Should cities have autoroute highways in them?

Montreal is recovering from the post-war autoroute mentality (i.e. all roads must be designed to move cars - and cars only - as rapidly and efficiently and in the greatest volume possible). We are now working to modify roads back to a human speed and scale.

Nowhere is this more evident than the roads surrounding Mount Royal, the mountain park in the heart of our city.

The demolition and rebuilding of the Pine-Parc intersection as a conventional ground-level intersection (replacing the previous cloverleaf-style highway interchange design) is a good example of the re-humanizing of road infrastructure in the city.

This brings us to the new mayor of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borrough (arrondissement) Luc Hernandez. He wrote some interesting opinions about the MTQ (the Ministry of Transport of Quebec gov't dept.) on his blog. These comments did not suggest that the MTQ has the interest of residents of Montreal. The MTQ concerns itself with only moving vehicles. Their job is to focus on the growth of the movement of cars and trucks. More cars are good. More trucks are good. More roads are good. You can see where we're going with this. The MTQ has a job to do, and they do it: build bigger and better roads. It's pretty simple really. Quebec's a big place, and we need good roads to safely travel through our beautiful province.

But the MTQ is a bit insensitive to the needs of anyone who isn't currently in a moving vehicle. We'll call them us, the people who live here. The residents.

Mayor Luc Fernandez seems to be standing up for us. Us? This is unusual behaviour in the type of government we have in Quebec. Read his comments about the MTQ on his blog (link). The CBC interviewed Mayor Fernandez on the morning show about this, it was hilarious.

(Luc seems to be a shit-disturber. Our favorite shit disturber is the nutritionist and food writer Dr. Marion Nestle.)