Villeray to mark parking places
An experiment is under way on some Villeray streets to indicate where parking spaces exist in an attempt to keep drivers from blocking entrances or parking too close to intersections. Item says they tried it in Ahuntsic and it helped.
Mark Côté 10:33 on 2024-08-25 Permalink
They’ve been adding a lot of bulb-outs in NDG and I’m thankful for them. It’s super annoying to see around corners when cars, and more so trucks, are parked right up at the corner, as happens way too often here.
Joey 19:51 on 2024-08-25 Permalink
Marking every single parking spot in the borough seems insane. Much easier to just paint the curbs where parking is forbidden (you see this in a lot of boroughs – yellow paint on the curb at the end of each block). On residential streets you can probably squeeze more cars in if the size of a space isn’t so strictly defined.
Mark Côté 09:58 on 2024-08-26 Permalink
Oh many curbs are painted at the corners here too, and they are regularly ignored. I guess it is cheaper to create bulb-outs than to pay people to issue tickets *shrug*
Kate 13:55 on 2024-08-26 Permalink
Bulb-outs add a lot, though. The ones around here in Villeray, mostly toward Jarry, are a riot of flowers as summer progresses.
Joey 16:32 on 2024-08-26 Permalink
Definitely bulb-outs > painted curbs. Beyond the addition of pretty flowers and plants to the street corner, which should not be understated, bulb-outs *actually* improve safety by making it impossible for cars to stop/park at intersections, making it much easier for drivers and pedestrians to see each other (though sometimes the vegetation is so abundant that it obscures smaller pedestrians).
Lately I am moving away from a rigid belief in the “bad driving is a result of bad roadway design” and towards a “lax rule enforcement reduces rule-following.” We don’t have the time or the money to make every block in the city as safe and secure as it could be; we need drivers and cyclists and pedestrians *now* to follow the existing rules. Station cops at crosswalks, red lights and stop signs and instruct them to aggressively ticket offences. Eventually replace the cops with cameras. Etc.
DeWolf 18:02 on 2024-08-26 Permalink
Bulb-outs or curb extensions (I’m never sure which term to use) add so much to the city. They do cost a bit to implement because you need to dig up the corner and redo the plumbing underneath, but they’re such an easy way to prevent illegal parking while also adding public space, greenery and/or flood management (in the case of a saillie drainante).
That said, I’ve noticed lots of drivers on St-Viateur illegally parking alongside the big curb extensions in front of Olimpico so they can run in for a coffee. As Joey says, there’s a limit to good design, and sometimes bad behaviour really just is people behaving badly.