Montreal City Weblog

Kate 10:13 on 2024-05-27 Permalink Reply  

• Ephraim 10:16 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  They could pay their budget with a few days on Prince Arthur. Which is annoying as they built an entire protected bicycle lane on Avenue des Pins, so that the people from the Villa Maria readaptation centre can hobble along and get their exercise on Prince Arthur

• bumper carz 10:49 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  The sidewalk is the same width that it was before the parking was removed in order to enlarge the bike network, and wheelchair-bound people can use this link to get around.

  80% of Montrealers drive, and they defend their parking privileges by mentionning “victims” of bike paths that are not themselves. It’s a car company tactic – astroturfing.

• Daniel 10:59 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  bumper carz, we prefer the term “confined to wheelchairs” /s

  (or even “wheelchair users/people who use wheelchairs” maybe?)

• DeWolf 11:03 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  As someone who gets around mostly by bike it really irritates me to see the bad behaviour of some other cyclists. I was riding behind a middle-aged woman on St-Denis last week and she cut off pedestrians on three different occasions, including one instance when I was already stopped and she flew past me just as a woman was about to step into the crosswalk. I caught up with her at a red light, on Roy, and was tempted to confront her, but she zoomed off and ran the red (of course) before I could say anything.

  That said, I have no doubt that at least some of those SPVM tickets are for red lights that get ignored because they make no sense. For example, there are a number of intersections that have bicycle lights that turn red to give priority to cars turning right across the bike path. Northbound St-Denis/Bellechasse and northbound Peel/William are two examples. Except both of those intersections are with one-way westbound streets where cars simply cannot turn right. The programming of the lights is not tailored to the intersection. If you follow the lights as you are legally obligated to, you have just a few seconds to proceed on your bike before the bike light turns red while the light for cars stays green for what feels like another minute. If you know the intersection and know that there’s no danger of cars turning, there’s no reason you wouldn’t proceed.

  There is also an overabundance of traffic lights in Montreal at intersections where they really shouldn’t exist. Pine/Henri-Julien, for instance. Or de Gaspé at its intersections with Beaubien and St-Zotique. These seem to be legacy lights from the days when four-way stops were extremely rare and traffic engineers had selected random little sidestreets to serve as thoroughfares to relieve traffic on major arteries. When you’re on a bike at a red light on a tiny street with no traffic, I certainly get the temptation to go through.

• steph 12:14 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  I never understood why cyclists wouldn’t lose demerit points for cycling infractions while a passenger not wearing a seat belt is subject to demerit points.

  Fines for cyclists should be more harsh – they’re not deterring anyone. (last week, in my car doing a full stop, I watched a cyclist with a phone in hand drive straight into the back of my car. The cyclist even admitted to the police they were distracted by their phone. No insurance. Damage to my vehicle. uuugh)

• Kate 12:17 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  Where do lost demerit points go if you don’t have a drivers licence?

• jeather 14:12 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  They create a shadow account for you and it goes on that account, waiting for you if you get a license. I assume they also fall off after 2 years from the offense, not two years from the day you get a license, but I do not know for sure.

  Cyclists used to get demerit points, but they removed that, I believe the SAAQ lost a court case.

• steph 14:38 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  I got a seat belt ticket when I was 15. They issued the lost demerit points when I got my license at ~16, and the loss counted starting the moment my license was issued. I considered it cruel at the time, getting my learners with only 1 of the 3 points… It was what it was.

• Blork 17:44 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  Bicycles will always occupy a grey area when it comes to regulations and law enforcement. After all, kids are riding around on bicycles at six or seven years old. There will likely come a day when age factors in, such as once you turn 14 or 16 then maybe some regulations are enforceable, but there are so many variables involved, and a lot of difficulty enforcing.

  One place to start that might be if you’re riding a bicycle and you cause an accident or otherwise do harm or damage, then you are held responsible for it (assuming you are 14+ or 16+, whatever). This might create something of a “bicycle rider’s insurance” industry, or at least make people more cautious as they are schooled on the consequences of reckess cycling.

  For example, Steph says that a cyclist rear-ended his car and caused damage. That cyclist should be held responsible for fixing the damage, no different than if they had picked up a stick and started smashing it against the car.

  On the other hand, there also needs to be flexibility. Ticketing cyclists who blow through red lights AND THEREBY CREATE A HAZARD ought to be done. But ticketing a cyclist who crawls through a red light at a small intersection where there is no traffic (as DeWolf describes)? That’s just stupid. But how do you define the law that says when there is no traffic it’s tolerable, but when there is traffic it is not? How much traffic is “traffic?” (Hence the grey area I mentioned at the top.)

• Blork 17:58 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  Incidentally, my casual observation from many years of cycling is that the worst cyclists are (a) teenage boys, as most teenage boys are less sophisticated than wild monkeys when it comes to impulse control and responsible behaviour, and (b) old men; in particular, old men who appear to have not cycled much since they were kids and are now puttering around on a bicycle, probably for health reasons.

  That second category is quite the phenomenon. I see these old guys who literally ride their bikes like it’s 1962 and they are nine years old. They just go where ever they want, and they assume the entire world’s focus is on clearing a path for them. As if all cars drivers have “don’t hit the cyclist” as their highest motivation at any moment (that would be nice, but FFS don’t count on it). You see them riding the wrong way against traffic. You see them riding on sidewalks when there’s a bike path RIGHT THERE next to them. I want to yell “CYCLING IS DIFFERENT NOW!” at them.

  Fortunately most old men aren’t that way. Over here in Longueuil the typical senior citizen cyclist is puttering along on an electric bike (slowly), usually with his spouse puttering along next to him on a matching electric bike. It’s cute. They obey all the rules. They don’t speed. They stay on the bike paths.

• bumper carz 18:58 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  Many drivers kill people with their cars without losing demerit points.

  Many drivers kill people, and this is why you can’t compare these dangerous machine-weapons to shoes or bicycles.

  I don’t like the behavior of some cyclists, just like DeWolf, but I detest the behavior of all automobilists because it kills so many people.

  “Killing lots of people” really stands out for me. I guess that’s because I’m not a car-addict like most.

• carswell 19:32 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  Agreed that a large number of cyclists are thoughtless and disrespectful of everyone except themselves. Younger people of both sexes seem to be the worst offenders, possibly for obvious reasons: not much if any driving experience; having often learned to cycle on quiet suburban streets where, until recently, few bike paths existed; and the sheer numbers of them.

  Something that could be done relatively quickly and affordably is a public education/awareness campaign, which the SPVM’s festival de contraventions approach isn’t. This could take the form of public service commercials on TV that explain proper/improper and safe/unsafe behaviour, spell out the rules of the road. Longer videos could be shown in schools. (Disclaimer: I rarely watch anything but movies on TV — yesterday I switched on the tail end of the Radio Canada evening newscast, the first non-movie since last summer — and I haven’t asked any teachers or students about it, so maybe stuff like this is already being done.)

  That said, this is a city of asshole drivers irrespective of the vehicle they’re steering. Yesterday, on the Lachine canal path, a dad on an e-bike towing a kid trailer and with his partner and another kid following was travelling at a moderate clip. He obviously didn’t want anyone in front of him because, when someone tried, he’d speed up until they fell back behind.

  At the dangerous pass under the 20 on St-Jacques between VSP and Lachine, I was crossing the Gowans Ave. offramp on a green when a cyclist waiting on the other side suddenly placed his bike across the very narrow entrance to the path, blocking it and forcing me to stop in the middle of the busy street (I suspect it wasn’t intentional, just his being oblivious to anyone except himself).

  Parents have a role to play in this too: on the René-Lévesque Park path, a family was biking with their 6 or 7-year-old on an mini e-bike in front swerving in and out of his lane and presenting a hazard to passing cyclists; the parents appeared to think it was cute.

  I’ll spare you the rant about car and truck drivers who view the paths as temporary parking spaces or the car owners who sweep the yard trimmings and trash from their property onto the path, often in large piles.

  But, hey, police! Expecting cyclists not to engage in Idaho stops is asinine. I refuse to expose myself any more than absolutely necessary to traffic on the southbound Décarie service road and will turn right onto Isabella on a red in a flash. On Isabella, I’ll also cross Coolbrook on a red if there’s no traffic because the next block, narrow and with parking on both sides, feels like a deathtrap when there are cars in my lane. It’s also good for motorists since I’m not slowing them down, blocking their way.

  I’ve been meaning to time my trips out to Lachine: once Idaho-stopping all the way and once coming to a full stop at every stop sign and stoplight and dismounting and pushing the bike as signs ridiculously instruct at various points. Maybe this’ll be the summer that happens. If I do, I’ll post the results somewhere.

• CE 22:15 on 2024-05-27 Permalink

  I’ve been noticing a lot of pedestrians obliviously standing in bike paths lately. The other day, a guy was standing right in the middle of the bidirectional path on Berri to take a photo. He seemed annoyed that I yelled for him to watch out.

  For cyclists, the worst is these guys (always 20ish men for some reason) riding their bikes while looking at their phones. I saw a guy swerving around on a quiet path while looking at his phone. I slowly rode towards him wondering when he would notice. He did at the last minute, fell off his seat and his phone and sunglasses went flying. He mumbled “my bad” as if someone might think it was anyone else’s fault but his own.

• Nicholas 00:54 on 2024-05-28 Permalink

  jeather, the SAAQ/government won that case, retaining the ability for certain offences by cyclists to count for demerit points. It was the 2018 Highway Safety Code changes to section 110 that ended up exempting cyclists and pedestrians from receiving demerit points. (I didn’t know it no longer applied until today, thanks for the update! And I’m mostly including links for my own reference.)

• jeather 10:26 on 2024-05-28 Permalink

  Oh, that’s interesting, I wonder why they changed it if they lost the case. (I think it’s probably correct not to get demerit points for non-car infractions.) I appreciate the links.

• Kevin 11:02 on 2024-05-28 Permalink

  I know I’m callous because I think when you’re discussing deaths and injuries you need to look at numbers and ignore feelings.

  About 365 people die in Quebec each year while on the road. Most of those people are inside the car that crashes.

  Meanwhile even though more people are in vehicles, and we have more vehicles on the road each year, the number of drivers in an injury-causing crash is slowly dropping year after year.
  https://saaq.gouv.qc.ca/blob/saaq/documents/publications/bilan-routier-2022-annexes.pdf

  People should and could be safer and more responsible when driving, and the evidence says that the overwhelming majority are doing that, even if it’s only through attrition.

• jeather 12:09 on 2024-05-28 Permalink

  200 pedestrians are seriously injured and almost 2000 lightly injured a year in car accidents, and 75 are killed.

• Nicholas 13:17 on 2024-05-28 Permalink

  jeather, I don’t know the specific impetus for this change, but the 2018 law was a really wide-ranging, long, open process. I know some people in the bicycle and pedestrian activist community who went to Quebec City for consultations. People said it really was treated like a once in a generation update, where anything was on the table if people could make the case for change. Everyone had their asks, everyone had to compromise, and I get the impression they weren’t going to make many changes again for a decade or two, as in this is a settled file for a while. So even though the government legally had the right to give out points, I assume consensus was it wasn’t a high priority or preferred policy.

• Ian 13:23 on 2024-05-28 Permalink

  Just can’t resist sea-lioning, eh qatzi?

  Back on topic …

  In 1992-ish one of my classmates got stopped by a cop for riding his bike the wrong way down Crescent on his way to class. The only ID he had was his driver’s license, which he showed. The cop said “Too bad you used that as ID because now you’ll get demerits” but my friend had drugs on him and didn’t want to risk being taken in to the station if he didn’t show ID, so he sucked it up.

  Am I correct in understanding that he woudl have gotten demerits anyway since he is a license holder? Was the cop just messing with him?