Motorists win NDG meter squabble
CDN-NDG borough planned to add parking meters around Sherbrooke Street, but an angry backlash from motorists forced them to scale back the plan.
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Joey 09:31 on 2026-04-24 Permalink
A backlash championed by Projet Montréal! There was an American bureaucrat named Rufus Miles, who in the late 1940s who coined the phrase, Where you stand is where you sit – i.e., your role in a system largely determines your point of view. When you sit in opposition, you wind up standing up for free parking, even when your political identity is disproportionately informed by your deeply held belief that civic life has already ceded far too much power and subsidy to drivers.
Anyway, this sounds like the right call.
Mark Côté 09:32 on 2026-04-24 Permalink
As noted earlier in this blog, Councillor Peter McQueen, an avid cyclist to say the least, really whipped up opposition here, which is very interesting.
Also interesting, I live near the Terrebonne bike path, and fear of loss of parking sparked my neighbour to start a petition to get permit parking for our street. After the bike lane was added, it in fact did not turn into a parking apocalypse… but there’s now permit zones on our street a few thousands more dollars a year in city coffers.
Joey 11:06 on 2026-04-24 Permalink
When I lived in Griffintown 20 years ago, the residents started to mobilize for permits, since parking was pretty sparse and lots of people would park for free and then walk downtown, especially when events were happening at the Bell Centre. From what I recall, the city has a pretty comprehensive process to determine whether permit parking is appropriate for a neighbourhood, involving some fairly significant data collection. I’ve wonder if given the ‘parking catastrophe’ overreaction to the Terrebonne bike lane, the city fast-tracked the process.
Ian 12:08 on 2026-04-24 Permalink
I heard McQueen talking on the radio and his angle did not seem “angry backlash from motorists” in the least, he was more concerned with people parking on the main strip of Westmount for too long, limiting parking availability for the people just trying to go to shops or whatever which is what that strip’s parking is meant for – and these meters would not help that issue at all, represents unithinking overreach, and a one-size-fits-all attitude that McQueen does not want to be associated with. Citing “angry backlash from motorists” is reductionist and does not do justice to the issue at all.
Joey 12:22 on 2026-04-24 Permalink
Huh? If people are parking on a busy commercial stretch of road for too long the solution is 10000% to charge for parking. Is McQueen arguing the opposite? My understanding was that there actually isn’t too much of a short-term parking crunch in that area and that this was just clearly a cash grab from the borough.
Ian 18:57 on 2026-04-24 Permalink
I expressed that poorly, he meant on the busy strip of Sherbrooke between Decarie and Victoria there SHOULD be these parking meters but the rest of the strip didn’t need them, and putting meters along the rest of the strip is the part that doesn’t help and is overreach etc. And yeah, a cash grab especially on the residential streets.