The city is not best pleased with the chaotic rollout of the Lime scooters, but as I recall, the introduction of Bixi was also attended with worries about its effects on our streets. I retrieved and docked two abandoned Bixi bikes myself in the first season. Doesn’t happen any more.
Updates from August, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
I’d seen and passed over a few items on a vandalized orchard in Deux-Montagnes, but today there’s news that it belongs to the chairman of Montreal Public Markets who stepped down last week, and this act may well have been perpetrated by malign forces at Jean-Talon. La Presse has an analysis of what’s known about what’s gone wrong in the governance of the market.
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Kate
CTV greets the news of a new express bus, the 445 Papineau, with the observation that it’s bad news for drivers because one lane of Papineau will be a bus lane. That’s one lane south in the morning, one lane north in the afternoon.
jeather
Seems pretty balanced to me. The article notes it’s good for public transit users and bad for drivers, which is true (in the short term, this is unlikely to turn a lot of drivers into public transit users). I’m not clear if the bus lane is taking from the southbound lanes in the morning and the northbound in the evening, or if it is like the bridge which takes the against traffic lane.(I assume the former but I rarely go there.)
I think inconveniencing drivers for public transit users is the right choice, all things considered — I take the 435 occasionally and it’s fantastic (I only use the 165 part of it so I have no opinion on the split).
ant6n
What I’d really like to see is one Northbound bus lane on Papineau starting at the metro station, so that the 45 doesn’t have to meander through adjacent streets. Drivers, Radio stations and TV stations will always try to create an outrage, exaggerating possible negative effects on hard-working driving commuters while downplaying the positive effects on scum who takes public transit.
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Kate
I remember this news story from 2010: a Concordia student was manhandled by police simply because she had been sitting on a bench in the wee hours. The Human Rights Commission ruled on her behalf and decreed that various damages should be paid, but its rulings are not binding. Now, nine years later, the Human Rights Tribunal has thrown the case out over delays.
Is there any point in having human rights bodies that can make rulings but can’t make them stick?
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Kate
Today in Montreal, it’s time for an important and long overdue re-examination of immigration policy. This debate should be held on the issues of fairness, access to public services, and protection of human rights — and not just the politics of fear and exclusion. Immigration must be a right to all, an integral part of Canada’s future, not a privilege for some. And with the federal budget in sight, this debate should not delay the implementation of the law.The above text was generated by an AI with the opening phrase submitted by me.
david100
Just a note in passing that many of the people who want open borders (not people on this board, but definitely in the city, in Toronto, elsewhere) are some of the people most militantly opposed to allowing the construction of housing for the hundreds of thousands who come every year as it is, let along the tens of millions who would like to move to Canada if it were possible.
Bring them all here! No one is illegal! Just as long as they won’t try to demand that we upzone our neighborhoods so that private or even government actors could build housing to accommodate them, or cut down any trees for new housing, or build out somewhere that constitutes “sprawl”!
Thomas H
I tried this by submitting the phrase “Montreal City Weblog”:
“Montreal City Weblog: I can’t say this enough. This blog is what we can all hang our hats on to. It’s the place to find all of the city’s information for the duration of every big event. It’s great for everything from finding parking for the biggest, most complex, and/or easiest event to finding all the latest information, info, and announcements and news. Read More »
Thank you, Kate, for always providing us information on parking for the city’s biggest, most complex and/or easiest events! 🙂
Kate
Thank you, Thomas H!
mare
The comments on Montreal City Weblog are useless. The real problem is the same one with any city, even a big city: people do not pay attention to what is going on. They don’t read the papers, they don’t read the blog, they don’t bother to check in on the blogs of the various city councils. The real problem with a city is not the citizens, it’s the corruption and the incompetence.
This AI is very smart (or trained with a great corpus), it even knows about “the corruption and the incompetence.” Or that’s just a general problem with cities.
Don’t let the bots take over Kate, you’re doing a great job! I applaud you for getting up early to read and digest the Montreal media, and posting here before going to work.
Blork
“It’s great for everything from finding parking …” HA HA HA HA HA!!!
ant6n
Well, I for one welcome our new new robot overlords.
Michael Black
This AI thing might explain the headlines, maybe the stories, at that other blog. I can see how an Eliza style program might generate such content.
Michael
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Kate
The Royalmount project has been revised; construction is set to begin soon.
Faiz Imam
ayyyy! Will you look at that.
“Moins de stationnements et de commerces, plus de logements résidentiels et au moins une école”
Music to my ears 🙂
“le plan initial prévoyait 12 000 places de stationnement, ce chiffre a été considérablement revu à la baisse. Au printemps, Carbonleo misait sur un total de 9850 places, dont 3000 réservées au résidentiel.”
So that means the problematic parking has gone from 12000 to ~7000 spots.
Also, 5000 units being developed, and 3000 parking spots means a ratio of 0.6 spots per unit, which is pretty damn low, and far lower than many of the city’s sustainable development plans call for. 4 our of 10 units will not have dedicated parking, that’s very unusual for this type of project.
But of course, its another megaproject, so the usual issues, such as the discussion about the brossard one last week, apply.
But this is to a large extent what activists and environmental groups have been asking for. This project went from a mega mall to Griffintown 2.0. Still a problem, but of a very different kind. Also zero gentrification concerns, which is not something you get every day.
js
They’ve been clearing and leveling the space all summer, which might account for the increase in sightings of marmots and rabbits on the lawns of nearby buildings along Royalmount itself. They also moved a few beehives belonging to apiary to an adjacent empty lot, which I found by snooping around on my lunch break a few weeks ago.
Have they released proposed maps showing how people coming west along the 40 or north on Decarie will be easily able to get there, or leave?
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Kate
A section of the new Turcot is expected to open on Monday morning and more pieces will be opening this fall. Of course that doesn’t mean there won’t be road closures this weekend.
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Kate
The CSDM had asked for a year’s grace before applying the secularity law, but has already begun including it in job postings for September.
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Kate
TVA is alleging that more and more groups are claiming to be nonprofit in order to avoid paying municipal property taxes.
Ephraim
Change the law to registered charities with a CRA tax number. Yacht clubs tax free…. talk about privilege!
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Kate
Had email this morning reminding me of several changes in STM bus routes for the rentrée, including the splitting of the long 435 express that has covered the entirety of the 80 and 165 routes at rush hour, into the 480 and 465. The expresses will only go south in the morning and northward in the evening*.
Some of the improvements are cast in terms of lightening the load on the eastern half of the orange line, and Papineau will have a reserved bus lane for the new 445 route.
*Montreal directions apply.
CE
I’m sure the replacement for the 435 will make planning buses easier for the STM but I’m having trouble understanding the new schedule. At least they’re now north-bound and south-bound instead of west and east like they used to be. When standing on the corner at Parc looking at the transit app or posted schedule, I always had to think a bit about which direction it would take me.
EmilyG
There will be a new bus, the 445. It’ll go from my place right to downtown! I’m pretty hyped. 🙂
Faiz Imam
Yeah, that new express bus might be the most important part of the changes. A lot of blue line users who fear the mess that is transferring to a packed orange line buses will prefer the bus, especially since much of the route is reserved bus lane.
But I don’t know that area too well, are the reserved bus lanes effective? are the parts mixed with normal traffic bad enough to not make it worth it?
The other big improvement is two more Azur trains on the orange line, though I’m not clear on what headway that translates to.
Here is the actual itinerary of the new 445 bus btw:
Kate
Emily, the 445 will run at rush hours only, but it’s a start. Radio-Canada reports weekdays 6:30 to 9:30 southbound, 15:30 to 18:30 northbound.
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Kate
Some interesting street fairs this weekend: Mont-Royal’s RU starts Thursday, Wellington Street in Verdun has a classic sidewalk sale Friday to Sunday, and the 18th-century market is on around Place Royale. There will be a few more street fairs before the season ends, which you can see on my list.
Chris
Great list, thanks for compiling it!
DeWolf
It’s a list I check every summer! Thanks!
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Kate
It’s charmingly typical this morning that the Gazette has an earnest René Bruemmer piece on the dangers of e-scooters, while QMI reports on seeing a Lime scooter floating in the Lachine Canal.
Sean
I came across this poor little guy earlier this week: https://i.imgur.com/XQU1krv.jpg
Kate
!
Chris
The Gazette article oddly focuses on injuries and deaths. Is their point that since some people are hurt that these things should be banned?
Of course there are injuries! Just as there are biking, driving, and walking on icy sidewalks. So what?
“at least 11 people have died in the U.S. since 2018”. Yeah, well, there are 100 motor vehicle deaths in U.S *every day*. And way more injuries.
“In Atlanta, usage has been banned at night.” Imagine doing that to cars!
Max
Somebody posted this to reddit this morning. It’s about the economics of another brand of scooter.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shared-scooters-don-t-last-171119677.html
Assuming the Lime scooters also last only a month on average and cost hundreds of dollars to replace, then this is a stupid program.
CE
I saw one parked on the curb pointing out into traffic on Atwater just as it meets Dr. Penfield. I felt like I had hit peak 2019 right then.
Blork
@Chris, it depends on the ratio of usage to injury. There are like a million cars in Montreal, and a handful of injuries each day. Hundreds of thousands of bicycles, and a handful of injuries each day. A couple of hundred e-scooters and a handful of injuries each day. Obviously, the e-scooters have a vastly higher rate of injuries per usage.
Chris
Blork, yes, raw count, per vehicle, and per distance travelled are all important metrics. The article didn’t give anything other than raw count, so hard to compare anything else. Not sure if there are good stats for scooters yet, but for autos there certainly are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
Also don’t forget that scooters aren’t *doing* the killing, they are *getting* killed. Like the article says: “In Atlanta […] there have been four fatalities since May. In the most recent case, a rider ran a red light and hit a moving oil truck. In the other incidents, users were struck by vehicles.”
Another factor to consider: (most) people have been biking since childhood, driving since late adolescence, and using scooters since… last week! So of course no one is comfortable with how those things work, and likely falling more often, like a kid first learning to bike.
But again: what is the Gazette’s point focusing on injuries? To me, it smells like hit piece.
Uatu
Eh, the Gazette is read mostly by old, cranky seniors who can’t fathom the kids and their obsession with the scooters and the phones and the series of tubes that connects to the phones. I’m just waiting for the Bill Brownstein/Josh Freed/Dr. Joe Schwartz yawnfest columns and opinion pieces to show up on the old folks network aka CTV 6pm news, cjad, the gazzoo ;P
CE
I just encountered someone riding one on Parc just below Jean-Talon. He was riding south on the sidewalk and then decided to hop down onto the street. Against traffic. This is a 6 lane stretch of street where all the north-bound cars are racing and preparing to turn. All this while wobbling and seeming unsure of himself on the scooter, obviously one of the first times he had ever been on one.
There’s something about these things that either turns part of the riders’ brains off, or makes them feel invincible.
Ephraim
I’m still waiting to see someone use one legally (on the street with a helmet) and waiting to see one parked legally. Still haven’t seen a single one that was within 100% compliance with the law. I’ve seen two on a scooter with no helmets, I’ve seen them parked all over the sidewalks and I’ve seen three people on a Jump bike.
Has ANYONE actually seen people use these legally or park them within the legal parking zones? Or am the only one that sees them littering Sherbrooke streets sidewalks?
Ephraim
Just to show what I mean, here’s a screengrab https://i.imgur.com/zvlADnV.jpg and you can see 3 scooters… with the blue being where they are supposed to legally be parked… and not one is in that zone…. and yet they release them. So who’s wrong… the rider who gets the scooter released via the app while in the wrong place, or Lime, for letting them release the scooter parked illegally?
Ian
I’m with Ephraim, I see them parked wherever and people riding them as if they have all the rights and privileges of both motorists and pedestrians with none of the obligations.
Whenever I see one parked in a stupid in-the-way place I move it behind a dumpster in the nearest alley. I encourage you all to do the same.
Chris
‘all the rights and privileges of motorists’, eh? Like the right/privilege to park your car along the whole length of both sides of just about every street, for free usually?
Ian, so you’re a vigilante, eh? What if I said: every time I see a car parked illegally, I deflate a tire. I encourage you all to do the same. That ok too?
How about we disallow car parking x metres from every intersection and reallocate that space for bike, scooter, and moped parking. We’ve sorta been reclaiming that space with bixi stations, this is an extension of that idea. Compliance will likely increase when they have more than a tiny smattering of parking places.
Ephraim
Chris…. it’s not about CARS, it’s about PEDESTRIANS. The deal they made with the city isn’t being respected… their app is allowing the scooters to be released illegally. The solution is pretty simple, fine Lime, or threaten to remove their licence… they will fix their app damn quickly.
Did you read the article about how bad it is in San Diego? They have people repossessing the scooters because people are dumping them all over the place, including on private property. And San Diego has started the process to revoke Lime’s authorization for non compliance of geofencing.
Dan
We can argue about scooters vs. pedestrians, cars and parking all day long. As Max pointed out, these are dumb because they are not sustainable and are going to be piling up in garbage heaps and bodies of water in no time.
Faiz Imam
Hopefully we can manage to create procedures to manage and store them to make it more financially sustainable. There’s plenty of space on the street, its just that most of it is taken up by that other vehicle everyone complains about.
It reminds me of images from 100 years ago of beautiful European public squares jammed with cars. It took a while to figure out how to deal with them, but it got done. This is not an impossible to solve problem.
But In the long run, I hope this trends gets people to buy their own private ebikes and escooters. They really are an excellent innovation that allows people to travel farther faster, ebikes in particular have actually been shown to replace car trips, which is huge.
Chris
Dan, not sustainable relative to what? To biking? Absolutely! To cars? I doubt it (though can’t be bothered to try to see if anyone has run the numbers).
Ephraim, I’ve been to San Diego and seen it first hand. Tried it too. Scooters everywhere. Juicers driving truckloads of them around. They were strewn around everywhere: sidewalks, private lawns, parks, beaches, bike paths, the road, everywhere. Not ideal at all. I fully agree they shouldn’t be on sidewalks. So that means they need to go on roads, which means they’ll compete for space with cars, which makes it about cars too.
Dan
No one is taking these things instead of their cars. If they’re going to go through the trouble of finding a half-dead scooter in an alley to get to work, they’re going to get a bike. They are not sustainable as in the situation you just described in San Diego. They’re garbage.
Ephraim
Chris, no one is talking about scooters versus cars, other than wanting people to do this safely and therefore wear helmets rather than have their brains smashed all over the pavement.
No, the problem is these all over the sidewalks. There are designated spaces to park these on the pavement. They should never be on a sidewalk. But they are getting left all over the place and Lime promised that they wouldn’t. They aren’t keeping up their end of the agreement. So, they can either fix their app or they can take their scooters elsewhere. Montreal is a city with a LOT of pedestrians, we need to care.
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Kate
The city has created a new cricket field in a park in Côte-des-Neiges. It doesn’t look like cricket requires much more than a stripe of astroturf in the middle of a park, but apparently this has to be far away from other activities because of the chronic problem of a loose ball doing damage. The enthusiast interviewed in the video here says he wants to see a lot more cricket fields created. Does anyone here like cricket or understand the game?
MarcG
I don’t understand it but my wife and sat and watched an amateur baseball game at the park last summer and had the joy of explaining the rules to a dude who just moved here from India – it’s surprisingly complicated. People play cricket and rugby on a park over the Atwater water supply here https://goo.gl/maps/uA4c26DvEbzC1KuR8 which is an unusual place if you’ve never been.
Joey
Watching cricket in Jarry Park is fun. I think you can find the occasional game on the McGill campus. From the photo it doesn’t look like there’s much in the way of fencing or netting to protect spectators and nearby cars from errant balls. This is, of course, quite the surprise given the city’s heavy-handedness regarding the flight of softballs in Jeanne-Mance Park and Vinet Park.
Gerhardt
Yes.
walkerp
It is very popular for people from the Caribbean as well. They play pick-up cricket games, which boggles my mind.
Faiz Imam
Huh, first time I’ve seen a astroturf surface, it’s usually it’s dirt, clay, or that rubber stuff tennis courts are made of. Sometimes even asphalt. Looks like the “grass” is very short and hard, which is what matters.
But yeah, it’s a very minimalist setup, and can be used for many other things if a game is not going on. Most people wont even realize it’s there.
As someone who enjoys and understands both cricket and baseball in great detail, I agree that a lot of details are complex, but at its heart it’s a bat and ball game. You want to hit the ball and run to the base. The main thing is you can hit the ball in any direction and there is no count (ball, strikes, outs).
Worth pointing out that there is such a thing as indoor cricket. It takes about the area of a basketball court, and has drapes on all sides to stop the ball from breaking stuff. But again, reserving court time in Montreal is no easier, so it’s still a challenge to play.
CE
I often see kids playing cricket in one of the fenced in school yards in parc-Ex. I guess they’re probably playing a version of indoor cricket.
Faiz Imam
That’s more analogous to playing baseball on the street. You try to do the best you can within the available environment.
With 7 public fields, Montreal already has more cricket access than many South Asian cities. There is so much urban development and so little park space that most kids have no choice to play on the streets. Yet it’s enough for them to grow into fans.
Kate
Faiz Imam, I was guessing about astroturf. Technically it could well be something else. I am surprised South Asian cities don’t have more provision for the sport, though.
CE, I get my eyebrows threaded in a little place next to a dollar store that sells cricket bats. It’s funny – my association with the sport is from British books where it seems to be a pastime of the privately educated, so it’s a shift of gears to thinking of it being the main sport in some places that are not so wealthy. Like, among others, Park Ex.
Faiz Imam
Nah, I watched the video, that’s definitely some variant of asteoturf. Really all you want is something hard enough for a ball to bounce, but soft enough that falling and sliding won’t hurt.
I recently spent a month in Karachi, spent a lot of time really analyzing the city, also met a urban affairs journalist who got a degree in planning from Montreal.
And the fact is that Karachi, like most cities in the developing world are a shit show.
Municipalities have no power, open brazen curruption is the norm, and money rules all. Any open patch of grass in any but the most powerful areas are ripe for development.
An uncle of mine is a biologist who studied old trees in the city, studied them his whole life. At this point thetr are almost no trees on public lands in the entire city. If they have not been torn down for new developments, they’ve been torn to expand roads and build highways.
My cousins love the idea of driving an hour away and living in the suburbs, and I honestly can’t blame them.
Michael Black
In grade six, there was a teacher from England and he definitely explained cricket, though I remember none of it. I think he even got us to play it once or twice, but the memory faded.
It’s still.uncommon here, so it’s not mundane like Canadian sports like hockey or baseball. I can sort of find it interesting when I have zero interest in “traditional” sports.
And I like the idea that it took hold in the “colonies”, something people enjoy as a sport rather than an attempt to be like the British. Whoever is playing, not that I watch it, it seems like their sport.
Michael
Nick D.
Cricket is much bigger in Ontario than in Quebec. Recently I was in a hotel in London (England, not Ontario) and wanted to try to see highlights from the Ashes (which is series of cricket matches between England and Australia). In all the various channels on the hotel’s TV I could not find the England-Australia games, but I did stumble across an Ontario cricket tournament. It was something called the GT20: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/top-names-in-cricket-swing-through-brampton-for-gt20-canada-tournament-1.5226278
The CBC back in 2013 did a piece on how cricket was the fastest-growing sport in Canada (mostly Ontario): https://youtu.be/QAQh0QvfXUoIan
I’m kind of surprised lacrosse hasn’t gotten more popular as a park sport. When I was a kid everyone had a lacrosse stick, it was as common as street hockey.
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Kate
Firefighters had to help some people down after two of the cars flipped on La Ronde’s ferris wheel Wednesday evening. A crew had been filming on the ride and their equipment was apparently too heavy for safety.
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Kate
The Boston Globe has a pretty decent visit to Petite-Patrie item this week.
steph 11:17 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
You can’t abandon a Bixi, the meter keeps running until it’s docked. With Lime the meter stops and the client doesn’t have to worry about where he leaves it.
thomas 11:26 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
@stetph Not quite true, to end the ride the app asks to take a photo to verify that the scooter is parked in a marked location.
CE 11:30 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
What happens when you send the photo and it isn’t left in a designated spot or the photo isn’t sent at all?
Kate 12:24 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
steph, everyone knows now that you can’t abandon a Bixi, but back then not so much. I possibly spared two people a big credit card charge by bringing those abandoned bikes back in.
Ian 12:29 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
As I recall at first there was some issue with the bikes not properly docking so there were some thefts.
Kate 12:45 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
Maybe, but unless the slot recorded the return of the bike, it was still running up a bill with whoever had last slotted it out.
thomas 13:29 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
Speaking of Bixi, Isn’t the official roll-out of electric Bixis supposed to happen next week?
@CE I don’t use Lime so not sure, but I think you must send a photo to end the ride and supposedly one gets banned from the service for repeat offences like improper parking (as what happens with Jump).
Blork 13:33 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
Does the Lime app have a map feature that shows you where the designated areas are?
Ephraim 15:18 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
Blork, yes, they are blue squares…. but Lime isn’t doing much about the bikes being out of the zones…. they just let people walk away and turn off the meter. At least on Sherbrooke, they are already littering the sidewalk.
js 15:59 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
They had a handful of those handicap-blue electrical assistance Bixis last year. They’re useless on flat ground for cyclists with properly functioning legs, but they do make climbing hills easier. One would think that most Montrealers including regular Bixi users would know the city well enough to be able to avoid big hills, which let’s face it there aren’t many to begin with. Who knows? Maybe between Jump bikes and the blue Bixis we’ll see many cycling commuters from the Plateau go up Camilien Houde to get to their jobs across town but I doubt it.
ottawaowl 19:02 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
Vandals used to lift up the bikes from behind at the docking stations to lever them free, but a 2009 upgrade to the docking cassettes solved the problem.
Too bad Bixi didn’t work out in Ottawa: we have NOTHING at the moment.
CE 20:40 on 2019-08-23 Permalink
The only time I ever used BIXI was when that was happening. I spent about 45 minutes looking for a docking station that had a free spot that wasn’t broken.