It is time to put an end to The Tour de l'Île de Montréal and its sister event the Tour de Nuit. For one reason or another, I was able to stay put in the West End while this "Tour of Inconvenience" took place in recent years. Today, I had no choice but to deal with it.
Saturday I went on the Vélo Québec website to try an navigate my routes respectively. It did not help very much.
The day began at 8:30 a.m. when I had to drop someone off in LaSalle. It was smooth sailing. Since I had to go to the new super hospital for the first time on Monday, I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to check out the parking situation there. St. Jacques Street near Girouard is already blocked until 2017 as part of The Turcot Yards reconstruction, so I drove along Upper Lachine Road. As I reached Girouard, a police officer waved the endless of vehicles like mine away. That entry was blocked in favor of the cyclists, so I sat in traffic for 15 minutes. What if there was an emergency and I had to get to the hospital quickly? Nope, it seems a recreational cycling event which does not raise one penny for charity takes precedence.
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| What a mess!! |
I gave up on going to the hospital and headed home. A few hours later I had to return to LaSalle. On St, Jacques Steet cars were lined up for almost a mile to get through the Turcot Yards. I slowly made my way through this mess and into LaSalle, but as I crossed the Angrignon bridge I saw an endless array of frustrated drivers not moving. You see the main boulevard of St. Patrick was shut off to traffic for the holier than thou cyclists, forcing all traffic to Angrignon. Furthermore, we could not travel back via Ville St. Pierre on Dollard Avenue because of the St. Patrick bottleneck. This is an instance where a GPS really does not help a lot. I used my own smarts and drove towards Boulevard De La Vérendrye, crossed through Ville Émard and got on to Highway 20, which helped me avoid the traffic.
There are other places I had to go on this day, but I got tired of being a hostage on my own city.
Sorry folks, I know there are thousands of cyclists who love this event. But it is really not fair to inconvenience the larger proportion of the population who have nothing to do with it! How much money is spent on the huge police presence? How many tickets are not handed out because the cops are on cyclist patrol duty? I saw people running red lights like there is no tomorrow. How many businesses are negatively impacted? The Carrefour Angrignon parking lot did not look as crowded as usual.
Known as well as the "Go Bike Montréal Festival," the event has some heavy duty sponsors: Les Producteurs de lait du Québec, the Jean Coutu Group, Gaz Métro, Desjardins
Group, MEC, Provigo, TELUS and the Société de transport de Montréal
(STM). What if they all pulled out unless the organizers added a charitable slant?
It is time to move this event to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve where they won't get in the way of anyone and perhaps allow money to be raised for something worthwhile. I have had it!
See my Facebook page. It seems that a lot of people agree.
See my Facebook page. It seems that a lot of people agree.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
This famous cycling event offers no fewer than five route options. For a recreational o
