With the pandemic forcing many people to work from home, the official opposition at Montreal city hall wants the Plante administration to increase the number of free parking spots during this winter when snow removal crews are out.
Ensemble Montreal said that with as many as 40% of Montrealers working from home and many of them with cars, many of those vehicles will be parked on city streets and will have to be moved or even towed during snow removal operations. Last year alone, the city towed 39,000 cars during those operations.
"You know, when you work from home, you have more cars parked in the streets near the home and you know the winter is coming and it's going to be really tough for the city especially for the snow removal," said St. Laurent city councillor Aref Salem in an interview with CJAD 800.
Salem said the city should look at freeing up spaces at municipal parking lots and striking deals with private parking owners.
"We know that you have a lot of parking that belongs to the city near the city buildings like the sports centers, the librairies," said Salem.
Salem said they don't know how many parking spots that could be since there's no system in place that tallies them up but that in his borough alone, there's potentially 500 available spots.
"It's not going to be the whole solution but it's a big part of the solution when you think there's a few thousand spots available - it could help for sure," said Salem.
Salem said the number of free incentive parking spots offered during snow removal operations has even gone down over the past year - from 6788 spots last winter to 5442 this past winter, with the Ville-Marie and Rosemont-La Petite Patrie boroughs taking away the most spots.
The party's motion will be introduced at the city council meeting in two weeks.