An irony of car-free day
My son’s school just called to say that his schoolbus (a form of public transportation) can’t bring him home this afternoon because it can’t get through the car-free barricades leading to the Old Port. The school is calling all the downtown parents to ask them to pick up their children at 3:30, which for most of us, means taking the afternoon off.
Thus the people who are the least car-dependent of any Montrealers — the ones who walk everywhere and take public transportation — will be among the most inconvenienced by car-free day. Meanwhile, school busses in car-dependant neighborhoods like NDG will be able to get home just fine.
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My daughter most likely goes to the same school as you son…that infamous minibus as they call it? I just called the school to inform them that the “car free day” ends at 3:30 pm…I’m wondering if the busdriver isn’t trying to get the afternoon off!
Yes, he’s in the minibus too.
Here’s what I don’t get. Car-free day starts AFTER morning rush hour, and ends BEFORE afternoon rush hour, so the South Shore commuters, with one person per car, can go about their business as usual, assuming they have a parking garage.
Yes, this thing doesn’t affect my commute from the south shore. It may even make traffic easier with more people taking public transport.
That said, I’m all for this. My main reason for taking the car is because my two destinations are not well served by public transport (to get to and to travel between). If it was only myself, I’d pay the $8 a day and take the bus-train-train-bus to get to work.
I totally agree. My only objection to car-free day is that it doesn’t address the real problem — people outside of the city center don’t have convenient mass transportation to work. Until we fix the sprawl model of urban planning, we’ll continue to have this problem.
If I were king of the world, I’d take all of Montreal’s ground-level parking lots and turn them into multi-level parking garages with retail shops on the ground floor, and a connection to the underground city. Plus, I’d use the vacant railroad yards just east of the 15 for a park-and-ride that featured a quick train into the center of town.