It’s awhile since I’ve seen any news about the renovation of the old St-Sulpice library building, but apparently work will start this fall to create an innovation hub there.
Updates from March, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
A lot of students will be walking out of class to meet Friday at 1 p.m. at the foot of the Cartier monument, or as close as they can get, for a big climate demonstration. There’s a Facebook page, viewable without logging in.
Alex L
I’ll be taking a day off and joining them, I encourage those of you who can to do the same. https://urbania.ca/article/chers-jeunes-crissez-donc-le-feu/
Kate
I’d go if I were free, but I’m not able to walk away from work at lunchtime and not come back.
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Kate
A man who shot a friend and a stranger dead in a 2016 rampage in the east end has pleaded guilty. His sentence is yet to be determined – and whether he’ll be in jail or in the Pinel Institute to treat his schizophrenia. Footnote from the CBC story: the judge in the case is France Charbonneau.
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Kate
In the short term, Côte-Vertu metro station will close on two, possibly three weekends while work is done connecting the station with the vast underground garage being built in the environs. Details on shuttles and detours in the item.
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Kate
The city’s 6500-member blue collar union is to remain under the trusteeship of the SCFP for at least another year.
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Kate
Food trucks, after a much lauded introduction, became less prevalent and less talked-about as time wore on. The city is hoping that a new formula will revive the small industry.
Blork
That dull roar you hear is everyone in Montreal saying “Duh! No shit, Sherlock!”
Kevin
The bozos who come up with these rules have somehow made it even worse.
Let ’em serve sandwiches, hot dogs, and fries, and strip the need to have a restaurant location.Ian
What people don’t want a lack of choice, irregular hours, food trucks selling tiny artisanal 8 dollar tacos, but actual consistent inexpensive fast street food like any other city on the planet? Huh.
Also, anyone who thinks there isn’t the density for street food hasn’t spent much tie in the business district on a summer day. It’s shoulder to shoulder all along square Vicky.
Maybe if food trucks weren’t hobbled by the restaurant industry they would do better. This whole “healthy fare” excuse is pretty typical of the doctrinaire morons in City Hall now, but even under Codere they were saying the same thing so it’s obviously a lie being repeated to distract from the real power play here from the restaurant lobby. I wonder how many brown envelopes Coderre got for that decision.
jeather
Sometimes I would google the food truck calendar — almost impossible to find — and go to the location and, whoops, no one showed. I’m into food trucks, but the rules were almost designed to ensure everything failed. Asking people who already go to expensive food trucks if they like expensive food trucks is not a great system.
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Kate
Mutsumi Takahashi has been named to the Order of Canada. My only thought was surprise this hadn’t already happened.
Kevin
Slight correction: she was named last year. Today is the investiture ceremony.
Kate
Thanks, Kevin.
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Kate
The trial continues of one of the men who shot and killed the “wrong” man in a north-end café two years ago, but Paul Cherry doesn’t account here for media reports at the time that the victim was a mobster. Cherry says here that police knew immediately it must have been a mistaken hit. Did police not tell reporters? Or were the media too keen to sound like they had inside knowledge of the situation? There are still stories up like this one calling the victim a “presumed mobster.”
The presumed target that was intended that day is, by the way, still alive.
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Kate
A big apartment building in St-Laurent had a fire Wednesday, throwing many immigrant families out of their homes. How can a building that size be permitted not to have working smoke detectors or alarms?
denpanosekai
Not just detectors, but expired fire extinguishers! All kinds of violations. Holy crap, poor girl walking barefoot during yesterday’s weather??? Either that picture was taken during the evacuation or many adults’ priorities just suck.
Ephraim
So, here’s the question of the day… what is in the city’s fire code and new build fire code? Are we still building homes without 120V installed smoke detectors? Are we still building without sprinkler systems? Are we still note putting in 10 year smoke detectors? Fire extinguishers are nice (I have them) but seriously, why are people still relying on smoke detectors with batteries or at least batteries that have to be replaced twice a year… 10 year sealed units, you replace them and the battery at the same time… which is what you are supposed to do… because most of the units are made to last just 10 years.
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Kate
TVA has dug up some background on the people whose Westmount house was firebombed this week – following some good detective work by commenters here!
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Kate
A system of dockless e-scooters and e-bikes will be coming to town soon.
Tim S.
Awesome, more carefully written bylaws that no one will enforce. I don’t know if this will cause many injuries, but it will surely increase the stress levels of pretty much all pedestrians and even people on non-motorized transport.
Joey
Who will be the first Montreal media personality to author the first “I thought I would hate these scooters but it turns out I love them” piece? Josh Freed? Probably not, if it means leaving his street. Bill Brownstein?
Chris
Oh boy, could be interesting.
In California, it’s been pretty hectic, with a love/hate relationship to the things.
“Proponents note that the vehicles reduce motor vehicle traffic and improve urban mobility” -> the little data I’ve seen on this is that they displace walking trips, *not* vehicle trips. Similar to Uber, which seems to displace public transport trips, not private car trips. If you already own a car, you’re going to keep using it. If you’re thinking to buy a car, you’re not going to not buy because a summer-only scooter option is now available.
Still, I support their introduction. We need to simultaneously reallocate public space away from automobiles. More space for walkers and bikers and now scooters. Otherwise, these scooters will just take away space from walkers and bikers.
Ephraim
So for the scooters, sidewalks, bicycle paths or street… where are they legally required to be ridden?
Chris
Ephraim, you obviously didn’t RTFA. 🙂
In California, these things are strewn across sidewalks. If we don’t want that, the only other place to park them is on roads, like bixi (though dockless). This is a great opportunity to remove more car parking, a proven technique to reduce car trips into downtown, hopefully Projet will seize it.
Tim S.
Interesting, Chris. Much as I support car reduction, I don’t really see replacing walking with more manufactured crap as a step forward for the environment or health.
Ephraim
Chris, I did RTFA and it talks about the city putting in regulations… but that the regulations don’t really exist. (And frankly, as I have repeatedly pointed out, regulations are only as good as enforcement… and since we rarely get any enforcement of any law in Montreal… this too will be a free-for-all, except they will have to pay for permits to do it.)
Legally they don’t have a right to drive on sidewalks (waiting to see this…. because we can’t keep the cyclists off the sidewalks already… how are we going to keep the scooters off.) And I’m waiting for the cyclists to start complaining about them being in the bicycle paths…. and then of course the car drivers next.
And where are they going to put them, since they are dockless, because from what friends have told me in the US they are just tossed and left all over the place. So, not allowed on the sidewalk, but don’t have to go back to any specific area…. where oh where will they end up?
It’s another example of the me me me generation. They don’t even want the responsibility of having to put this away properly, maintain it, secure it, etc. Just dump it when I’m doing and someone else can charge it, maintain it and what happens, happens…. we’ll deal with the consequences later, after society pays for it all.
Kevin
If the prices I’ve read for charging are accurate I may have a new hobby this summer.
Kate
How do these things intersect with
a) needing a helmet
b) needing a driver’s license?
Blork
No, and no.
I’m wondering how they intersect with broken bones and other injuries. I’m not worried about the e-bikes but the scooters are dangerous. Non-motorized foot scooters are fairly benign; they’re just a step up from kids’ toys. But motorized ones go faster. Also, if you own a foot scooter you learn how to ride it properly (you get the sense of balance, how fast you can be going when turning, etc.) But if you’re just some arsehole who wants to grab and ride an electric foot scooter for the first (or second or third) time, watch out!
Particularly on Montreal’s perilous rough roads. Those tiny wheels do not work well with potholes or other bumps. And turning can be tricky if you’re going fast.
Dooring cylists? Next up: dooring e-scooterists. They will likely not be allowed on sidewalks, and not every street has a bicycle lane. That means they’ll be on the street, in traffic. But they’re slower and less maneuverable than bicycles, so scooter riders will hug the right side of the lane, basically zipping along just inches from the line of parked cars.
There will be blood.
Ian
Yeah I really don’t see adding scooters reducing car traffic for all the reasons mentioned above. I know everyone hates cars, blah blah blah, but having a different mode of transport doesn’t automatically reduce car traffic, and in some cases will increase overall traffic hazards. Also, given how crappy bixis made bicycling (inexperienced and irregular cyclists filling up the bike lanes, riding several abreast, unfamiliar with bicycling conventions, riding slow like a bunch of touristy dopes), I can only imagine how much more hazardous scooters will make things – yeah, people that don’t regularly ride scooters, probably don’t know the neighbourhood because they are tourists, and don’t even have helmets? My one way north-going street in trendy Mile End with parking on both sides has two way bike lanes, already super hazardous for cyclists because drivers pulling out of the left parking lane can’t see into the bike lane until they are already in it. Make that lane full of unhelmeted dopes going 40k and somebody is going to get pasted.
Ian
For a party that claims to be all about urban planning PM really didn’t think the Jeanne-Mance bike paths through. Most regular bicyclists I know won’t take the left lane because it’s an obvious death trap.
Bradley M
The ones that I’ve seen have a “bounty” program for charging run by volunteers who charge them themselves and are later reimbursed for the use of their electricity, and then “redistribute” them throughout the served area, which I guess is clever. A super annoying trend I’ve noticed with them though, is that some people get territorial over “their” scooter or “their” bike, and use their own lock to deter people from claiming it when they’re not using it, or even bring it in off the street.
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