If you were the mayor of Montreal, what changes would you bring to the city?

[kira005]

Personal opinion, Montreal has so much potential! I really mean it. I Lived there for roughly 40 years. The problem is... they never had a competent administration that understand what kind of unique gem they actually have in their hands.
Montreal is surrounded by water, it has 4 DISTINCT seasons, European architecture, influence and vibe... but it's surrounded by "American/Toronto" restlessness. It is multilinguistic and multicultural.
It has probably the most welcoming people in north America...

INSTEAD...

They spent stupid amount of money to make bike lanes everywhere just because it sounded good and looked good in some European countries.... countries where winters has an inch and a half of snow and last 2 months at best.
They spent money to make all those open ground at every street corner because according to them it's safer for pedestrian.... never realising now those same pedestrian will just walk off even further in the streets because of those same open ground
They were actually considering changing station "Champ de mars" to "DU champs de mars" for a 150000$
2 ways streets become one.... 2 lane streets become one... and all of that because they need more bike lanes so the cyclists can ignore all of them and just ride in the middle of the street anyway.
And as bonus, any car driver that dare to drive a little closer to a cyclist will witness their famous middle finger...followed by "on partage la route" while the bike lanes are empty because of pot holes....should I even start on pot holes??
The STM offer garbage services always being late and all while consistently raising it price... and somehow still recording deficit every year.

Explain to me why after 2011 Tsunami, Japan can rebuild 60% of a whole city within a year and a half while it took Montreal 3 years and a half to put a pipe on 3 blocs on Plaza St-Hubert?
Montreal has so much going on for it... so many fun festivals in summers (francofolies, festival de jazz, feu d'artifice loto quebec, juste pour rire, nuit d'afrique and sooo many more) it boast one of the most DIVERSE and actually tasty cuisines in the world.
And somehow they never fail to shit the bed...Unfortunate really.

 

[CLOUD 500]

Its precisely one of the issue. With current housing crisis you can't expropriate peoples to widen the roads.

Again im just a low level grunt but i feel the generals were not suited to make decisions. Who tought it was a good idea to allow so many peoples in Montreal when current peoples already had issues finding housing. Then add what we just discussed.

I always said it ... Its fun to go to Montreal as a "tourist" but NO WAY in the 9 hells would i ever wanted to live there. Its all fun and dandy when you rent a hotel downtown and use metro/your legs to go around. Heck even when when me and my buddy go to Montreal for a show he park in Longueuil and we use the metro to go on the island.

But only last week end i had a familly party and got to Montreal (no meeting lol just in and out with family) and even my uncle wich is a pretty good driver (it was litterally his job for years) had to deal with the narrow streets, one ways and reckless drivers.

Unless you were born and raise in Montreal yeah... You can see the issues easily.

The Plante administration did this on purpose. A type of Communism. You make it so hostile that people either get fed up and take public transit or ride a bike or just avoid Montreal. It always ends up being a disaster when ideology takes precedence over practicality.

 

[Skym]

For me, my first day in office, I would...
1. Make the STM metro operate 24/7 like NYC Subway does
2. Put an end to the corruption in the construction industry
3. Speed up all the never ending BS road construction on St.Catherine to finish, literally order the construction companies get it done right away.
4. Build a new baseball stadium on Peel Basin to bring back the Expos
5. Legalize the hobby, make it safe & regulated. So its safe for SW & clients.
6. Implement a NYC food truck culture to the city
7. Lower the fare prices for the metro
8. Cut down on bike paths, there's enough already
9. Expand the South Shore metro, add more stops.
10. Expand the Laval metro, add more stops.

 

[hob12]

A lot of what you guys list is also out of municipal, or even provincial, jurisdiction.

A city mayor cannot legalize the hobby.

 

[Skym]

Moreover, many of the gung-ho, sunglass-wearing, spandex types who use these bike paths

Imo, those gung-ho spandex bike weirdos are the biggest douchebags the city and also very pretentious.

 

[minutemenX]

A lot of what you guys list is also out of municipal, or even provincial, jurisdiction.

A city mayor cannot legalize the hobby.

For the center I mentioned, the mayor does not need any special government permission, just the will and be unafraid of political controversy. Strip clubs exist, massages exist, hotels with no limit time renting (short time) exist. What you need is to bring many places under the same roof. Can even justify it by placing it far from schools and places that can be seen by minors. Hire efficient private security, make entrance to the center payable and enforce the age limit. It can also house bars and restaurants, movie theaters with erotic content etc. It can be funded by private money only and would immediately bring some serious cash to the city budget.

 

[polaroid]

That too and that was one of the things mentioned. I am witness do this. I used to go to stripclubs often but now much less and one of the factors was the never ending construction and detours.

And what left wing politicians tend to forget is if you block trafic in the downtown core daytime and evening there's plenty of foot trafic it keeps crime low but late evening to early morning depending on the time of year drug dealers and homeless people take over the place.....traditionaly buses,cabs and car trafic insure a certain effect of security and if something happends cops are in there cruiser and can intervene faster.....im particully thinking of Saint Catherine street east with the permanent closure next to place des arts and then another area plague by crime it's from Berri to Papineau street again on Sainte Catherine !!!!!

Ah and the crack alley south of Sainte Catherine street and east of Saint Lawrence kind of ironic one of the least secure place on the island of Montreal is 5 minutes walk from the SPVM police headquarters ....What will it take for them to crackdown these people imagine some tourist arriving there by mistake best case scenario they just get robbed I let you imagine the worse.....!!!!!