This is an expansion to my thoughts on Montreal, as threatened promised.
Very interesting culture on the streets, at least downtown. I think we were crossing boulevard René-Lévesque when, upon seeing a car turning right all but drive over the heels of crossing pedestrians, my friend described Montreal drivers as aggressive. And yet it’s not that. They’re certainly assertive, but the turning driver was never going to hit anyone, and you could see the pedestrians knew it. We do our thing and you’ll do yours.
The entire four and a half days in Montreal I’ve only heard a single honk. A cyclist attempted to run a red on an evening Ste-Catherine across, if I remember correctly, de la Montagne in their clubland. An SUV which had the green took exception to being forced to stop rather rapidly. It ended there. During the four days, I’ve seen pedestrians and drivers live together at countless right turns; I’ve seen drivers tolerate others doing a late left turn on yellow; I’ve seen intersections get blocked when traffic ahead doesn’t move as fast as the drivers think it will and the very pointless but very common honk never materialized. Because what would be the point?
I came back to Kitchener-Waterloo and within an hour I heard someone honk after a left turn on late yellow from King onto University. What was the point?
It’s a weird city. They have, in places, forbidden turns for the first few second of a green so that pedestrians can enter their crossing and establish a number superiority, but also countless intersections with no pedestrian signal at all. (Thankfully, very few with that supremely anti-pedestrian system which doesn’t activate the pedestrian crossing even on relevant green unless you’ve pressed the button). They have bike paths, separated from the rest of the road, with dedicated signals and even a proper bike left-turn system (on Street View, too) at Berri and Cherrier, and probably more I don’t know of, and also drivers that know what they deserve, when they deserve it, and aren’t shy to go and take it — no honking required. They have lights which go straight from yellow for one direction to green for the other, and seemingly manage not to have a million collisions.
They have jaywalkers. Oh, the jaywalkers. I’ve jaywalked before, and like to pretend that my experience from a couple of days each in Paris and Rome at ages 12 and 13 respectively give me an obligation to uphold a jaywalker’s image. Needless to say, I was delighted by downtown Montreal. Wikitravel describes it as risking life and limb
, but it’s really nothing but — it’s deliberate, not blind; assertive, not aggressive. Walking across the cross streets to Ste-Catherine is particularly fun; there’s just so many people around doing the exact same. As long as the nearest car visible won’t get to the intersection in the time it will take you to walk across, you walk. If there are no cars, you walk. If there are cars, you let them go. After a while, you stop looking at the lights downtown, because it doesn’t really matter except for the wide arteries, where the self-preservation instinct does kick in (cough, aforementioned boul. René-Lévesque). We do our thing and you’ll do yours.
Technically speaking, this is called normalization of deviance. Practically speaking, this is called nothing short of amazing.