RUTA-Montreal

By Chelsey St-Pierre

Pierrefonds-Roxboro Mayor and spokesperson for the Official Opposition on snow removal, Jim Beis along with organizations defending the rights of people with reduced mobility held a press conference to challenge the Plante administration’s failure to respect universal accessibility standards during snow removal in Montreal.

Ex Aequo and the Group of Users of Adapted and Accessible Transport on the island of Montreal (RUTA-Montreal) say they want better conditions for Montrealers with reduced mobility.”I think the most important aspect about accessibility in the winter is making sure that snow and ice chunks are removed from the bottom of curbs, because the curbs often are cracked and when they have extra snow it becomes bumpy and people’s wheelchairs can flip over,” Natalie Cinman, told The Suburban.

Natalie says she saves her medical appointments as much as possible for the spring avoiding travel during the winter months. In 2020, the City of Montreal launched a universal accessibility project aimed to “improve its practices in universal accessibility” which was supposed to lead to the development of a 2024-2030 action plan by the spring of 2024.

“We requested at that time that the mayor look at and be committed to adding a clause to all contracts for snow removal that the areas that we are talking about today, be prioritized and taken care of,” A priority that has been overlooked according to Beis.

According to the 2021 census carried out by Statistics Canada, nearly 158,000 Montrealers have difficulty walking, using stairs, using hands or fingers or to perform other physical activities. n