Posted at 3:00 p.m.
Home delivery and the convenience of online shopping appeal enormously to consumers. In order to minimize this abundance of trucks, there should be distribution centers where buyers would be forced to pick up their orders. Only large parcels could be delivered to your home. As long as they travel to pick up purchases made online (and too often in favor of foreign merchants), consumers would perhaps begin to shop more locally and “face-to-face”. Most likely, this way of doing things would help reduce overconsumption, which is itself a major problem.
Lucie Nadeau
Before, customers went to the shops and invaded the streets; today, it is the trucks from the stores that go to the customers. White beanie, white beanie.
Marcel Rivest
Is it better to have 100 vehicles converging on a point of sale or just one delivering to 100 different addresses? To ask the question, is to answer it. These 100 vehicles could disappear from our roads, think about it; buying online requires adaptation, buying in person is by far more polluting.
Christian Castonguay
Why not ask Amazon to convert its entire electric fleet? They can afford it… they could use it for good publicity.
Alice Babin
Despite all the online shopping, the parking lots of supermarkets are overflowing with cars. The stores are understaffed, most of the time looking dead. In addition, the price which differs enormously. So the price of the goods, the cost of using the car and the loss of time shopping are increasingly encouraging online purchases. Shopping is probably the last favorite activity to meet people.
Bernard Lefebvre
Mrs. Collard, it is certainly less serious than the thousands of motorists who go to Montreal to make purchases… It also solves the lack of labor in retail businesses; a warehouse where all the goods are stored requires fewer workers; the big buildings in the city center house fewer people, so less wasted electricity, less heating… In the end, it’s less polluting to buy online; it takes less time and fewer people.
Francine Davis, Boucherville
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE
People who travel by vehicle to go shopping create pollution.
It is more than important to act more and more effectively to counter the harmful effects of climate change. However, without having the answer, I wonder about seeing one or more Amazon, Canada Post, UPS or other delivery trucks in our neighborhoods compared to the number of people who, otherwise, would travel by motor vehicle to go do their shopping. The effect on local trade is most likely positive, the effect on the environment would perhaps be more negative given the large number of people called upon to move. As for the safety aspect, the impact of a few delivery trucks compared to the large number of vehicles circulating is perhaps equivalent. I’m just asking myself the question.
Serge Pelletier, Saint-Hyacinthe
Instead of rethinking the city, I think we should rethink the delivery system. You see it yourself: four trucks on the same street in less than 15 minutes! It is an aberration. And you think it’s the city that needs to be redesigned! I rather believe that a single truck could very well have delivered these four parcels. One could perhaps assign exclusive transport in a given postal code to a designated transport company and deny access to others. Surely there is a way to regulate transportation rather than starting to redesign our cities, which can be a daunting task.
Gilbert Savard, Quebec
I wonder why, there are still no regulations and I find that deplorable. It should of course be done in stages. There are many possible solutions elsewhere in the world to inspire our elected officials. Ikea already uses electric trucks – immediate benefit: no noise. Please don’t add “no pollution”! We could already set targets over time for delivery companies to gradually use more electric trucks.
Christine Besson, Montreal
I force my 10 employees to consolidate their purchases of office equipment and order them from a local stationery store. I found that they ordered from Amazon and that sometimes I had three deliveries a day. It’s the same for Uber Eats. Employers must have clear policies.
Helen Normandin
I’m against online shopping unless I can’t do otherwise. I boycotted Amazon for several years and I’m glad I did. I rather encourage local trade in person!
Micheline Beauchemin