Kent Park in Côte-des-Neiges, seemingly named only by the street on one side, was officially renamed Parc Martin-Luther-King on Monday.
(Previous brief discussion about why the street was named Kent in the first place.)
Updates from July, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Fifty thousand tons of trash were put out on Montreal’s sidewalks over the weekend, and the city estimates ten solid days of work will be needed to clear the sidewalks again.
-
Kate
A woman was crushed by her own pickup truck Tuesday afternoon in a storage facility parking lot on Crémazie. Seems a child in the vehicle set it in motion and pinned the woman against a wall. She’s in critical condition.
Update: Wednesday morning CTV reports the woman has died.
-
Kate
Plans are afoot to upgrade parts of Parc Jean-Drapeau although I hope at the end of all this revalorisation and aménagement that there’s still some disorganized woodsy areas not paved over and earmarked for specific activities.
Blork
I agree. That said, things that could definitely use improvement are the cycling paths — where they exist they are in bad shape, but most of all they barely exist — and signage. My one gift in life is a good sense of direction, but FFS is it easy to not know where TF you are on that island or how to find the Metro or whatever.
-
Kate
Ville-Marie is going to set aside a hundred spots for anchoring Jump bikes and electric scooters around the borough.
Ian
I wonder how thick that brown en envelope was.
Faiz Imam
I get the cynicism, especially with the current focus on Uber’s Jump, but this is awesome news that’s actually a long time coming.
We’ve been asking the question for years now, what is the future of urban mobility?
Obviously its not cars, and clearly improved transit is key, but the success of bixi and the recent rise of battery powered vehicles shows us there is a huge potential of real progress… if they are properly managed.
Right now not only do private rentals get stored all over the place, but the powered ones need to be picked up and taken to private residences or businesses to be recharged. It’s a very messy system.
The goal here is to have designated areas so that these vehicles can both be charged up and stored responsibly. If it works it will mean these ebikes/escooters will be much cheaper to operate as well as fit in much better in the urban environment.
Also, given that we are also talking about massively expanding the EV charging stations, this fits in well with those plans.
Kate
Faiz Imam, you’re an incurable optimist. These “solutions” are only a toy because they’re useless in wintertime. I’m also not thrilled by the fact that the success of human-powered Bixis is going to be overtaken by battery-powered toys of one sort or another. OK some people aren’t able to cycle, and we live in a town with hills, I get it, but not everyone using those things is going to be a disabled person riding up Côte-des-Neiges.
Chris
I’m with Faiz here. As much as I hate Uber the company, we need more bikes and scooters to replace cars. Cars use more space, pollute more, make more noise, etc. By every measure they are worse.
If cars were a brand new ‘disruption’, people would be pissed off seeing them just stored all over the place on every street.
Kate, that they don’t work as well in winter makes them a partial solution, not no solution at all. Also, human-powered bikes were overtaken by automobiles a century ago, why lament it for bixi specifically now? Decades of evidence shows people would rather not be human powered. It’s not like bixi use is going to grow so much as to displace cars. Besides, the bixi “solution” is just a toy, since it’s useless in wintertime, no? 🙂
The amount of materials and energy required to manufacture, operate, and maintain an automobile vs a bike/scooter makes the latter a much better environmental choice. As long as it’s a replacement and not a supplement. As such, another part of this is that we should take away car parking and car lanes and reallocate that public space to these other better forms of transport.
Ian
@Christopher to a hammer everything looks like a nail
@faiz giving away public land for private profit is always a bad idea. Let’s also not forget that Uber’s disruptiveness includes union busting, tax evasion, and substandard wages… and yes, bribery.Blork
Two comments:
Kate said “I’m also not thrilled by the fact that the success of human-powered Bixis is going to be overtaken by battery-powered toys of one sort or another. OK some people aren’t able to cycle…” The thing is, aside from various types of mobility scooter, pretty much all of the other new toys showing up are the antithesis of mobility aids. Those hoverboards and electrick kick scooters and one-wheel skateboards (etc.) require the user to be very fit and very mobile. Just about anyone can ride a bike; it’s the most user-friendly of the small vehicles except for those specifically designed for people with mobility issues.
Chris said: “human-powered bikes were overtaken by automobiles a century ago…” Um… not really. Bicycles were not a serious form of transportation a century ago. For one thing, the roads were rough and muddy and full of horse shit. Also, bicycle designs back then were awkward and only really for upper-class sporty men.
Faiz Imam
So what is your alternative here kate? banning all electric vehicles?
Because if we are not responsibly managing them, then that is the only alternative. Clearly the status quo is not tenable. These vehicles need spaces to be stored and charged if they are to coexist.
electric scooters and bikes are some of the most quickly growing forms of mobility in the world. They have gone from a quirky novelty to “the next big thing” in only a few years. And this is not just the case in tropical cities. Its just as true in nordic europe for example. Key to success in winter is comprehensive snow removal of bike paths. if they are clear, all sorts of people will use them.
And making room for them does not mean any less room for regular bikes. They are enormously complementary. Work making room for one only helps the other, and both play a huge role in showing a way of moving that does not rely on driving.
Blork. I agree some of the vehicles out there are toys that are more for fun than for mobility, but we see from other cities that those ones don’t last. The modes that sustain for years are the ones that people find real utility in. I’m still on the fence about these scooters being more than a fad, but ebikes are a serious tool that has been shows to get people biking in all sorts of cities. The hoverboards and unicycles are a joke, and zero mobility companies has considered renting them in any serious way.
Ian. good point about Uber, but from what I understand this is not space for Uber alone, this is space that all evehicles will be sharing. For me its essential that open standards and a a fair playing field be a part of this process. Uber is only mentioned because Jump got here first.
Kevin
If I didn’t already have a motorcycle licence, I would likely pick up an e bike of some kind as my next bicycle.
A friend of mine who alternates between a bike and scooter and the metro to commute is planning that for when his scooter dies.
Blork
For anyone interested in e-bikes, there’s a local company making pretty good ones at reasonable prices. If I were to replace my e-bike I’d probably go with theirs (YUL Bike… Google it.) They have a new model called the Phantom which is one of the lightest e-bikes on the market at 15.7 kg (it’s very similar to my Propella e-bike.) For anyone who has to haul their bike up a flight or two of stairs every day, that’s a key feature — most ebikes weigh around 30kg.
This isn’t a paid endorsement. I haven’t seen many reviews and I haven’t tried them, but based on specs and design philosophy they seem really good, and given that most brand-name e-bikes are in the $3000-3500 range, they’re a bargain.
Faiz Imam
oof, still too rich for my blood. My plan is to buy one of those conversion kits off of ebay. You can get all the mechanical parts for around $300, then spend another $200-$400 on a battery pack. Seems like it gets you a pretty decent experience, since I already have a pretty decent bike to start with.
Michael Black
When wevwere in Denmark in 1965 for six months, npmemory says tiny gas motors weren’t uncommon. Couodn’t do.much other than help a bit on steep hills.
Seemed common, an artifact of fewer cars. They had to live wuth bucyckes, through the war and afterwards, sk tgey nade do.
Now those motors would be dlectric.
I read Kate’s post as nit being against seriius use, but against things left here and tgere that probably are being tried for novelty.
Michael
-
Kate
The EMSB is trying to get an injunction to block the government’s transfer of two of its schools to another board.
-
Kate
A video showing the forceful arrest of a young black man is the latest in a long string of evidence of Montreal’s not-so-fucking-finest acting on their more atavistic impulses.
YUL514
It’s horrible, I saw it last night. No one deserves that but we need context, he was cuffed therefore was he resisting getting into the cruiser? The few seconds we can see from the confrontation the kid seems calm but for the cop to throw him in like that he was either resisting or the cop really was being an a-hole. Glad it was caught on tape.
Ephraim
He was cuffed with his hands behind his back…he can’t protect himself. Even if he was resisting, it’s too much violence to a person who can’t protect themselves… and worse, could be severely hurt by this action because he’s cuffed.
-
Kate
Gentrification is arriving in Park Ex like a steamroller, although I’m told the facts are somewhat different than given here: “The city voted $4.25 million for the bakery site but didn’t want to pay for decontamination, so after a year of trying to negotiate, the owner sold it as-is to Montoni for $4.7 million. All this information is public.”
Along with that jolly news comes the CAQ, saying it’s “studying” allowing landlords to demand a security deposit. If you know anyone living in a place where these are allowed, you’ll know that the tenant never gets them back. A landlord can always find a reason – you walked on these floors, you wore out the sink washers or the door hinges, there’s paint rubbed off this corner, look. But putting up an additional barrier to the worse off among us is par for the course for Legault & Cie.
Roman
I’ve gotten my security deposit beck 5 out of 5 times in Ontario.
Ian
I’m from Ontario, never got mine back once including my 6 year hiatus in Toronto in the 90s.
dwgs
I rented in Ontario for years, never got mine backin cash but it was good to use it for last month’s rent when you were saving your pennies for the coming move.
CE
I rented an apartment in another province years ago and when I left, the landlord made up a list pretty much the same as Kate’s which added up to more than the deposit. He forgot to send the bill and sent a collection agency after me. I paid it all but only because I was 19 and and was intimidated and didn’t know how to fight it. I can only imagine how a recent immigrant would feel in the same situation.
Ephraim
I’m not sure how this would play out with the rental board. Holding on to deposits, might in the end be more trouble than it’s worth, if they have to show up at the rental board and prove that they did these repairs and provide bills for it.
-
Kate
There was a bad triplex fire overnight in Ahuntsic, although not much actual information like the cause or how many people were unhoused as a result.
-
Kate
I’m intrigued by the subhead put on this CBC piece: “Montréal Complètement Cirque festival makes connections, builds awareness.” Building awareness is a thing now, but it’s usually tacked onto stuff about mental or physical illness. It’s just weird to see circus arts as something of which we should be more aware. Like you’re minding your business in a park or on a metro platform when suddenly – acrobats! Have you gone mad? No, it’s a case of…. circus arts! It could happen to you or to a loved one!
Dan
Ha! Well played. Thank you for the chuckle. (I agree that that is ridiculous and would tend to write it off as a moment of imprecision on the part of an editor. But I’m also thinking, FWIW, that someone probably has “build circus awareness” as part of a job description and can use it on a LinkedIn page.)
Tee Owe
Then again, clowns we see all the time
-
Kate
The demolition of the old Champlain bridge will only start next spring, so meantime it will be experimented on by engineers and engineering students. Mathias Marchal, now writing for Radio-Canada, notes this and other facts about the old bridge, which won’t be truly gone for another couple of years.
Michae Black 19:10 on 2019-07-17 Permalink
It’s right next to the rehab centre where I’ve been for about a month, working to get back to being able to walk again (my muscles lost strength from underuse at the hospital).
I had to check, since the map app hasn’t changed the name. There is a swimming pool, and what seems like a lot of green space, but it’s hard to tell when I can’t go walking yet.
I do wonder if all three parks are together because it’s an “ethnic” area. I don’t put Nelson Mandela up with the other two since the ANC weren’t non-violent, but Gandhi-ji and MLK are definitely for all of us. If they are seen only as heroes for some groups of people, that’s not good.
His youngest daughter keeps tweeting that we need to remember her mother. And I’ve seen hints that her mother was why her father spoke against war in the end, though lots of people in the civil rights movement like Bayard Rustin and James Farrmer sat out WWII as pacifists, as did many whites who joined civil rights after tge war (not really that abruptly).
But I read that Coretta Scott went to university with Marjorie Swann, who in the sixties was involved with CNVA, a fairly radical group non-violently against war. She may have even babysat for Coretta.
The civil rights movement took the WWII pacifists work ( which extended Gandhi’s work) so all three helped to buikd non-violence, separate from the causes.
They maybe should be parked in a more central location.
Michael