Won’t a Lansdowne parking change add spaces?
Letter to the Editor of the Westmount Independent, published on 2021-2-16:
I received in the mail, from the City of Westmount’s Traffic Advisory Committee (TAC), a poll addressed to the residents of Lansdowne between de Maisonneuve and Sherbrooke, soliciting our opinions on a proposal to move on-street parking from the west side to the east. Ignoring evidence of carelessness in the preparation of this document (a sentence appears twice; staple in the upper right corner; badly distorted photo) I am concerned about the statement “…moving parking to the east side will result in the loss of two parking spaces”.
How was this calculated? And why does it differ so radically from the minutes of the TAC meeting of December 2020 noting that there would be an additional four spaces from the move?
In a letter to the editor (25 August 2020) I had suggested, in support of moving parking to the east side, that there would be a gain of parking spaces as there are far fewer driveways on that side. I could add that one or two spots lost on the west side because of a fire hydrant would also be recuperated.
In that letter, I opined that since the east sidewalk is used by seniors going between Contactivity and Manoir Westmount, as well as children and other users of the Westmount Recreation Centre, a row of parked cars on the east side of the street would protect these vulnerable pedestrians from vehicular traffic and from being splashed by rainwater or slush. The poll document fails to mention any of these considerations.
Should I conclude that this TAC poll was just carelessly put together (blame the epidemic and people working from home) or was it deliberately designed to discourage the change in parking?
Henry Olders
Lansdowne Avenue (between Sherbrooke and de Maisonneuve)
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