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Earth to anglos: This is Quebec. Bus drivers speak French BY NICHOLAS ROBINSON, THE GAZETTE JANUARY 7, 2014 I’m an expat American whose family transferred here (my father worked for ICAO) in 1976. In 1988, after having gone to college and graduated in California, I moved to Japan and spent five years there, teaching English. When I returned, my parents had relocated to California, but left their condo here unrented and unoccupied. Naturally, I chose to resettle here instead of California, and I’ve been here ever since. I spoke French before I came to Montreal, having learned it in francophone African countries, so I had no problems getting around Montreal. Except in my lengthy absence, Bill 101 had been passed, and many anglos were hightailing it out on the 401. It was strange coming back to a Montreal that had language issues; I’d never had the Eaton-fat-lady experience while I had been here in the 1970s and had never had any problems back then. And at first, actually, for over a decade, I resented the ridiculous sign law that made English two-thirds smaller than French on signs, plus all the “tongue-trooper” shenanigans over the years. But then my mind started changing, and today I’m pretty much the polar opposite to what I was in 1994. I now teach Japanese to individuals in Montreal, having enthusiastically learned it from scratch while in Japan. Most of my students are francophone, but we usually end up having the class with a mixture of all three languages. Now when I hear about people “not getting service” in English in such institutions as hospitals, or not being responded to in English by bus drivers, my stance is: tough luck. When I moved to Japan, I quickly discovered that almost nobody spoke English, and that in order to function, I would have to learn Japanese — and fast, which I did. And now I feel maybe Bill 101 should have gone farther and made all signs only in French. After all, we are living in a French-speaking province that just happens to be in the middle of a vast country called Canada. Any anglos who have been here for any length of time — over a year or so — should at least be able to carry out basic living functions in French and learn how to read signs in French. The wheedle-factor here is enormous. To my mind, the French speakers of Quebec have been incredibly tolerant of the anglophone “community,” and a vast swath of them have gone to the immense trouble of learning English — when they don’t have to at all. Yet they do, happily and willingly and without a single murmur of protest. Why then, can’t the so-called “anglophone community,” knowingly residing in a province that has every right in the world to make everything in French, not do a better job of learning French? Earth to anglos: this is Quebec. In Quebec most people speak French. Bus drivers have every right in the world to respond to you in French, even when you speak to them in English. And my suggestion to these besieged individuals is simply: learn how to speak French. There are literally hundreds of places where you can learn it absolutely free. Or take some of my classes and move to Japan, where there is a severe shortage of English teachers; I promise there are no French speakers there to hound you. Nicholas Robinson teaches Japanese in Montreal. © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette
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Traffic management: APPlied logic
un sujet a posté mtlurb dans Urbanisme, architecture et technologies urbaines
Traffic management APPlied logic Sep 13th 2011, 16:10 by The Economist online TRAFFIC lights are crucial tools for regulating traffic flow. They are not, however, perfect. Drivers exchange the gridlock that would happen at unmanaged junctions for a pattern of stop-go movement that can still be frustrating, and which burns more fuel than a smooth passage would. Creating such a smooth passage means adjusting a vehicle’s speed so that it always arrives at the lights when they are green. That is theoretically possible, but practically hard. Roadside signs wired to traffic lights can help get the message across a couple hundred metres from a junction, but such signs are expensive, and have not been widely deployed. Margaret Martonosi and Emmanouil Koukoumidis at Princeton University, and Li-Shiuan Peh at the Massachussets Institute of Technology, however, have an idea that could make the process cheaper and more effective. Instead of a hardwired network of signs, they propose to use mobile-phone apps. For a driver to benefit, he must load the team’s software, dubbed SignalGuru, into his phone and then mount it on a special bracket attached to the inside of his car’s windscreen, with the camera lens pointing forwards. SignalGuru is designed to detect traffic lights and track their status as red, amber or green. It broadcasts this information to other phones in the area that are fitted with the same software, and—if there are enough of them—the phones thus each know the status of most of the lights around town. Using this information, SignalGuru is able to calculate the traffic-light schedule for the region and suggest the speed at which a driver should travel in order to avoid running into red lights. Tests in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where five drivers were asked to follow the same route for three hours, and in Singapore, where eight drivers were asked to follow one of two routes for 30 minutes, revealed that SignalGuru was capable of predicting traffic-light activity with an accuracy of 98.2% and 96.3% respectively, in the two cities. This was particularly impressive because in Cambridge the lights shifted, roughly half-way through the test, from their off-peak schedule to their afternoon-traffic schedule, while in Singapore lights are adaptive, using detectors embedded under the road to determine how much traffic is around and thus when a signal should change. In neither case was SignalGuru fooled. Fuel consumption fell, too—by about 20%. SignalGuru thus reduces both frustration and fuel use, and makes commuting a slightly less horrible experience. -
(Courtesy of CJAD) Thing is, I never see any cops around when people fail to stop for pedestrians. I wonder how many points you will lose for failing to stop at a stop sign or red light or even turning right on red on the island. These new rules are good, but still not strict enough. Honestly, where is the rule about if you get caught over the legal limit of alcohol in your system, you lose your license for good. I guess the people in the government, like drinking and driving
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Anyone who's sat at a red light for minutes on end in the middle of the night when there's no cross traffic can cheer on science for proving what we already knew: lights that adapt to the flow of traffic, instead of dictating the flow of traffic, can improve the flow of traffic. A team of researchers discovered that if you let lights locally decide how to time their signals based on how much traffic they're dealing with, and then communicate that with nearby lights, you get closer to the "green wave" of lights that keeps thing moving smoothly. The issue with the centralized, top-down system of control is that it is geared to address an average traffic situation that rarely occurs as planned. The variations in rush hour traffic mean that lights are trying to apply one solution to a vast number of situations. In their trial in Dresden, Germany the team found that traffic congestion was eased by nine percent, pedestrian congestion by 36 percent, and bus and tram traffic by 56 percent. With rush hours spreading in time and distance, the proof and implementation of this can't come soon enough. Blog: http://www.autoblog.com/2010/09/23/study-traffic-lights-should-respond-to-cars-not-other-way-arou/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+weblogsinc/autoblog+(Autoblog) To tame traffic, go with the flow Lights should respond to cars, a study concludes, not the other way around By Rachel Ehrenberg Web edition : Friday, September 17th, 2010 Traffic lights that act locally can improve traffic globally, new research suggests. By minimizing congestion, the approach could save money, reduce emissions and perhaps even quash the road rage of frustrated drivers. The new approach makes traffic lights go with the flow, rather than enslaving drivers to the tyranny of timed signals. By measuring vehicle inflow and outflow through each intersection as it occurs and coordinating lights with only their nearest neighbors, a systemwide smoothness emerges, scientists report in a September Santa Fe Institute working paper. “It’s very interesting — the approach is adaptive and the system can react,” says mechanical engineer Gábor Orosz of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “That’s how it should be — that’s how we can get the most out of our current system.” An ultimate goal in traffic regulation is “the green wave,” the bam, bam, bam of greens that allows platoons of vehicles to move smoothly through intersection after intersection. When that happens, no drivers have to wait very long and sections of road don’t become so filled with cars that there’s no room for entering vehicles when the light does go green. To achieve this rare bliss, traffic lights usually are controlled from the top down, operating on an “optimal” cycle that maximizes the flow of traffic expected for particular times of day, such as rush hour. But even for a typical time on a typical day, there’s so much variability in the number of cars at each light and the direction each car takes leaving an intersection that roads can fill up. Combine this condition with overzealous drivers, and intersections easily become gridlocked. Equally frustrating is the opposite extreme, where a driver sits at a red light for minutes even though there’s no car in sight to take advantage of the intersecting green. “It is actually not optimal control, because that average situation never occurs,” says complex-systems scientist Dirk Helbing of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, a coauthor of the new study. “Because of the large variability in the number of cars behind each red light, it means that although we have an optimal scheme, it’s optimal for a situation that does not occur.” Helbing and his colleague Stefan Lämmer from the Dresden University of Technology in Germany decided to scrap the top-down approach and start at the bottom. They noted that when crowds of people are trying to move through a narrow space, such as through a door connecting two hallways, there’s a natural oscillation: A mass of people from one side will move through the door while the other people wait, then suddenly the flow switches direction. “It looks like maybe there’s a traffic light, but there’s not. It’s actually the buildup of pressure on the side where people have to wait that eventually turns the flow direction,” says Helbing. “We thought we could maybe apply the same principle to intersections, that is, the traffic flow controls the traffic light rather than the other way around.” Their arrangement puts two sensors at each intersection: One measures incoming flow and one measures outgoing flow. Lights are coordinated with every neighboring light, such that one light alerts the next, “Hey, heavy load coming through.” That short-term anticipation gives lights at the next intersection enough time to prepare for the incoming platoon of vehicles, says Helbing. The whole point is to avoid stopping an incoming platoon. “It works surprisingly well,” he says. Gaps between platoons are opportunities to serve flows in other directions, and this local coordination naturally spreads throughout the system. “It’s a paradoxical effect that occurs in complex systems,” says Helbing. “Surprisingly, delay processes can improve the system altogether. It is a slower-is-faster effect. You can increase the throughput — speed up the whole system — if you delay single processes within the system at the right time, for the right amount of time.” The researchers ran a simulation of their approach in the city center of Dresden. The area has 13 traffic light–controlled intersections, 68 pedestrian crossings, a train station that serves more than 13,000 passengers on an average day and seven bus and tram lines that cross the network every 10 minutes in opposite directions. The flexible self-control approach reduced time stuck waiting in traffic by 56 percent for trams and buses, 9 percent for cars and trucks, and 36 percent for pedestrians crossing intersections. Dresden is now close to implementing the new system, says Helbing, and Zurich is also considering the approach. Traffic jams aren’t just infuriating, they cost time and money, says Orosz. Estimates suggest that in one year, the U.S. driving population spends a cumulative 500,000 years in traffic at a cost of about $100 billion. And the roads are just going to get more congested. The optimal way of dealing with such congestion is to take an approach like Helbing’s and combine it with technologies that deal with driver behavior, Orosz says. Car sensors that detect the distance between your bumper and the car in front of you can prevent a sweep of brake-slamming that can tie up traffic, for example. “In general these algorithms improve traffic, but maybe not as much as they do on paper because we are still human,” he says. “It is still humans driving the cars.” http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/63481/title/To_tame_traffic,_go_with_the_flow -
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2010/07/new-york-cabbies-love-old-ford-crown-victoria-not-hybrids/1?csp=34 -
MONTREAL, June 22 /CNW Telbec/ - The head office of Astral Media Inc. (TSX: ACM.A/ACM.B) now boasts a new address at 1800 McGill College Avenue. Astral-one of Canada's largest media companies-also shares its name with this office building that has been part of Montréalers' lives since 1989 and now becomes Maison Astral. Over 400 of the 2,800 Astral employees will occupy many of the building's floors, including Corporate Department employees, as well as a large portion of its French-television team and Sales Department employees. "Our company was founded in Montréal nearly 50 years ago and we take great pride in helping to make our city one of the country's economic and cultural drivers. Today, we are delighted to occupy a choice location at the heart of Montréal's business and cultural district," declared Ian Greenberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Astral. Maison Astral is a 30-storey office building with a breathtaking view of the Mount Royal that overlooks Montréal's most strategic hub at the corner of McGill College Avenue and de Maisonneuve Boulevard. ----------------------------------------------- They have already installed their hideous new logo
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(Courtesy of © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette)
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About time. I really like those "test" street signs. They look great! I think I prefer the Green ones though. Green ones (from http://www.flickr.com/photos/montrealstreetsigns/460880559/)
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(Courtesy of CBC News) How about stronger sentences? You get caught you get a huge fine. Second time you get caught your car gets ceased and auctioned off and you lose your license for life. If you ended up killing someone, you die in prison! WELL WILL THIS DAMN PROVINCE AND COUNTRY DO THIS!
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Smart licences now available for border-hopping Quebecers
un sujet a posté ErickMontreal dans L'actualité
Smart licences now available for border-hopping Quebecers Last Updated: Monday, March 16, 2009 | 6:04 PM ET CBC News New driver's licence will be accepted instead of passport at land crossings. Quebec Premier Jean Charest showed off his "smart" driver's licence near the Canada-U.S. border on Monday as his province became the first in the country to issue the new border-friendly licences. Quebec Premier Jean Charest holds up his new, high-tech driver's licence near the Lacolle border crossing on Monday.Quebec Premier Jean Charest holds up his new, high-tech driver's licence near the Lacolle border crossing on Monday. (CBC) Quebecers who sign up for the enhanced licences will be able to use them instead of their passports at land and water crossings when the U.S. government brings in more strict security measures in June. "It doesn't solve all of the problems, but it goes a long way in making the lives of a number of our citizens simpler," said Charest at a news conference near the Lacolle border crossing south of Montreal. Charest said he wanted to set the example by becoming the first Quebecer to get the new licence, known as PC Plus. He said the licence will be especially handy for people who cross the border often. "Not everybody carries a passport with them everyday of their lives," said the premier. He also hopes the new licences, which are also being developed by states such as New York, will make it easier for Americans to travel to Quebec. "If there are five people, five kids and two parents, if they had to all pay for a passport it would be an expensive requirement for them to come here," said Charest. Charest aware of privacy concerns The new licence contains an electronic chip that when scanned gives border guards a special code. The guard can then punch the code into a computer to search a database for information about the cardholder. The information will include the same details contained on a passport such as address, birth date and name. Charest said the fact the card contains a code, instead of personal details, will help protect the privacy of individuals who sign up for the licence. The database will also be located on the Canadian side of the border. "[Privacy] is a serious issue. We believe we need to do what has to be done to protect the privacy of individuals," said Charest. The card will cost $40 on top of the standard government licence fees. It will be good for four years. A passport will still be required for air travel. Five Canadian provinces including British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario are already testing the technology or have licences in development. Saskatchewan has temporarily put its project on hold pending a review of potential privacy issues. -
Alex Wurz on Montreal Last updated: 3rd June 2008 F1 Drivers Championship 2008 Drivers Championship Raikkonen 10/11 - Lewis 13/8 - Massa 7/2 - Click Here for a full range of markets. Also see F1 forum Live coverage Bet now with Sky Bet Honda's test driver, who finished third in last year's Canadian Grand Prix, describes a lap of the 2.709-mile Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, venue for Sunday's race... "Montreal is a nice Grand Prix. It feels quite similar to Australia in that everyone likes going there and there is a great city nearby that offers good restaurants and a vibrant atmosphere. I made my F1 debut at this race in 1997, so I associate it with the moment when it all came together for me and I like going back to Canada as a result. "Coming straight after Monaco, the cars feel strange to drive in low-downforce trim. They are always sliding around and you have to get your head around the fact that you rarely find a good balance. Tyre graining is also a big issue. "You arrive at Turn 1 in sixth gear and it's one of those corners that invites you to brake too late. You want to use the left-hand kerb as much as possible and if you brake too late, the car becomes unstable and the kerb feels much worse than it actually is. "This corner leads straight into a first-gear right-hander, which is very slippery early on in the weekend but improves as more rubber goes down. "Turns 3 and 4 make up another chicane and as the track improves you can jump the chicanes and be very aggressive. You run very close to the right-hand barrier at the exit, before positioning the car on the left in preparation for the flat-out right-hander. "The next chicane is quite bumpy under braking, but you can still brake very late and use the kerb on the left. You have to be careful not to unsettle the car because you need to be flat through the right-hander, which is followed by a long straight. "Then you go under a bridge and you're into another chicane, which has only one turn-in point. It's very easy to miss the entry point here and every year we see drivers getting it wrong and going straight on. "Next comes the hairpin. It is second or third gear, depending on your gear ratios, and it's very important to have good traction at the exit because the longest straight on the lap follows. You're flat-out for 15 seconds, before stamping on the brakes for the final chicane. "You try to brake later and later into here, but you have to be careful because things can go wrong very quickly. A small mistake and you'll be in the 'wall of champions' before you know it. "The two best overtaking points on the lap are into the hairpin and the last chicane, but it's not so easy due to the marbles off-line, especially late in the race."
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Taken For A Ride In Montreal Warning: Loyal reader ripped off by taxi driver at Montreal Airport. by Wendy Perrin Frequent globehopper Joe_Kayaker reports that he was "taken for a ride" when he landed at Montreal International recently: "It was late in the evening, the shuttle bus to the Airport Novotel had stopped running at 10:00 p.m., and none of the taxis would take me on such a short trip. Grrr. I finally found a taxi driver who would take me. As we were driving to the hotel, he said he didn't understand why the Novotel was called an "airport hotel," since it's not really that close to the airport. We drove for quite a while, and the ride cost $30. When checking into the hotel, I asked how much a cab ride from the airport is supposed to cost and was told, 'No more than $15.' I overpaid by only 15 bucks (well, Loonies), but how does one avoid being taken in by unscrupulous taxi drivers? Thanks, Joe" Joe, you paid $15 in what I call "tourist tax." I've been taken on circuitous routes and overcharged by cab drivers in many a city -- Cairo, Beijing, Moscow, New York -- but I have to say I'm surprised to hear of this occurring in orderly and lawful Montreal. Here's my test-driven advice for avoiding unscrupulous airport cabbies: 1) Ask the hotel in advance how long a taxi ride it is from the airport and what the cost should be. The Hotel Novotel Montreal Aeroport's web site says it's "just 10 minutes" from the airport and provides a map of the route (see left). 2) Before getting into a cab, ask the driver how much the ride will cost. If he quotes a price higher than what the hotel told you, offer your price. Negotiate and reach an agreement before stepping into the cab. 3) When you arrive at your destination, if the driver demands a higher price than was agreed to, ask for a receipt with the driver's name on it, write down his ID number (make known to him that you're recording it), and take out your camera to snap a picture of him and the car. Often, as soon as you pull out the camera, the driver will drop the price. One more thought: If the hotel has a doorman or bellman, see if he can hold the cab while you notify the front desk that you're in the process of being ripped off. I've never done this myself, but I bring it up because a few weeks ago a hotel in Madrid happened to suggest just this. When I called the Tryp Atocha a few days before my arrival in Spain to confirm my online reservation and find out what the length and cost of a cab ride from the airport should be, the front-desk clerk volunteered that if the driver tried to overcharge I should tell the front desk and they would deal with him for me. I got the impression that they had done so for other guests in the past. Hope this helps, Joe. Always good to hear from you. http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs/perrinpost/2008/04/taken-for-a-rid.html?mbid=rss_cntperrin
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Driving in Montreal is an experience Posted By Marshall, Scott Updated 1 hour ago Driving in different places can be difficult to many people. The fear of not knowing where you're going can be very overwhelming. Roads you've never seen before and higher than normal traffic can lead to high anxiety. I was recently in Montreal and if you've ever driven there you'll already know it's an experience of a lifetime. The cab ride from the airport to my hotel was interesting to start with. The driver didn't use his turn signals. Most people will use them at least most of the time. It lets other road users know your intentions. In Montreal, it lets other drivers know what your plans are early enough so they can speed up and block your move. If you're in Montreal you don't signal. That way nobody knows your moves. We all know that fuel prices are higher than we would all like, so the drivers in Montreal decided to work together to save fuel. They follow each other very closely so they can cut down on wind resistance. Race car drivers call this 'drafting'. The cab driver was driving close enough to the traffic in front of them that it looked like they were being towed by the driver in front. I thought it was very nice of the lead driver, or drivers, to avoid suddenly stopping. That was nice of them, don't you think? Most drivers would understand they need to have some response time from the driver in front if they stop suddenly. Wouldn't you? You should leave more of a following distance if the driver ahead of you is unsure of where they are going so they'll have enough room to turn around as necessary. As a side note, following further back also give you more to stop if the lead driver stops suddenly. We should all know that, right? Now, I enjoy playing and watching sports like a lot of people do. I like the competitiveness of sports. Being a pedestrian in Montreal seems like it's a sport to many of the drivers in Montreal, though. When the cab driver was driving along the road and was about to enter an intersection, a pedestrian stepped off the curb right in front of us. There was no horn honking and only a slight swerve was done to avoid hitting them. Maybe you need to drive as close as possible to a pedestrian when you're driving there? I didn't see the rules for this one, so maybe I'm wrong. I may have exaggerated my thoughts here, but every event did actually happen. The bottom line here is no matter where you drive, keep space around your vehicle and communicate to other road users. Plan your route so you know where your turns are and get into the proper lane well in advance. If you do all of this, you'll be safe driving - even while in Montreal! Scott Marshall is the director of training for Young Drivers of Canada. He has spent almost 20 years in driver training. For questions or comments regarding this column e-mail Scott directly at smarshall@youngdrivers.com http://www.wellandtribune.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=920904
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(Courtesy of The Canadian Press) It be nice. People would not have too drive to Tremblant for a track.
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Here are some pics I took during the weekend. The safety and medical cars Lewis Hamilton's mclaren A walk in the Paddock Before the drivers parade Ooooh say can you see... Sorry no racing for you today Pitstop time The Podium
