A woman is suing the city for thousands of dollars to pay for teeth she lost when her bike hit a raised sewer cover on the Gouin Boulevard bike path and she did an endo.
An all-male “throuple” in Montreal is petitioning Quebec to recognize all three of them as parents to a little girl. Heather has three daddies?
A Montrealer is suing several large grocery chains over faux Made in Canada labels.
The first new CLSC in Quebec in twenty years has opened in Montreal North.
Protests were held in Montreal and other Quebec towns over the housing crisis and against the new system for calculating rent increases to come into force next year.
The next election will be the only protest that matters, I fear, and even then the anti-tenant legislation might just get grandfathered in since all the elected class own property.
Maybe there should be a rule that municipal representatives should not own property except for the one they’re living in.
But right away I can see how they’d loophole out of it – putting properties in their partner’s name, or investing in real estate trusts instead.
Better than nothing.
It’s a provincial law, no?
The Gazette is trumpeting today that Montreal politicians should ‘solve our traffic mess’. This is a teaser to a Gazette video podcast thing which I don’t have the patience to watch. The Gazette also has Josh Freed moaning about the state of our roads today. I’m not planning to link to it.
At least Rick Leckner gets close to admitting that public transit might mitigate the congestion caused by so many solo drivers in individual vehicles. But he also wants the Cavendish link built, which he claims would ease congestion but which every traffic study in the world shows would clog up immediately due to induced demand. Leckner should know this, but the Gazette panders to boomer sensibilities.
On display here is the tendency to assume that Montreal’s problems are unique. Every city of size on the planet has versions of this same traffic issue. We’re not special.
Solo driver here – we deserve more love as we are paying for your transit etc. you seen how much license and registration fees are? 🙂
“We should spend more money fixing roads.” “Why are all these roads closed for construction all at once?”
I do wonder if the West Island Gazette readers will take the REM, or just complain that no one else does. That famous Onion headline still rings true: “Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others”.
I hope you’re being sarcastic Ricardo, because all of those fees are a drop in the bucket. Even the increased registration fees in Greater Montreal only generate $320 million per year, but the ARTM’s budget is $3.3 billion.
Drivers don’t even pay enough to keep the roads in good condition, they certainly don’t keep transit afloat.
And that’s not even counting the massive externalities not really accounted for, like air pollution, resource use, etc. etc. Society massively subsidizes car use, from building roads to providing (or even requiring!) free parking, to literally designing our cities around cars.
Everyone pays taxes. This is oneof those situations where some say “why should I pay for ___ if I don’t use ___”. Like, I have no kids, why should I pay school tax. I’m healthy, why shoudl I fight helathcare cuts.
Ideally infrastructure serves everyone. If tax spend on urban transportation infrastructure disproportionately favours car drivers then the obvious solution is to improve public transit to the point that people don’t feel that they need cars, and then reduce car access. Ocf course there will still need to be vehicular access for food deliveries, emergency vehicles, buses, etc. but that’s another planning session entirely.
In any case I’m 100% certain that I won’t be taking the REM to work in the WI becasue it doesn’t go where I need to be, is in all likelihood going to be unreliable, and doesn’t actually improve my transit time in any meaningful way over the existing network – even if it actually runs on schedule.
Let’s not be too fast to get up on our high horses, especially since it’s pretty clear that not everyone gets horses in this scenario. I wish I got to live and work close enough to everything that I could just walk around or if I’m healthy, ride my bike. That’s not feasible for a lot of people, especially given the housing situation. And the REM? Please. It’s a joke.
I’m a little more optimistic about the Cavendish extension. Yes, I know that thanks to induced demand it won’t be clear sailing, but it’s essentially impossible to get north or west from NDG/Montreal West/Hampstead/Cote St Luc without going through a chokepoint on either the Decarie or the 20. Adding a third option would not be a bad thing.
Meanwhile, the attitudes of people who think we can have nice roads without orange traffic cones are not worth taking seriously.
>Adding a third option would not be a bad thing.
But it will. That’s the thing about induced demand. It’ll mean more car trips, more pollution, more noise, more space allocated to cars, etc. We should stop building new car infrastructure, and instead use our limited money to repair existing roads and fund transit. I can’t be bothered to look it up and hyperlink it, but Quebec already has a huge number of km of roads per capita.
Outside of a few urban centers the vast majority of Quebec is essentially rural, in case you forgot. This isn’t Europe where the next country over is a few hours’ fast, efficient & inexpemnsive train ride away.
Ian, you’re confusing cause and effect. We *decided* to build roads and spread out. We could have decided to build less roads and be more compact, or interconnect towns by rail instead of roads. Right or wrong, those were all choices we made.
The critical point Mayor Plante has made consistent for years that nobody can refute is this: there are simply too many cars in Montreal to allow for adequate mobility. Every year there are more cars, and no way to add road (or parking) capacity. We are fortunate that different levels of government are funding transit (perhaps far from ideal, but still) and alternative infrastructure (REV etc.), but there’s an element of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at work. Thinking about congestion, how much of the benefits of the expansion of the cycling network is instantly negated by the unchecked growth in the number of cars?
@Chris not to pick nits, but Quebec was populated as farms long before tehre were cities. Cities grew up around ports first. I know you’re talking about exurban sprawl bu that is a strictly 20th century phenomenon in the sense you mean, and the urban/ rural divide predates that by a few centuries. Even in the 50s 80% of Canada’s population was rural, and I mean out in farm country, not burbs. The rural road system also predates suburbs by a few centuries.
@Joey well good news, Saint Urbain, a 4-lane street, is down to one lane for cars between bernard and milton. Problem solved, right? Lol.
@DeWolf “Drivers don’t even pay enough to keep the roads in good condition” …all good points but as long as we’re counting, how much do bicyclists directly pay into road maintenance through their fees, again?
We badly plan trams which could move more people with less drivers and never take into account that pedestrians and trams can easily leave together, it’s vehicles (including bicycles) that can’t. For example, St- Catherine street could be pedestrianized with a tram going both directions at street level, which pedestrians can easily cross, with cobblestones to prevent anyone else from using it (or regretting trying to use it.) And then synchronized lights to let them pass at each corner without waiting. With no car/bicycle traffic at all. Basically the trans would have nothing stopping them at all. And yes, they run trans all over northern Europe, they work will in the snow and they can run on electricity. Even Pie-IX should have been trams with dedicated lanes. You can even leave grass under the trams. And have taller stations for boarding every few streets, which makes trams entirely handicapped accessible.
Extending Cavendish is essential if anything is ever going to be built at Blue Bonnets.
Jean Talon and Decarie operates at something like 300% capacity. That number needs to drop in order for trucks carrying concrete to get through in a reasonable amount of time. The only way to do that is to give drivers from CDN-NDG/ Cote St Luc/ Hampstead another way to get north of the train yards.
The 1.1 million cyclists in the Montreal region pay quite a lot of taxes.
Yes, numbers are fun. 65% of Montrealers drive to work. I literally said ” @DeWolf “Drivers don’t even pay enough to keep the roads in good condition” …all good points but as long as we’re counting, how much do bicyclists directly pay into road maintenance through their fees, again?”
As I also said, everyone pays taxes. This is one of those situations where some say “why should I pay for ___ if I don’t use ___”. Like, I have no kids, why should I pay school tax. I’m healthy, why shoudl I fight helathcare cuts.
Ideally, infrastructure serves everyone.
Mark Carney announced this week that the TGV planned between Quebec City and Toronto will be built in half the time originally projected. This is definitely a project I’ll believe when I see it happening, although it will be good to know there will be fewer Toronto‑Montreal flights, because there are a lot of them now.
But all that money spent so we can get to Toronto? Toronto? I want a magic train that will bring me to Sapporo or Istanbul for a price tag like that.
I know I’m in the minority but if it’s faster and cheaper than VIA and gets me to Toronto I’m all for it. I’m one of those rare Montrealers that loves Toronto. Next do a cross-country high speed train! And sure, to Europe too, why not
I’m one of those people that came to Montreal or university and never left.
I came here from Hamilton, most of my family is scattered throughout SW Ontario.
I know there are lots of others in the same boat, and 8 hours is a long drive.
We already often split our family trips into a train to Toronto then renting a car to get to London, Welland, Hamilton, Guelph, Owen Sound – although the Go train is pretty good and gets all over Ontario now, too, reducing our need for car rentals substantially. VIA is okay but I’d love a high speed train so I could spend more time with family.
I’m currently on a Via to Toronto! Traveling at 156 km/h, not too bad. I hope they put high speed internet on the new high speed trains, because the Wifi here is a crappy 2 Mbps.
High-speed (also high frequency! Don’t make people stress too much about schedules!) rail between Montreal and Toronto would significantly improve my work. The proposal would even allow for same-day return trips. Huge.
Ian 22:08 on 2025-09-13 Permalink
I blew out my front tire and messed up my knee joint going over a road plate biking over a corner back in 92, I had no idea I could sue. What’s the statute of limitations on that?
I kind of feel like biking in the city is treated as an “at your own risk”situation, but then again people do successfully sue for slipping on ice or damaging their cars on potholes… And dental work ain’t cheap.
Kate 22:14 on 2025-09-13 Permalink
You can complain without going so far as to sue. I know someone who tripped on a piece of sidewalk hardware – a stub for a bike rack, sticking right up out of the sidewalk and, for once, not marked with a cone – and fell hard, damaging both herself and her clothes. She got about a grand to offset costs in sessions with an orthopedist and to replace the damaged garments.
Annette 02:45 on 2025-09-14 Permalink
She was financially compensated via complaint? Pleasantly surprising! I’ve seen those rusty metal bolts (for securing poles/signage, racks) sticking up everywhere. I wonder how many formal complaints it would take for the city to treat those all as hazards – along with empty tree wells, poorly-graded manhole covers, etc etc.
There’s a straight line between crooked contractors and that anti-human, hazardous obstacle course of a streetscape – so what’s the best way the suffering citizen can gain leverage in that kind of system? Maybe lots of lawsuits, idk?
There are broke-ass post-soviet countries that put more thought and precautions into their urban ameliorations than Montreal does. It’s a choice Montreal makes, not an inevitability.
Kate 09:39 on 2025-09-14 Permalink
Often it’s less expensive to settle than to go to court – on the other hand, settling a complaint moves faster than a court case. So it was beneficial for both the victim and the city to have it sorted out quickly. Also, she had her partner photograph the accident site and her injuries right away, so the city must have realized it had no defense.