-3/ch_04_6-e.html
Thank you, Kevin.
Weird that the CBC piece doesn’t consider the implications of Frechette’s victory over Drainville on the election (which, IMO, is very significant). It could have been written days before the CAQ leadership vote. I find CBC’s local coverage, which was always sort of ‘just the facts,’ has gotten even less analytical in recent years. Compared to the French-language coverage (which also has less of a structural barrier between news and analysis/opinion), it really feels incomplete, like the reporters don’t have real relationships with the principal political actors or credible commentators.
People have been noticing the old streetcar tracks rising from broken asphalt, here and there around the city. The last streetcars were retired in 1959.
Is this a sign that the streets were never properly redone, or a message that we shouldn’t have retired the streetcars in the first place/?
It’s both!
A stoppage on the REM on Friday night, between McGill and Édouard‑Montpetit, forced passengers to walk for a kilometre to get out of the tunnel. And then no emergency shuttles were provided to resume the route.
Pulsar, the company that runs the REM, says four trains were affected by the outage. La Presse also notes another outage happened Saturday night.
lucky they didn’t have to walk up the E-M stairs, I guess.
DeWolf 19:10 on 2026-04-14 Permalink
It’s really bad. Just for example, Mozart/Bélanger has never been great, with recurring potholes that are filled at least once a year. But this year the entire street is a minefield from about Saint-Laurent to Christophe-Colomb. It’s not good in a car, worse on a bike — and as you mention, even on foot you have to watch your step because there are some giant holes right in the crosswalks.
I’ve also noticed that 311 isn’t as responsive as it used to be. Maybe it’s the enormous number of potholes but usually the ones I report are filled within two or three weeks, but so far nothing I’ve reported has been dealt with this year…
Kate 19:13 on 2026-04-14 Permalink
By September, will the route of the cycle race mentioned in the previous post will be smooth as silk?