Metro visited the downtown offices of the blue line extension department – 200 people up in Place Bonaventure, preparing the start of the excavations sometime next year.
In related news, a group called Trajectoire Québec says it’s urgent to get the orange line extended to Bois-Franc station, and soon.
Frédérick Silva, arrested in February in connection with a couple of execution-style murders, was charged with four killings Monday, plus an attempted murder where he’s alleged to have tried to kill Salvatore Scoppa two years before someone else succeeded.
High school students are doing less drink and drugs now than five years ago.
A Statistics Canada study shows big shifts in how Montrealers commute. More people take public transit if they go downtown, but a smaller proportion are working downtown as workplaces diversify out into the suburbs. Also, “a majority of people who live in the metropolitan Montreal area neither live nor work in the city core.”
The Journal has a graphic and gory account of the attack on a father and son in Villeray in August that left the father dead and the son injured. A group of men is accused of the attack, one of whom is the son of union guy Ken Pereira. This is not even the trial, but a bail hearing.
The city’s parking wardens gave out 110 tickets over two weeks to badly “parked” scooters of all 3 brands here – Lime, Jump and Bird – after October 21, but the number given out also by the SPVM is not known. The upshot from city hall’s mobility czar is simply “Il y a eu beaucoup de délinquance.”
Who is on the hook for those tickets; the scooter companies or the people who last rode them and presumably parked them badly? (How do you even ticket an unattended scooter?)
Or do they only ticket scooters that they catch WHILE being badly parked, in which case the rider is on the hook but they need to be caught in the act?
” Cet automne, Lime avait averti ses clients que toutes les amendes leur seraient facturées.”
Suggests, but isn’t certain, that the scooter company is billed and they pass it along to the user. Really the only sensible way to do it.
And how does the scooter company prove that someone else didn’t pick up the scooter and move it after the client left in a an appropriate location? I don’t think a lawyer would have a hard time having that charge annulled.
I’d assume there’s a GPS history of where the scooter was when the user signed out, that’s how you find a free one, right?
But if you left it in one of the spaces with the logo painted on the street and a motorist then chucked it onto the sidewalk to free up a parking space is the gps finely tuned enough to tell?
There was a story a while ago saying users would be fined directly if caught in the act and the company who owns the scooters would be fined if the scooter was found outside of a designated parking spot (the fine was higher for the former). One of the companies said they would charge the user if they were fined.
It should be easy to prove that it wasn’t you who parked it wrong because you’re supposed to take a photo of the scooter to send to the company once you’ve finished. Considering how many were parked outside of the designated spots, the scooter companies didn’t seem to care too much.
I truly doubt that lots of scooter users were leaving their scooters in a scooter parking spot and motorists tossed them onto the sidewalk. The scooters I saw were nowhere near scooter parking spots (itself a problem — there didn’t seem to be enough scooter spots).
I’m not saying that scooter users weren’t dicks about where they left them, I’m saying that scooter companies trying to pass on the cost of the fine wouldn’t likely survive a legal challenge.
I’m sure we’ll find out sooner or later. I think they have a better chance than you do.
@dwgs I’m not so sure. I would assume the scooter companies would have stacked the deck in their user agreements – forced arbitration, burden of proof on the consumer, etc.
dwgs, why not? If it is in the EULA it is generally applicable. Uber has a cleanup fee. Costco gives itself the right to cross check receipts to carts. Flying requires you to present ID to some civilian. Car rentals have clauses to re-bill for toll-road and photo-tickets.
It is entirely plausible that when checking in a scooter that your location is taken (i.e. GPS required for use), proper parking zone confirmed and if check-in is done out of the geofenced area that either a fee is added automatically by the scooter provider. That fee could actually be directly confirmed to the user during check-in. e.g. “The scooter is not parked properly. A xxx$ fee will be applied.”
The STM’s “Opus en ligne” system crashed over the weekend so people couldn’t get their monthly passes from home, but now it’s back.
I wonder if this may be related to people from the Deux-Montagnes line changing fares / subscriptions ahead of the shutdown.
Oh, THAT’S why the lines at the Opus machines were so ridiculous on Monday.
The city created a fund to help businesses stuck in construction zones, but only a small fraction of that cash has ever been claimed. Whether the program is well enough known, or whether the city is putting too many conditions on receiving it, are both going to be looked at.
From one of the merchants that didn’t take the money I heard that one of the conditions was that they wanted to see the books for the last x years (I believe it was five) so they could assess the amount of revenue loss. Nobody in the retail businesses wants to show their numbers to city accountants. Books are never squeaky clean in that sector (but not as bad as restaurants and construction firms), and they feared the chance these numbers made it to Revenu Quebec were very real.
So the city is really surprised they still have money left? Gosh.
I wonder why showing the income tax as submitted to Rev QC wasn’t the answer.
Longtime Laval mayor Gilles Vaillancourt was convicted of carrying out a standing take of 2% on all that city’s business, and he served less than a year of an eight-year sentence in 2016. He paid his city back more than $8 million from a Swiss bank account, but now they want back some funds he hid in Bermuda.
There were two separate shooting incidents overnight, one in Dorval, one in Pointe-aux-Trembles. Both victims were young men, expected to survive, and in neither case was an arrest made or even a description given of the attacker.
Jonathan 09:57 on 2019-12-04 Permalink
Hard to tell if you are unsure of who the organization is, but Trajectoire is the new-ish name for Transport 2000. It’s been around since the 70s and has been quite vocal over these years.
Michael Black 10:02 on 2019-12-04 Permalink
I didn’t know Transport 2000had changed its name, though obviously I have known about the group is under its previous name.
Jonathan 10:04 on 2019-12-04 Permalink
I also think that the recent Stats Can report that you linked to previously gives a lot of credence to this idea… if people are more likely to work and live outside the city’s downtown, then an intermodal link to the orange line at Bois Franc would likely increase the use of public transit for those living in the West Island/North shore and working along the Decarie corridor.
Kate 10:48 on 2019-12-04 Permalink
Jonathan, thanks for the heads-up re Transport 2000 changing its name. I had not known.