The “power trip” by Luc Ferrandez

The Belvédère Camillien-Houde

Josée Legault

Thursday, 8 February 2018 15:35

UPDATE
Thursday, 8 February 2018 15:46

Look at this article

It was a fear very real.

With the election of Valérie Plant to the city hall of Montreal, it was foreseeable that Luc Ferrandez, one of his lieutenants in Project Montreal and the indefinable mayor of the borough of the Plateau Mont-Royal, take in the ranks. He was therefore appointed to be in charge of large parks.

Like what, despite the turmoil of the beginnings of Ms. Plant as mayor, with the best that remains to his election to the hall is also the worst…

Sorry for the English expression in the title, but it says what it has to say.

I’m talking about the absurd idea of Mr. Ferrandez to prevent cars from crossing the Mont-Royal of end-to-end, taking the bucolic voie Camillien-Houde through what my colleague Lise Ravary, described as a “pilot project radical”. In fact, it is the “transit” of the mountain which will be closed to cars.

All, we are told, to protect cyclists from dangerous drivers of cars, since there had been the tragic death of the young Clement Ouimet, hit by a car whose driver had made a u-turn illegal.

However, cyclists hit by cars, there has been, unfortunately, on other streets, boulevards and avenues.And just as unfortunately, there will still. Are not all these streets to cars.

Worse yet, if Luc Ferrandez is being stubborn – and that Valerie Plant, the leaves-these are thousands of cars who, on a daily basis, take Camillien-Houde to cross from east to west or from west to east which, while they avoided the traffic jams in the city centre, will be to cause congestion even more in the same downtown Montreal. And in doing so, POLLUTE the atmosphere even more. Looking for the error.

These cars pass through, however the Mont-Royal without causing traffic jams. There is also access to the cemeteries, which would be reduced or complex.

In fact, Luc Ferrandez will never change. His aggressiveness to the cars and those who lead sometimes makes it completely irrational.

On the Plateau Mont-Royal, some of the changes mind-boggling “sense of street” have ended up creating a traffic jam pollutants where there was none before. Bravo champion.

And before one treats me of the “great bourgeois who just wants to park his chariot” – as some followers of Mr. Ferrandez have done in the past to insult me -imagine-you so that I don’T have a car.

And this, for a good reason : I NEVER learned to drive. Urban hard and pure of birth, I have simply never seen the need.

My status as a perpetual pedestrian does not prevent me, however, to denounce the automobilophobie of Luc Ferrandez when that product decisions are outliers that cause more problems than they solve.

Cross the Mont-Royal by Camillien-Houde should remain an activity that is ALSO accessible to motorists.

The death of Clement Ouimet was tragic, as any death free, but it does not justify that an elected official, by stubbornness, ideological, becomes a pretext to punish thousands of motorists. Which, in fact, have done nothing wrong. On the contrary, elsewhere. Via Camillien-Houde, they help to alleviate congestion in the city centre without putting to much in danger the integrity that is the jewel of Mont-Royal.

But why make it simple when you can make it complicated?…