Richard Ryan, who’s been a Plateau councillor for 12 years, is not going to run again this fall.
Updates from April, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The SPVM has teamed up with Garage 529, who make an app allowing cyclists to register a bike by registering it and attaching a permanent sticker. Article says this has cut bike theft in other cities.
denpanosekai
So the link in the article (spvm.ca/garage529) doesn’t even work
John B
it should be spvm.qc.ca/garage529
Joey
Any idea if this integrates previous bike registration with the police? They do clinics around town where you can have a code engraved on the bike (with a sticker added to boot).
TC
Interesting, I work summers in a town where bikes are the primary means of transit for workers and most visitors. Theft rates vary year to year, but you need to lock your wheels regardless. To track mine I attached a Tile, which uses Bluetooth to determine location.
Kate
Joey, I wondered about that. There used to be seasonal promotions for engraving social insurance numbers on bikes. Cops would hold sessions for it or even lend out engravers. I never saw anything about whether this practice helped anyone get their stolen bike back.
Ephraim
The page is also https://project529.com/garage/organizations/spvm/landing
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Kate
A four-alarm fire damaged four vintage triplexes in Ville-Marie down near the bridge, Wednesday. Nobody was hurt, but a whole row of housing was badly damaged, and 12 households have been unhoused.
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Kate
Thirteen pedestrian streets are announced for this summer.
Bill Binns
There is no such thing as a pedestrian street in this town. You can keep cars out but there is not an inch of public outdoor space on this island where you can be free of bicycles.
MarcG
It’s not the fault of the organizers, Wellington has signs that say “get off your damn bike” and people just ignore them. The bike path by the river doesn’t allow scooters and there are scooters. I’ve seen cars parked on the walking path nearby recently. I like to wallk down the middle of one-way streets, fair is fair. What’s your point, Bill?
Bill Binns
I didn’t say it was the fault of the organizers. It’s clearly the fault of the police who like to choose for themselves which laws are worth enforcing. Like politicians, they fear the wrath of the city’s most powerful political group, Velo Quebec.
Kate
the city’s most powerful political group, Velo Quebec
Off your meds again, Bill?
Bill Binns
@Kate – When “Tennis Quebec” successfully lobbies to convert hundreds of kilometers of traffic lanes into tennis courts let me know.
DeWolf
It really is remarkable that Quebec is the only place in the world with bike paths! Must be that all-powerful Vélo Québec lobby.
dwgs
I often enjoy watching you stir the pot Bill but you gotta know when to sit down and take the ‘L’ as my kids would say.
Raymond Lutz
“stir the pot”? Cute idiom! L’expression vernaculaire serait “brasser d’la marde” 🙂
JS
Questions:’How many bike-pedestrian accidents occur every year? Not just in Montreal, but in the world?
Answer: You’re kidding, right? Go back to kvetching on the Gazette’s FB page.
mare
@JS The answer is zero in Montreal, because an accident has to include a car here in order to be counted. Source: the SAAQ, who told me that after I had a bike accident with a pedestrian.
A kid jumped in front of me on the bike path and I managed to not hit him/her by braking really hard. So hard that I went over the handlebar and landed on my head. My helmet broke, but my head survived. However now, 16 years later, I still have serious health issues because of the accident that wasn’t.
(I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl, or their name, because I was carted away in an ambulance and the cops didn’t even make a report. So again, no accident.)
Kate
A few years ago I interviewed a guy for Openfile who was one of the top public health dudes (still may be, I don’t know) and he was on top of motor traffic vs. pedestrian stats and situations, but when I asked him about bicycle vs. pedestrian incidents he said they were so negligible that his department didn’t even keep track. But perhaps the real reason was, as mare says, that the SAAQ doesn’t record them.
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Kate
The Ville-Marie, signposted as Autoroute 720 since time out of mind, is now Route 136.
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Kate
Mayor Plante announced a new long-term plan for the islands of Parc Jean-Drapeau Wednesday. More trees and less cement, fewer parking spots, and river ferries from Montreal and the South Shore are in the plan. Here’s the official document.
La Presse has a headline emphasizing that, in ten years, cars will be forbidden. But that’s misleading: there will be parking lots near La Ronde and the Casino and somewhere near where the Jacques-Cartier crosses the island, so it’s not like motorists are banned.
Bill Binns
Would be great if she applied her “more trees and less cement” policy to La Fontaine park. Instead, she is spending millions to replace an underused, vandalized outdoor amphitheatre with another underused, soon to be vandalized outdoor amphitheatre.
Kate
Bill Binns, the Théâtre de la Verdure used to have a whole summer program, I know because I used to live fairly close by. Live theatre, movie screenings, dance performances, all kinds of things, and quite well attended. There were drawbacks – events could be rained out, and it’s near a marshy corner of the park pond that breeds mosquitoes – but it wasn’t underused in season.
Bill Binns
@Kate – Even under the most ambitious use scenarios, this chunk of former park will be chained up and unavailable to the public the vast majority of the time. I’m not against children’s theater but why does it have to displace scarce grass and trees? Same thing for the tennis courts which actually see far more use than the theater ever will but are still chained up and unavailable for something like 7 months a year. Worst of all is the baseball / softball diamond which in 5 years of going to LaFontaine twice a day, every day I have never once seen in use.
DeWolf
Given that the Théâtre de la Verdure opened in 1956, there’s a very good chance it has been around for longer than you’ve been alive, Bill. Rebuilding it isn’t displacing anything.
Also, Lafontaine Park will be progressively renovated between now and 2028.: https://www.realisonsmtl.ca/parclafontaine. The plan is, as you suggested, to increase the amount of vegetation.
Raymond Lutz
I wouldn’t bet on this, DeWolf: Mr. Binns comments are so reactionary (exploding knees, invading bikes, hatred of Québec Solidaire et j’en passe) he sounds from a past century or two! This said we share at least one interest: beautifully engineered cars. Spotted any Bugatti lately, Bill? A Bolide? Some Koenigsegg? 😎
Bill Binns
@Raymond Lutz – As I’ve said before, the fact that I stand out on this board as some sort of super arch conservative says more about the 15 or so regular commenters here than it does about me. I’m considered such a lefty in my former country that I could not safely discuss politics with people I worked with for 20 years. Now I work here in Montreal and it’s really not that much different. Most people are anti-criminal. Tons of people in this town are sick of the bikes or the idea that the city must be remade for them.
If opposing an unapologetically communist fringe political party with 3 seats is all that’s required to be a big bad conservative, QC must be just slightly to the left of Alberta.
I don’t know what you’re talking about regarding cars unless you stumbled across my Flickr account or something.
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Kate
More than 30 workers at a Montreal Canada Post mail processing plant have tested positive for Covid.
Montreal public health is asking that the border with Ontario, which has worse numbers than Quebec now, be controlled. No response yet from Quebec on this.
Community workers in Park Extension are trying to make sure that asylum seekers in the area can get vaccinated.
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Kate
Teachers are holding a one-day strike for better working conditions and more support for special needs students.
Chris
I’m surprised “we want a vaccine” isn’t one of their reasons.
SMD
Quebec teachers are being vaccinated as we speak.
Chris
They’ve been musing a strike for weeks and never have I seen their lack of prioritization as a reason. I find it odd.
Tim S.
1) they have lots of other concerns which have been around since long before COVID and will likely be around long after.
2) Maybe they actually understand that there’s a limited number of vaccines and not everybody can be a priority?dwgs
There is absolutely no reason why teachers shouldn’t be a priority. I have no idea how you could argue otherwise.
j2
I’ve always wondered if teachers are in the school column, the workplace column or both as far as transmission stats?
Anyways both the hotspots and the vulnerable are good targets.
Tim S.
I’m not saying they’re not a priority – I want my kids’ teachers vaccinated, believe me – I’m just glad it’s not my job to decide if they come before or after bus drivers, dentists, various chronic conditions. But no matter where they are on the list, they’ll get vaccinated within a few weeks probably, and the under-funding of education will still be there. You strike based on the most intractable problems, not the most easily fixed.
DeWolf
Teachers are already getting vaccinated, so why are you arguing about whether they should be?
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Kate
Felix-Antoine Joli-Coeur, who has made noises about running for mayor, has already thrown in the towel.
This leaves Plante, Coderre and Gilbert Thibodeau, the man who intends to “correct the error” of the city sometimes communicating information in English, who refers to Plante as a “fille”, and who – going by his supporters, who tend to tweet in ALL CAPS – may actually pull some of the more fringey voters away from Coderre.
(Again, I’d bet that some of the people shouting things like “L’HOMME, LE MONTRÉALAIS QUI FAIT PEUR AUX MÉDIAS, À CODERRE ET À PLANTE !!!” don’t even live in the city.)
Bill Binns
Sounds like a recipe for record low turnout.
Kate
It’ll never be a high turnout. But that’s what makes it unpredictable. There will be a lot of shouting on social media, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate to the views of active eligible voters.
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