There’s a wet shelter for a small group of homeless people in Montreal – presumably, since it’s run by Projets Autochtones Québec, indigenous ones. This is a departure for the city, breaking from the general principle of trying to sober folks up first.
Updates from March, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
A group of experts has signed an open letter calling for a different approach to Covid outbreaks in Quebec.
Raymond Lutz
ah yes! Ils bottent le cul de Legault et Cie pour leur gestion désastreuse en nous comparant avec les nombreux pays qui ont mieux agi:
« New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Iceland, Thailand, Norway, Finland, with a combined population of 283 million, have had 4,116 COVID deaths. If Quebec had had a similar mortality rate, there would have been only 125 deaths in a year. Now, in March 2021, Quebec is still adding 50 COVID deaths per week»
I’ll repeat myself (from a March 2020 post) : we should organize adaptive triggering of suppression strategies as mentioned in “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand” ie tuning schools and commerces lockdowns at a finer spatial and temporal granularity than at province level.
And this, based on wastewater analysis… like those published daily by the city of ottawa: Ottawa covid-19 wastewater surveillance. EVERY municipalities should do this.
-
Kate
Metro looks at plans and promises by the city that have been slowed down by the pandemic. It’s not surprising that everything from a new homeless census to the renovation of city hall has been touched in some way.
Joey
You can add the plan directeur for Jeanne-Mance Park, which has been coming soon for almost two years now.
Kate
That’s a hot potato, Joey, ever since Projet abolished the softball field. They’ve got to know that was a deeply unpopular move.
Joey
Agreed, but they (really Alex Norris) told everybody who asked that the consultations for the plan would allow for a discussion of the softball field… except he didn’t tell the consultants who announced at the wrap-up session that they had no mandate to look specifically at the softball field. Even though the field was the focal point of those consultations, there was no mention of it in their summary presentation. For comparison’s sake, they did have a call-out to the dog park advocates. Moreover, because the field had been destroyed just before their mandate began the “status quo” excluded the hundred-year history of that field. Talk about manufacturing consent. Anyway, the consultants submitted their report in August 2019, as far as I understand (a colleague was told that by one of them). The city was supposed to release a plan directeur soon thereafter. The announcement of the process indicated the plan would be adopted in 2019 (http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=7377,95273611&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&id=20435&na=&ret=/pls/portal/url/page/grands_parcs_fr/rep_utilitaires/rep_actualites/coll_actualites), so they can’t even blame COVID-19 on the delay. Also, the city published the synthesis report of the first phase of the consultations, but not the second (the one described above), even though they showed the slides in public. Maybe Alex will one day explain to me why I’m wrong for expecting public documents to be made public.
Anyway, I asked Alex a few months ago what was taking so long and he said they hoped to have it out soon, which isn’t really an answer. Now this seems unlikely – in fact the most likely outcome at this point is more dithering by Projet meaning nothing will happen before an election. Given that there are no guarantees in politics I’m surprised they wouldn’t want to start implementing their vision for the park rather than risk Denis Coderre winning and inaugurating a brand new field and a dog park, but what do I know?
The dog park is another hot potato – keep in mind that Projet’s priority for the park seems to be no new fences of any kind, so I guess it’s easier to just keep deferring action on this stuff but (a) PM doesn’t seem to have a problem taking short-term unpopular decisions when they think they have a strong long-term vision (e.g., St.-Denis REV), (b) they’ve already pissed off all the people they’re going to piss of and (c) they’re supposed to be abvove primarily seeing things through an electoral lens.
Orr
Speaking of Jeanne-Mance park, wouldn’t those new tennis courts be a wonderful place for a winter skating rink? Beautiful view of Mont Royal and close to 1000s or people,
The existing little hockey rink at the other end of the park isn’t my idea of a family-friendly skating location.
-
Kate
People 65 and up can now register for vaccination in Montreal.
-
Kate
-
Kate
The city is planning to double the permissible locations for street food trucks this season, and several boroughs are lightening up on requirements for terrasses.
dmdiem
The entire purpose of food trucks is that they can go anywhere. Let them.
Kate
I just canvassed a group of people I know online, most of whom don’t live here. Not all towns in the U.S. allow food trucks. Ones that do, they often limit them in the same way Montreal does. Limits on where they can park and how close they can be to regular restaurants, are both common. It’s not a free-for-all.
The only complaint I’m not seeing is price. Montreal has gone in for making food truck menus somewhat upscale, which I think kind of shot the whole program in the foot from the beginning.
dmdiem
I imagine this is a thing that the market would largely self regulate. Trucks would generally avoid residential neighbourhoods because there’s no profit there. No problem. However, if there is a profit there that would mean that the locals want the food trucks around. So no problem again. I would think the bulk of food trucks would find themselves around high foot traffic areas like parks or festival events.
I agree with you 100% about prices. The whole other point about food trucks is that low overhead equals inexpensive food. Also when you couple that with a low cost of entry, it allows food trucks to be wildly experimental with minimal damage from failure.
One of the few problems I could imagine is say if a sushi truck parks in front of a sushi restaurant and charges half the price for the same menu. Regulations there makes sense. However if a pizza truck parks in front of a sushi shop and the sushi shop goes under, it was going to go under anyway. It wasn’t the trucks fault. People usually go out with a specific place or food in mind. Having another option nearby generally doesn’t change their mind. Although, to be fair, I have on occasion found myself walking around a restaurant district just looking for something to catch my eye. Or stomach, rather.
Hmmm. I didn’t realize I cared this much about food trucks. Go figure. Maybe I’m just hungry.
Kate
dmdiem, I wonder right now if there would necessarily be no profit in stopping in some residential neighbourhoods around lunchtime. Obviously I haven’t taken a survey, but my strong impression is that a lot of the folks on my block in Villeray have been working from home now for a year.
If you could harness technology to create a system where, say, people got texted around 11 a.m. that a food truck would stop at a nearby corner between noon and 1 p.m., they might well decide to skip making lunch and go out to get something from the truck instead. Could that be made profitable?
dmdiem
Holy crap. I didn’t even think of the work from home crowd. Imagine a food truck slowly rolling through the neighbourhood playing some sort of ice cream truck jingle…. People would be pouring out of their homes screaming, “yes I would very much like tacos now please!”
An all in one food truck app would be an insanely good idea.
1). Shows where all the trucks in the city currently are and what food they have.
2). Each truck could upload their route for the day. You could see when each truck is going to be nearby.
3). If the truck was just driving around randomly, it could ping you when it’s nearby and you could respond “yes please” and the truck could pull up right in front of your house.
4). Everyone who wants a particular food could let the app know and the truck could calculate a route around the city to hit everyone.If only the city would let the trucks off the leash, this would be a billion dollar app.
MarcG
This has some of those features https://streetfoodapp.com/vancouver
dmdiem
Very cool. I’ve heard that Vancouver food trucks are amazing. Can we do that here, please? Preferably before lunch tomorrow.
Kevin
Way out in Pincourt there are a couple locations where the chip truck routinely parks- and it’s mostly in residential areas, or areas near parks. And they don’t need a storefront to prep food — they can do it in the truck.
DeWolf
Imagine if a cavalcade of food trucks were allowed to operate in the old Mile End garment district. They could park along de Gaspé or in the St-Louis arena parking lot, feed all the Ubisoft and other workers around there. Not only would it be fun and lively, it might take pressure off the St-Viateur real estate market and reduce the number of takeout restaurants that exist primarily to serve tech workers.
Montreal is a great town for eating refined cuisine at affordable prices. But it’s not very good at offering a diverse range of casual, cheap eats. Loosening food truck regulations could be a way to help with that. Food trucks are meant to be an affordable way for somebody to get into the food business, but we’ve made them some cumbersome and expensive to operate that only corporate restaurant groups and well-established residents can afford to run a food truck, which defeats the whole purpose of having them.
Reply