Writer and committed citizen, the author has taught literature at college, is president of the governing board of an elementary school and member of the editorial board of Quebec letters. She co-directed and co-wrote the collective Shock treatments and tarts. Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec.
Often, my subjects point at the same time as their title. It’s been more than a year since I wanted to write “Le ras-le-bol de la brigadière” to address the scourge of deadlock. But, this Tuesday again, a child was hit, 100 meters from a school. Fatal hit and run. A change of angle was necessary.
The seven-year-old girl was walking to her school in the borough of Ville-Marie. Corner of Rouen and Parthenais, several of his comrades and members of his siblings attended the scene, helpless. Around 6 p.m. Tuesday, we learned that she had unfortunately succumbed to her injuries…
The hit-and-run adds another layer, but for the rest, it’s a sad story that repeats itself. Motorists in a hurry, in ever larger vehicles, drive at breakneck speed even near schools. Children and parents who walk there are aware of the risks. The “whew, it didn’t take long! » often rain for months, years, before a « real » tragedy occurs: one that will lead to concrete actions on the part of the police and municipal authorities.
Insist on it moving
During this time, parents, citizens and governing boards will be mobilised. Sometimes they will have obtained what they asked for by dint of persistence. Other times, a child would have had to get hit for it to activate. In the meantime, the claimants will have come up against the rigidity of certain processes: rules that engineers still fixated on automobile fluidity apply with zeal; to decisions based on counts made at odd hours…
I witnessed one of these counts. A few years after the residents (I was one) asked to secure the intersection in front of my house, 50 meters from our primary school and very close to two large CPEs, the cavalry landed… at 9:30 a.m. one day week ! The dozens of small pedestrians and cyclists passing by were already seated in class; the many motorists, comfortably seated in the office.
After several years of representations, we finally got curbs, floor markings and signs (better than a simple stop, we were told, which can create a false sense of security, because too often overlooked…). Thanks to these structuring measures, visual contact is facilitated, the crossing is shorter, near-misses are less frequent.
Two streets south, mandatory stops were finally installed at the request of the school… but only after a child from our community was hit (minor injuries, phew!). It took this incident for the SPVM and the City to ensure that a crossing guard was systematically present and that stops were added. A one-way street will also be implemented.
Will it be the same for the present drama? A citizen would have asked that protrusions be put in place at this intersection a few years ago. “His request did not materialize,” according to The Press. Even more heartbreaking: in the spring of 2021, the governing board of the Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur school had asked the SPVM to add a crossing guard at this precise intersection. Request denied.
Copenhagen, and quickly
The Plante administration’s desire to make mobility safer is real. But the deployment of structuring measures is slower than the speeders, who “are buying SUVs at a rate that surpasses that at which we are building projections,” my neighbor and adviser, Marianne Giguère, pointed out to me. On the Plateau, for a long time under Project Montreal, the positive changes are more evident — which does not prevent it from sometimes taking time: the civil service machine is heavy… In Ville-Marie, where the tragedy occurred, the projections also appear , but their implementation is more recent.
That said, some intersections require more urgent interventions. When citizens, who use active transportation every day, several times a day, at an intersection, mobilize, isn’t it already too late? Are they prioritized, as part of the Vision Zero action plan, which advocates a road safety approach based on a systemic and collaborative approach to achieve zero deaths and serious injuries by 2040 on Montreal roads? The Parthenais-De Rouen intersection does not appear in the priority protrusions of Ville-Marie’s 2020-2030 local travel plan… A count was planned in the sector on Tuesday, it seems.
Apps like Waze are also to blame, driving traffic back to residential streets. In addition, on the side of the SAAQ, certain offenses are penalized little. Blocking an intersection doesn’t even result in demerit points! In Montreal, the fine for deadlock is $60, a bargain for forcing pedestrians to weave dangerously through traffic.
While the all-by-car is outdated, the anti-cyclist and anti-pedestrian discourse still has good press: however, according to the scale of vulnerability, walkers and cyclists are at the end of the food chain. The street belongs to them too. Drivers should be extra careful, especially when driving a truck or SUV, which cause more fatal injuries. “If every driver who arrives at an intersection says to himself: ‘isn’t there a child coming?’, that will already be it”, confides to me Mélina D’Orléans, who took in the siblings of little Maria on Tuesday morning…
According to the president of Piétons Québec, Sandrine Cabana-Degani, “we must accelerate the implementation of proven actions to better protect pedestrians. This concerns the layout of streets and sidewalks, authorized speeds and the design of vehicles”. Let Copenhagen’s dreams come true here — and fast. 2040 is too far away.