In a city where the car is king, a civic leader has come up with a plan that is nothing short of revolutionary: making Montreal motorists actually stop for pedestrians at crosswalks.
Pedestrians in Montreal have long accepted it as a fact of urban life -- step into a crosswalk elsewhere in Canada and even the meanest-looking SUV politely stops. Try it in Montreal, and you risk losing a foot, or worse.
But now efforts are under way to change the culture that makes pedestrians the lowest creature in the food chain. Jeremy Searle, head of the transport commission in the new Montreal megacity, says Montreal motorists' surly road manners are an "urban myth" -- and he can make them drive as politely as other Canadians.
The 49-year-old city councillor is launching his re-education plan with the crosswalk. He has announced he will make them safe for pedestrians within two years, starting with better signs to alert motorists, and more police enforcement.
It's a bold prediction in a city where the striped markings are treated as decorative.
"We don't have to be the only backwater in the Western world that can't make a crosswalk work," he said yesterday. "I'm confident we can do it."
Mr. Searle's campaign begins with consultations in April. He is coming armed with his own studies, which he acknowledges are unscientific. He has observed a dozen crosswalks across Montreal for one hour each, and found that only 5 per cent of motorists gave way to pedestrians.
"People are living daily in fear about crossing the road. The crosswalks are invisible," Mr. Searle said.
"We are going to change 5 per cent [compliance]to 95 per cent within two years by hook or by crook, if we have to drag motorists screaming from their cars," he said.
He faces a major task. Montreal is a city with a well-earned reputation as a battle zone between cars and pedestrians. Drivers view yellow lights as a cue to speed up. Stop signs are considered optional.
When the province announced that it would allow right turns on red lights throughout Quebec beginning in August, it exempted Montreal. "Maybe it will never apply to Montreal," Transport Minister Serge Ménard said this month.
Paradoxically, however, the lack of respect for pedestrian crosswalks has not resulted in higher rates of serious injury, according to Mr. Searle. Because pedestrians don't expect cars to yield for them, they don't have a false sense of security.
"They're not getting hit," he said. "They've learned to cope."
Fatal injuries to pedestrians in Montreal have fallen 21 per cent and serious injuries 16 per cent in five years; minor injuries have increased 7 per cent, according to the Quebec Automobile Insurance Board.
Yvon Lapointe, an official with the Quebec branch of the Canadian Automobile Association, said yesterday he welcomes plans to make motorists more mindful of crosswalks. "It's just a question of our culture. We haven't respected a pedestrian crosswalk in 50 years," he said.
The key difference between Quebec and other provinces, he said, is lack of enforcement.
Police in Montreal have come under fire for failing to crack down on motorists. The Gazette of Montreal published figures recently showing that between 1990 and 2000, the number of tickets issued to drivers in Montreal for ignoring stop signs fell by 42 per cent. Tickets for driving through red lights declined 56 per cent.