Taking the city of Montreal to court over bike paths

getting up with you weekday mornings. 20 years and counting Andrew Carter on the voice of Montreal CJAD 800 Coalition for Democracy Montreal has had it with the way bike paths are being implemented in the city. They say there's lack of consultation. Mark Perez is part of the group planning legal action against the city of Montreal over the way it's been building bike paths. The director of the coalition for Democracy Montreal Morning, Mark.

Good morning, Andrew. Thank you for having me this morning. So tell me what are the issues that you're having with the way bike paths are built? So the main issue that we're having is that the citizens are very interested in helping the city implement these bike paths and stuff like that. And they bring up a lot of great recommendations and suggestions on how they could accommodate the needs of everyone.

The problem that we're having is that the city is choosing not to take these things into consideration. And a lot of the accidents and issues that are, are curing are things that we've predicted and warned the city about. And they just don't want our input. They just want to implement bike paths the way they want and how they want. And it's, it's infuriating citizens and it's infuriating commerce.

So when you're talking about accommodating the needs of everyone, what would that look like? So let's say we take the street in park extension on the curb street. So it's a densely populated area where many of the residents need their cars for various reasons. You know, there's the old age, there's the families with the many children and

There's the nurses that work late nights and that are circling the block for about an hour to find a parking spot. So what they did is that they removed one side of parking, completely parking, to accommodate the two bike lanes that they've installed in that area. Now,

The configuration that was recommended by the citizens were that the bike path should have been on the outside of the cars and not closer to the sidewalk. If they would have followed that, there would have been enough space for the parking and there would have been space for the bike paths. So tell me something. This legal action is at a class action and what's the goal of it? What do you hope to gain from this?

So we're really, it's not a class action. It's basically our organization representing people that have been deeply impacted by these forced bike paths. And what we're trying, what we're seeking is to get the city to listen to the citizens and work with the citizens to implement an equitable solution to these bike paths.

And, you know, here in my own borough, the Cote Nation D.G. on Terre Bunch Street, they completely converted the street to Tulane Bike Path and removed much-needed parking in both areas to the point where the St. Monica Church has been having a financial crisis and, you know, they're having a fundraising campaign on

on uh... on november twenty eight to to try to compensate the money that they've been losing because of uh... the lack of uh... weddings and uh... funerals that's a mark that i've been caused by the fact that yeah mark my understanding is that the the city's not interested in uh... further consultation

Well, is that the case? Actually, the case actually, as we've been moving forward with our lawsuit and preparations, you're, we're starting to notice that they're no longer using the word consultation. It's basically an information session. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And that's exactly what it is. It's an information session. When we go, when I went to a lot of these things, you know, and that was, you know, and that's what's infuriating because

When you go to these information sessions and you hear the people who give these recommendations, you're like, OK, well, they make sense. And the worst part is that some of the recommendations that the citizens are giving have been applied to other neighborhoods that have very similar configurations. And we don't understand why the city is choosing not to implement these recommendations that we know they've done somewhere else.

Who's coming up with these ideas? Is there like a bike path czar or something who just decides we're going to put a bike path here and then that's it? Who decides this? Well, so far as far as I'm concerned, we can see that it comes from the C40. We can see that there's an organization called Villa Quebec. We can see that there's many outside organizations that have not been elected. They're not elected officials.

that are doing all these recommendations. I think there's a company EXP. I don't know what they stand for, but I've seen their name a couple of places. And it's all these people. And let's not forget that Valerie Plant is the vice president of a certain organization that are related to green initiatives. Okay, Mark, well, good luck with this. Okay. Appreciate your time. If I may, we need the support

of every citizen. This lawsuit is costing us, is costing us, so if people would like to make donations, they can visit our website CDMTL.org. And there's a button there that can click that takes them to our GoFundMe and they can make a donation there. And if you have any ideas, recommendations, suggestions, bypass, cyclists,

citizens' businesses, they should all be participating in this. Like that, we can make a solution that's good for everyone. CDMTL.org, as always said. That's correct. The name of our organization is the Coalition for Democracy in Montreal, so CD. And then at the initials of MontrealMTL.org.