On a city without purpose
Taylor C. Noakes looks back on the municipal election: “I felt like I was watching an election campaign for president of a geriatric South Florida condo board association, not Canada’s most interesting city.”
Why should this be so? Montreal’s strength is in its diversity and the life that comes from the variety of cultures within it – the one thing Quebec has been at pains to repress and bleach into uniformity. I wonder how we’d be doing if the government in Quebec City was gung‑ho about helping the city thrive, rather than trying to turn it into Joliette. As things stand, it would be unwise for any mayor, or candidate for the mayoralty, to speak too loudly about pride in the city’s multicultural life.
Speaking of people on the wrong track, La Presse interviews Yves‑François Blanchet, under the stinger headline “Le Québec devrait craindre le Canada plutôt que les États-Unis.” Blanchet must have had his flacks busy, because he’s also interviewed in Le Devoir, where he tries hard to sustain a claim that we’re all disillusioned with Mark Carney.
(I don’t know anyone who’s a wholehearted cheerleader for Carney, but likewise I don’t know anyone who doesn’t feel that he’s infinitely preferable to the alternative, especially under their current leader. On the other hand, as I’ve said before, I prefer the Tories to be led by an idiot rather than by a smart barracuda like Mulroney or Harper.)
DavidH 12:51 on 2025-12-24 Permalink
Thinking whatever is going on in the rest of Canada should be scarier than ICE, the end of due process, and Trumpists’ supremacist mentality is white privilege on steroids.
dhomas 16:43 on 2025-12-24 Permalink
I like the line about “a referendum on whether or not Valérie Plante built too many bike lanes”. My favourite rebuttal to this was that more bike paths were built, per mandate, during Denis Coderre’s single mandate as mayor than during either of Plante’s two tenures. Under Coderre, we saw ~220KM of new bike paths. Under Plante, we saw ~350km over two mandates, or 175km per mandate.
Ian 18:20 on 2025-12-24 Permalink
Ah yes but as many here have pointed out, unless a bike path is physically separated from cars it is worse than useless, etc.
dhomas 17:28 on 2025-12-25 Permalink
I see painted bike paths as something like “desire paths” for bikes. Cost is a factor in creating good bike infrastructure, so what a responsible municipal government would do is replace those painted bike paths during the next roadworks project with more durable, protected bike paths. Example: a street needs to be dug up to replace the sewage system or water pipes, then those painted bike paths become protected bike paths when the road is repaved.
Ian 22:13 on 2025-12-25 Permalink
Funny how bike advocates are doing so much heavy lifting for Coderre, lol.
dhomas 07:47 on 2025-12-26 Permalink
I’m not sure if that comment was directed at me, @Ian. But there was no lifting on my part. It was more to illustrate how people just bought into the whole “bikes ruin everything!” campaign, when really there weren’t really more KMs of bike paths added during PM’s time running the city. They seemed to be using a similar playbook as elsewhere in the political world: find a divisive topic and focus on nothing but that topic to get to victory.
Ian 12:19 on 2025-12-26 Permalink
All I’m saying is that a lot of people here was complaining that Coderre-era bike paths were insufficient (some even said worse than nothing) but now that it can be used to defend Projet there are lots of voices suddenly declaring Coderre’s bike paths as equivalent to Plante’s. Accusations of cherry picking go both ways.
@dhomas My 2 cents is that on a residential street, painted paths should suffice especially as residential street paths often have to be adjusted (Jeanne Mance between Fairmount and Bernard is a a good example), but on a mixed or commercial street, divided lanes are necessary if at the very least you don’t want your bike path full of parked delivery vehicles & to protect bikes from turning cars at intersections (a green box does not suffice).
Kate 11:40 on 2025-12-27 Permalink
I saw a post to Bluesky that fits in here:
Both recognize a problem and the harms it causes, but are designed without the will or imagination required to implement a real solution.
Ian 17:09 on 2025-12-27 Permalink
I disagree – not every bike lane can be a fully divided fietspad. A divided bike path works on a wide street like Clarke (having to tear it out and re-do it because of poor planning aside), but wouldn’t on a narrow street like Esplanade.
For that matter the painted lanes on Jeanne Mance were problematic in that the first version with a southbound path on the west side and a nothbound path on the east side didn’t work out for safety reasons – southbound lane should have been on the right hand side of the street for visibility from parked cars OR bike lanes should have been along the curbs. The new version has a full lane width bike path going northbound only on the east side. Of course since people are used to JM being a 2-way bike path, they still bike south on the west side even though there is no longer a bike path there, and since there is only one lane for carrs, they are riding directly against straffic… so I imagine in another couple of years someone will try another variation of the 2-way bike path. Of course one of the big issues on streets like JM is the regular flow of school buses at different times deoending on the school anbd the age of the children, 6 days a week, all year long – as we saw from the old bike path configuration where a southbound bixi rider plowed into a little kid skipping into the street to catch her school bus. Schoolbuses should also only be allowed to do pickups on residential streets at intersections – but that’s another argument altogether.
Regardless, pedestrians, especially children, should always be considered top priority. It’s worth noting there is a big synagogue right at the stop sign every bicyclist blazes thorugh at Groll, and you can’t drive to synagogue on Shabbos so the streets are full of people of all ages (including a lot in wheelchairs) Friday and Saturday, all times of year. There’s another synagogue just north of Saint Viateur on JM, and another at the corner of Bernard, Honestly I’m beginning to think that Bernard to Fairmount and Jeanne-Mance to Waverly should be entirely limited to local traffic, public vehicles and deliveries only, and every street made one way in the opposite direction at every major intersection, enforced for all motorized AND non-motorized vehicles – the flocks of kids riding their scooters and bikes excepted.
Oh and capital punishment for parking your vehicle in crosswalks even “for just a second” or riding your bike on the sidewalk if you are over 12
…
OK just kidding about that last part
Ian 18:50 on 2025-12-27 Permalink
addendum:
I guess part of my assumption is that all streets should be reconfigured to be safer for bicycles, but there is certainly a school of thought that bike paths should only be on streets of a certain width and/ or where bicyclists are actively in danger.
I do think that residential streets shoul be designed primarily to accomodate residents, not commercial traffic or commuters of any type from outside the neighbourhood – but I know I’m in the minority, and catch hell from both bike advocates and car advocates.