Montreal Could Be First City To Let Street Artists Paint Bike Paths

In Montrealwe often make fun of city workers. Like why it takes 5 of them to plant a tree, or that they have no idea how to fill potholes properly. But this time, I think they're exaggerating a bit.

Yesterday, a story from CBC was circulating online about how the City of Montreal needed to call upon its most experienced workers to draw straight lines on bike paths.

You wouldn't thinkthat was necessary, until you see the handy work of the first crew.

If that wasn't bad enough, in many other areas the streets weren't even cleaned properly so the workers actually painted over the debris.

Now Montreal's Mayor is calling for the boroughs of Plateau, Ahuntsic and Rosemont–La Petite–Patrie to repaint the lines, but not until they retrain 90 blue collar workers to paint straight lines.

I assumethis technique involved giving them coloring books and only hiring those who don't go over the lines.

Now insteadof letting the screw-ups have another go at it, and before we waste any more time and money re-training them, I have a better idea.

Why not let the street artists of Montreal paint the paths? 

They already love painting, they would probably do it for free (minus the cost of materials), and we would have the prettiest bike paths in the world.

Some Montrealers are so fed up they started painting crosswalks themselves.

We're always talking about street art in Montreal, so why not turn the streets into actual art? It could be like the new MuralFest, but with a lot more places to paint, and every borough could have their own themes and colors.

Recently the city was talking about making manhole covers prettier, but lets face it: No matter how pretty the covers are, they're still just pretty lids for a shit-filled pipe. Why not beautify something more useful instead?

What do you think? Is this idea crazy, or am I on to something?