It’s tough to get around

The Gazette’s Letter section is constantly full of letters from people complaining about road conditions and bridges in disrepair, making them late coming into Montreal from the South Shore and other suburbs for work — and then the long delay to get back to their homes!

I agree the roads are in terrible shape and the orange cones are a pain in the neck, but I don’t feel the least bit of sympathy for the suburbanites. They fled the city for greener pastures, leaving the rest of us holding the bag, with no voting base, tax base or much of any other base to attempt change — much like those who jumped ship back in 1976 when the PQ took over.

So now they complain that it takes forever to get into Montreal, to get paid, and run back to the suburbs with their gas guzzlers? I’m sure there are some bleeding hearts around who will sympathize with them, but I ain’t one of them. I can’t wait for the toll bridges and highways. Fred K. Lee

Montreal

With all this fuss about the heat-wave and leaving infants in cars, I feel the need to raise a similar and serious issue we have in this city.

Thursday, while riding Montreal’s city bus, an older woman near me almost passed out due to the extremely high temperature levels. I myself exited the bus earlier than my destination for the same reasons. Riding in those metal vehicles is dangerous without proper air conditioning.

I know this is a winter city, but nevertheless, something needs to be done.

Don’t even get me started about the métro system.

I hope this message will be heard before there is, God forbid, a victim of heat stroke. If I wanted to go into a sauna, I’d go to my local gym. Michael Stein

Montreal

With gas prices hitting $1.49 a litre here in Montreal — and, coincidentally, just in time for the construction holidays — I rely more and more on my gas-sipping motorcycle for transportation.

But the city of Montreal and the government of Quebec are determined to make even that an exercise in futility!

We are incarcerated on the island of Montreal, and the expression “You can’t get there from here” is proving a reality and should be the new motto on Quebec licence plates, replacing Je Me Souviens!

I see the frustration on motorists’ faces while they sit idling, going nowhere, all the while burning precious and expensive fuel. The government, on the other hand, is grateful for all the wasted gasoline due to the taxes collected.

You would think that, after all that has been exposed during the Charbonneau commission and the neglect of our roads year after year, they would see the value in reducing the taxes they imposed? Talk about having your cake and eating it too! Glen K. Malfara

Beaconsfield

In these times, when we are talking about improving fuel efficiency, why does the city of Westmount have traffic lights along Sherbrooke and Ste-Catherine Sts. that are not synchronized?

The city seems to have the lights timed in such a way to slow drivers down, however, all the stop and go creates more noise and wastes fuel.

This ridiculous practice needs to stop. Jonathan Jones

Westmount

Let’s face it, our provincial government has little reason to object to the $149.4-per-litre price for regular gasoline being sold at most gas stations on Thursday night. Only a small fraction less than 10 per cent of that is our provincial sales tax, while a full 19.2 cents per litre, is for our provincial excise tax.

Several years ago, our provincial government passed a law to weekly establish the minimum price at which gas could be sold in our province. Its rationale was to protect most small gas stations from some large retailers who could lower their prices, thus making the former unable to compete with those low prices.

We now need the provincial government to enact a law to protect individual motorists from large gasoline conglomerates which abuse their monopolies to, coincidentally of course, all raise their prices, at the same time, to the same price.

But, with our province fixated on its zero deficit budget objective, it is not an impartial party to the cha-ching sound of gasoline station sound registers as Quebecers add needed fuel to their cars. Robert Marcogliese

Montreal