Why the debate about parking spaces vs. bike lanes is so heated in Park Ex

A borough council meeting in Montreal's Parc-Extension neighbourhood Tuesday evening got so rowdy police were called for the second time this summer since the mayor announced the borough would remove 250 parking spaces to revamp two bike lanes on Querbes Avenue. 

The debate about the bike paths has been simmering since the Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc-Extension held an information session about the upcoming roadwork in June — and has become a flash point in the small but densely populated community where people often report feeling unheard by officials representing them. 

Amid the late-summer heat Tuesday evening, it appeared to reach a boil once again. 

The heckling started when Zubeda Khan, a 34-year-old mother of four, asked what she and her husband would have to do with their two vehicles, a small car and a van, once the parking spaces would be lost. 

Khan has lived on Querbes in Parc-Extension (often called Park Ex) with her husband and four children, aged three, six, nine and 14, since 1999 during the family's early years in Canada.

When Khan heard she could ask a question at council, she signed up to do so for the first time and brought her husband and three-year-old along. The borough mayor, Laurence Lavigne Lalonde, suggested Khan go first since she had a young child who would need to go to bed shortly. 

Khan's question launched a series of shouts in her favour that prompted Lavigne Lalonde to request that some attendees be escorted out.

Stella Bailakis, a longtime resident who works for several community organizations and seems to know everyone in the area, was among those asked to leave after she compared the mayor to Maurice Duplessis, a Quebec premier in the 1940s and 1950s known for his authoritarian streak. 

"When you're doing a project like the bike lane, have a compromise in mind," Bailakis said in an interview outside. "Why do the old people, kids, families get booted out [of the conversation] just to please one people: the bike people?" 

Similar arguments have been made on the other side. But while there have been debates over parking and bike lanes in several other boroughs across the city, Park Ex residents say their gripes go beyond parking and are also about feeling underrepresented in a borough that encompasses three vastly different neighbourhoods in an era of rapid change. 

"As soon as we cross the tracks to Villeray," Bailakis said, "everything's pretty; there are flower boxes everywhere … everything's taken care of." Garbage has been another big issue in Park Ex in recent years, she added. 

Bike lanes take up 2 per cent

In response to another resident's parking concerns at the council meeting, Lavigne Lalonde said 50 per cent of Park Ex's population doesn't use a car and that bike lanes occupy only two per cent of the borough's roadways; three per cent is for public transit and 20 per cent is for pedestrians. 

"The rest is for cars. So, when people come and tell me we're putting [bike lanes] everywhere — I'm sorry, but at the moment it's two per cent," the borough mayor replied. According to one environmental advocacy group, parking takes up 29.8 per cent of the space in Park Ex. 

There are currently two bike lanes on either side of Querbes Avenue separated from parked and rolling cars only by faded painted lines on the pavement. Work to revamp them is expected to last from mid- to late-September and will move the lanes next to the sidewalks and create a physical barrier between them and cars.

The added barriers mean the city must remove a lane of parking on the eastern side of Querbes from Ogilvy Avenue to Crémazie Boulevard, as well as on a part of Ball Avenue, Lavigne Lalonde said in an interview with CBC Wednesday.

The mayor says it's her responsibility to make sure people commuting without cars can get around safely and that Park Ex lacks safe cycling infrastructure. Home-care workers will be given parking stickers that will grant them priority to park on the street. 

But residents like Khan say they feel pushed aside. 

When Khan asked her question, Lavigne Lalonde replied that her administration had made the decision to revamp the bike lanes and remove parking spots, knowing it would affect people's lives.

Khan felt she was being told to change her lifestyle, which involves a constant series of appointments and errands to keep the family of six afloat. Her husband has a one-hour commute to the South Shore every day to the fertilizer manufacturing company he works for. 

Wednesday afternoon, Khan had just returned from a doctor's appointment on foot with her three-year-old's stroller packed with groceries when she was met by two CBC reporters outside her house. 

"I felt like I had no voice. I felt like I just wasted two hours of my time without being heard," she said of the meeting. 

Lavigne Lalonde said she didn't have a chance to fully respond, given the shouting.

'Who is going to help her?'

A few doors down, Matilda Ramacieri's reserved disability parking space will be moved around the block to D'Anvers Avenue as a result of the bike lane changes. 

Ramacieri, 66, has been off work as a crossing guard in the neighbourhood for three years following three major operations to her hip, shoulder and knee. She struggles to walk more than 15 metres, she said. 

"What am I supposed to do in the winter? It's going to be difficult," said Ramacieri, who was born in the building she now owns. Her parents first rented it when they moved to Canada from Italy. 

Her 24-year-old son, Marco Paredes-Ramacieri, went to borough council Tuesday evening but was turned away because of overcrowding. 

"If I'm not there to remove the snow from her car and she falls in the street or something, who is going to help her?" he said. 

Paredes-Ramacieri was among a couple dozen people outside the borough office on Ogilvy Avenue late Tuesday night. Seven police cars were parked on the street, though Montreal police said they made no arrests and were there simply to make sure things remained calm.

Benefits outweigh costs: advocate

Blaise Rémillard, who oversees transportation and urbanization initiatives for the environmental advocacy organization CRE-Montreal, said he understands why the loss of parking spaces in Park Ex is a sensitive topic. 

"I think there's a cumulative effect in neighbourhoods with more marginalized populations," Rémillard said. With time, though, he believes people will adapt. 

"We'll notice less noise on the street, that children can pedal to get to school or the library. People will see the benefits," he said.

Competing petitions have each been signed by more than 800 people. Rachel Shugart, a mother who started the one in favour of the bike lanes, told CBC in July that bike lanes in Park Ex were unsafe and disconnected from neighbouring communities.

Connie Buccheri, who launched the petition against the revamped lanes, doesn't own a car, but said she wanted to act as a voice for her neighbours. 

She, too, was at the meeting Tuesday. And though she was disappointed by the sense that the borough mayor and councillors didn't understand their constituents' discontent, she saw a silver lining: citizen involvement. For several people, it was their first time attending a borough or municipal council meeting.

"I felt terrible, but happy at the same time that a lot of people did show up to try and voice their opinions, and I think that was heard and seen," Buccheri said.