Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:07 on 2019-10-07 Permalink Reply  

• walkerp 08:36 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Yes. From the planet, actually.

• Mr.Chinaski 09:42 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Meh. What is a SUV nowadays? Is a Crosstrek one? What’s the difference between a CRV and a Subaru Outback… A couple of inches of clearance and that is all. So would it be ok to drive a Tesla X?

• MtlWeb 10:04 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Would love to see trucks and SUVs prohibited from parking at street corners. Whether driving or cycling, they always seem to be at an intersection corner (even with the yellow-painted curbs) which makes seeing oncoming traffic (cars, pedestrians, cyclists) difficult. Son is learning to drive and that is one of his comments re: which situations does he find driving risky.

• Spi 10:48 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  SUVs have simply become a symbol for car pollution. Truth is there are 15+ year old cars on the road with rusted out catalytic converters that consume more petrol and pollute more than some modern SUVs.

• Tim S. 10:50 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  I got a fundraising email from my Project councilor, and having just read this article, responded by saying that my future support would be contingent on measures to protect pedestrians, including restrictions on SUVs and trucks. The response? “Noted.” (to be fair, an earlier email included a list of new stop signs they were thinking of putting up).
  I would move heaven and earth to get them re-elected if I thought it would make a difference to the safety of me and my family. Two years in, at both borough and city levels, and I’m still not convinced.

• Tim S. 10:52 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Spi: one the most depressing moments of my life was when I went to a panel with noted local environmentalists about the future of the green economy. They were super enthusiastic about the progress being made with electric cars, and I left thinking, great, my fate is to run over by an electric SUV driven by a morally virtuous asshole.

• jeather 11:35 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  There are a lot of reasons I want to ban SUVs but the driver side is “they all blind you from behind because they are up so fucking high the lights go right in your back windshield”. I used to just want to list them as trucks so they had to follow truck rules, but now they’re a weird evil hybrid.

• Spi 11:43 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Tim: There are so many common-sense solutions to protecting pedestrians that don’t really involve any additional inconvenience for anyone. Some intersections need a larger no-parking exclusion zone beyond the yellow-painted curbs. The new mayor of the plateau that promised more bicycle parking should install angled bicycle racks where the yellow curbs are, that way it would be clear at all times and frankly the yellow paint starts fading if you look at it long enough.

• Alex 12:14 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Further to Spi’s comment, I think we also need to look at standardizing the pedestrian crossings. Sometimes you are looking out for a Green Light, sometimes its a Walking Man icon and for some it is confusing. In most countries the signing is exactly the same at every crosswalk

• Kate 12:34 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Alex: this is very true. The cycle of walk, turn, wait is also different, so people are not sure which is next.

  Also, some may remember I was nearly hit by a car a couple of years ago – the post is no longer online – when a huge black Mercedes SUV was parked right at a corner, and another driver did not see me as he turned. I was lucky that driver had good reflexes (and I still regret swearing at him after realizing the bad visibility was not his fault – he had no view of the crosswalk with that thing in his way).

  People like being higher up in traffic and they feel safer in a big tank. I get it. But there’s a sort of arms race on, to create the biggest and most impregnable vanity truck. I was hoping there’d be another oil crisis to rein back car size, but apparently not. Meanwhile, pedestrians take an increasing number of hits.

• CE 13:31 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  I posted this yesterday, but on a post that was already on page two. Lots of statistics showing how cars are increasingly making cities and streets more dangerous for pedestrians:

  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/04/opinion/self-driving-cars-safety.html

  During the climate strike, I split off at Sherbrooke and walked west for a while to get something to eat. I was struck by how pleasant the street could be without all the car traffic. It as nice and quiet, people were walking down the middle of the street, and enjoying the nice weather. My girlfriend mentioned how she had never noticed how beautiful many of the buildings are along the street (and she went to McGill so has walked on Sherbrooke many times). I really look forward to the day we can get these things off our streets!

• Blork 14:09 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  I am not a fan of large SUVs (in fact I hate them for various reasons) but I don’t know how you could ban them. For one thing, how do you define them? “SUV” is a very broad category and it includes everything from small vehicles like the Honda HRV, which is basically just a Honda Fit (very small car) with a higher ground clearance, all the way up. The term “crossover” is used for smaller ones but I don’t know if that’s an official designation.

  So if you ban them based on size (height, wheelbase) then you also have to ban mini-vans and pickup trucks, and there are plenty of legitimate uses for those. How can you tell the guy with a gardening business that his truck is illegal and he can no longer work in the city? What about the hobbyist who needs a pickup truck to move his gear around?

  How do you tell the family that has four kids that their primary mode of transportation is now illegal? What about an unofficial co-op in a neighbourhood that has a lot of kids where one or two of the families has a mini-van that they use for driving loads of kids to hockey practice or summer day camps?

  I just seems silly to focus on one particular type of vehicle. It comes off as moral indignation posing as progressive policy making.

• Tim S. 14:44 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Blork: I worry about the height of the front. If the vehicle’s hood is higher than a six-year old child, then that vehicle shouldn’t be allowed in a city or residential area. Of course, maybe there could be special, stricter licenses for commercial vehicles.
  Most of the uses you describe could be met with a station wagon. A Subaru Outback, I believe, has more interior space than a Forester, for example. However, an Outback has a considerably lower front.
  (Full disclosure: I own a Mazda 5. Room for 6 people, if some of them are small, or 4 + plenty of cargo space. Low to the ground)

• Kevin 14:52 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  @Tim S
  The Outback is no longer a station wagon: it is a very large SUV. My brother and my brother-in-law both have them, and they are large vehicles.

• Ephraim 16:34 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Not sure where I saw yet, yesterday, but the city had put up a large sign saying no parking because of parking visibility. I just don’t remember where it was, but it was definitely around here in the upper Plateau.

  In fact, we went to vote yesterday and it was a disaster from the get-go… we had three polling stations within 2 blocks of us, but instead they had us go to one that was maybe 14 blocks away. And it was blocked because of work being done by Hydro, so not very handicapped accessible. The city should be embarrassed.

• Tim S. 16:34 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Kevin: oh well then. Nonetheless, in this fantasy world I’ve been sketching out today, I’d still be willing to accept it as the upper end of what should count as a passenger vehicle. At least the models I’ve seen on the streets.

• Chris 18:47 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Blork, I take your point, but if we can’t tell those people to give up SUVs, can we tell the travel-lover to give up flying?, the steak-lover to give up meat?, the lawn aficionado to give up watering her lawn?, the coffee-lover to give up his disposable cups?, etc. etc.

  Nobody wants to voluntarily give up anything, and nobody wants to be forced to give up anything, and so here we are decade after decade with the world just getting hotter and hotter.

• Francesco 23:00 on 2019-10-07 Permalink

  Agree with Spi about new cars in general. I drive a cream puff 94 Corolla (seriously, it’s got 75k on it and is *mint*). My contention is that a) keeping an old car out of the scrap heap and b) not having Conglom-o-Corp build me a new one to replace it are two net benefits to the planet (ie “the greenest car is the one you already own”). But my Crapolla with wind-up windows and no aircon averages 10.5 l/100km city and highway. My wife’s 2018 Crosstrek has better carrying capacity, air conditioning, all mod cons and is all-wheel drive, but we haven’t had a tank yet that was worse than 10 l/100km, and often significantly lower — on the highway at 100 km/h it hovers around 5.5 l/100! NB the car it replaced was a 17 year old four-cylinder Honda. Living where we do and working where we work and the oddball schedules of our jobs, going car-free isn’t an option — though that may change for me when REM starts running.

• qatzelok 10:14 on 2019-10-08 Permalink

  Some of the defensive comments for SUVs here remind me of Bill Clinton’s “Depends on what “is” means” defense of having sex with interns.

  Confronted with the social trend that has adults driving larger, more oil-consumptive vehicles that kill pedestrians and cyclists ay lower speeds…. many die-hard drivers ask “What does “SUV” even mean, for goodness sakes!?”

  It suggests that post-modernism will be humanity’s last trend.

• Blork 12:46 on 2019-10-08 Permalink

  Chris, bear in mind that replacing a steak with something made of vegetables is something easy to do. Also, flying less is relatively easy to do. But if people already have a large investment in a vehicle it isn’t easy or inexpensive to just get rid of it. Also, what about people visiting the city? You’re not going to sell your SUV at the foot of the Champlain Bridge so you can spend a few vacation (or business) days in Montreal. (And don’t say “rent a smaller car for the visit” because 99% of visitors will not have prior knowledge of the ban.)

• Francesco 22:40 on 2019-10-08 Permalink

  Before it goes any further – and I’m not defending SUVs or the like – but but my wife’s “SUV” is what’s called a crossover these days. It’s essentially a small hatchback on a raised suspension with taller tires and it enables here to get in and out of the seat more easily. The fact that it gets better economy on the highway than a smart Fortwo throws most anti-car or anti-“SUV” arguments out the window wrt fuel economy or emissions.

  Do I think every soccer mommy in the West Island needs a giant, polluting, full-sized SUV? I can’t think of a single use-case that justifies what I observe there. But don’t lump tall, 4-cylinder hatchback crossovers in with Escalades, Range Rovers and GLSes. A Honda HR-V is closer to a Fit than it is to a Pilot.

  Now, do I think we should have more vehicle-free streets? Yes. Congestion charges? Absolutely. If the recent uptick in mass transit development proposals is a hint at a future with better public transit in Montreal, I can see a day when people who don’t live in town or close to the current metro could be ditching their personal cars en masse.