This Monday Montreal celebrates En ville sans ma voiture, the local manifestation of International Car Free Day. Although many of us will hear about the slight inconveniences caused by a few closed roads on the morning traffic report, there are events scheduled thoughout the day.
Map of car-free zone during the day
The car free zone will extend from de Maisonneuve to René Levesque and McGill College to St. Urbain. A full schedule of events is available here. In addition to official events, a “die-in” will be held by cyclists to draw attention to the persistant deaths and injuries caused by motorists each year in this city.
Spacing Montreal will feature exclusive photos and interviews from the event.
5 comments
Not that I don’t appreciate what we have here, but Montreal’s car-free day is so toothless that it’s almost not worth having. It would be nice if the mayor would just extend the hours to include the morning and afternoon rushes.
You know, to actually force people to leave their automobiles at home.
I agree, that is just plain embarrassing. It’s like pretending the jazz festival is on, quite lame.
This was the first time that I was able to make it to the ‘car-free zone’ in many years (since the first Car Free day here?), and I was really disheartened with the scale of things.
Even more shocking for me was the prevalence of all the electric vehicles on display! I know that Quebec is a world-leader in fuel-cell technologies and there is nothing wrong with being proud about that, but this day is supposed to be about being in the city without cars! A car is a car, no matter what is under the hood.
And don’t even get me started on the Bixi’s (the new bike rental program)- $28/month just to rent a bike for short trips?!
Montreal has one of the worst urban “hollow-outs” within Canada. That is to say, in Montreal people fled to the suburbs to a greater extent than elsewhere.
If they really had a car free day downtown, the lack of investment in mass transit over the past 20 years would become immediately apparent…
In fact, Montreal’s sprawl over the past 40 years has been significantly more gradual than Canada’s other two metropoles, due mostly to uneven economic growth and political instability.
I believe Montreal is better placed than almost all other North American cities to implement a fee system for cars in certain areas. This might help to pay for all the alternatives everyone seems to be clamouring for, but no one quite knows how to finance.