But sometimes unelected provincial bureaucrats make things considerably worse for the cities and their residents.
Here are some troubling recent examples of how the Quebec government has made life worse for Montrealers.
1-Leisure - The unpopular political decision to remove the longstanding baseball field on Jeanne Mance Park near Mount Royal and Park was a decision taken by the Projet Montreal municipal administration based on the idea that after decades of uneventful play, balls from casual pickup softball games suddenly become dangerous projectiles. However another chunk of this narrative has gone overlooked: provincial authorities laid down strict guidelines concerning how this or any baseball field could be built or rebuilt. Municipal authorities had the choice to either rebuild the field based on those demanding standards or demolish it completely. They chose the latter. The experience is common and widespread in other domains, as Quebec entrepreneurs will often bemoan that their dreams of creating a commerce were dashed when informed of the excessive rules and hoops they'd be required to satisfy in order to make their operation happen.
2-Parking: Many handicapped parking spaces go unoccupied around 99.9% percent of the time while other motorists - many vulnerable in their own ways - are banned from setting wheel in those much-needed spots. The handicapped parking spaces have been proliferating due to a provincial law from the Regie du Batiment which orders places like grocery stores to earmark one space per hundred to handicapped parking. Handicapped lobbyists often persuade the business owners to go above and beyond the spaces required. While this doesn't seem shocking, this year the CDN/NDG borough and possibly others, have extended this same rule to city streets near such places as public parks with chalets. The municipality now classifies a park chalet as the same thing as as grocery store or any other such structure, as a result, the borough has removed parking spaces that can be used by anybody and set them aside for cars with handicapped user stickers. Delivery trucks, parents with small children and other worthy vehicles are routinely forced to park in distant spots while these handicapped parking remain empty at all times.
3-Tickets Many parking tickets have recently ballooned to an unreasonable $169 in the Montreal urban area due to a new interpretation that provincial rules apply to Montreal-area city streets, as opposed to municipally-generated tickets that cost about $62 - which is still pretty steep. The ridiculously expensive punishment has been met with an outraged backlash.
4-The Turcot rebuild - The rebuilding of the various highway entrances and ramps known as the Turcot Interchange has proven a difficult challenge for Montreal, as residents have been forced to endure years of noise and dust and motorists to suffer time and gas-consuming detours. However the provincial authorities could simply have chosen the option of simply repairing the existing structures, a cheaper option that simply was never seriously discussed, although some journalists, such as myself confirmed at the time with engineers that repairing the existing structures would have been cheaper and less invasive.
With a provincial election campaign now underway, these issues might be worthy of mention to the candidates you are considering.
Interesting and so true!
ReplyDeleteLove all your articles!
Thank you!
Derek
These issues regarding green space management, parking, traffic interchanges, etc., are not unique to Montreal, nor to Canada. Indeed, they exist in many major cities around the world.
ReplyDeleteJeanne Mance Park had previously been commandeered by the city when it built the tennis courts and restructured the rest of the field and playground areas, nor did these changes follow public consultations. Remember, you have often written about how Oxford Park in N.D.G. was likewise re-configured behind residents' backs.
What I find unacceptable is that while some city parks are indeed improved whether it be better landscaping or updating children's apparatus, other parks are ignored. It seems like a coin-toss district by district. Inquiries and complaints via 311 don't always obtain a satisfactory explanation, either.
Whether it be misplaced pic-nic tables and benches (or too few of them), soccer nets unusable by anyone because they are inexplicably chained up, heavy Public Works trucks driving onto the grass and leaving deep ruts left to fill with mud following rainfalls, litter and broken bottles left lying around, much needs to be done.
Worst of all, in my opinion, are the surly-looking city employees who walk along block by block waving around those excruciatingly loud leaf-blowers--the worst invention ever conceived of by mankind. All that blowing does is just shift the debris from one property to another (gee, thanks!); debris which the wind will invariably blow right back again. How stupid is that? Not enough municipalities have managed to BAN these devices completely--yet.
Why not invest in those portable, leaf vaccum-cleaners instead? Thus far, I've only seen ONE guy using it in the city. Once I even asked a leaf-blower guy why he didn't use a vacuum-cleaner and he replied "I wish!".
I haven't seen the leaf blowers in my area or if I have I've forgotten about it. My complaints on top of the ones I've gone on about endlessly: The grass is absolutely garbage. I don't get why so little attention is given to keeping the weeds out. It's disheartening. Snow is not cleared from park paths in the winter, indeed snow is sent over them to make them particularly impassable. The city spent $500,000 making the park friendly to wheelchairs and yet the changes were very minor and frankly I've not seen a single wheelchair user take advantage of these facilities yet and I'm there all the time, and I mean all the time. Anyway if you think wheelchairs are a priority you might consider clearing the snow and ice from the paths, as the park is rendered useless for half of the year.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the underlying problem regarding outright poor or sporadic park maintenance is due to the long-standing battle between the city and the public works unions. Remember how long it took for the city to finally come to an agreement with the fire-fighters?
ReplyDeleteI once had a conversation with an Anglophone Public Works guy handling park cleanup duties who said that although he considered himself well-paid for his work, there were still some lingering problems with the city. So, what else is new?
Clearly evident in their ubiquitous red trucks are more female and recent immigrant workers who must surely earn way more money than they otherwise would in the private sector.
Of course, any such remaining, aggravating issues within a work force can't help but engender resentment among some city workers: the universal "us-versus-them" factor.
It's not as if the city is afraid to spend money upgrading and updating its technology. As is becoming more common in other major cities, GPS is now deployed on many of Montreal's vehicles.
Indeed, the police already have a new digital-mode, two-way radio network immune to eavesdropping by radio scanners, similar to how cellphone manufacturers moved away from analog to digital in order to achieve customer privacy, notwithstanding any persistent, dedicated hacking techniques by geeks.
Surprisingly, even the Public Works are now likewise communicating under a similar, eavesdropper-proof, digital "stealth mode" and on a different radio band. No longer can the average-joe public actually tune in to dispatchers sending works crews to job sites.
Could it be that perhaps the city doesn't want us to know how inefficient they are?