They Told You to Park at Place Versailles. Then They Ticketed You For It.

They Told You to Park at Place Versailles. Then They Ticketed You For It. SIIIOCULI | March 2026 This is not a story about a parking ticket anymore. It stopped being that the moment the location was confirmed. A worker parked his car at Place Versailles in Montreal’s east end before dawn. Took the Radisson metro. Went to work downtown. Came back at 4 in the afternoon to find a city parking ticket on his windshield. Reason given: ayant stationné dans un stationnement privé. Having parked in a private parking lot. The issuing authority: the Agence de mobilité durable. The City of Montreal. The location: Place Versailles. Next to Radisson metro station. The same Place Versailles that the Quebec government officially designated as the primary hub of its entire Lafontaine Tunnel traffic mitigation strategy. The same Radisson metro station that the Transport Ministry, the STM, the RTL, Exo, and every level of government involved in managing the tunnel crisis spent millions of dollars, years of press releases, and an entire transit infrastructure buildout directing drivers toward. The same spot. The exact same spot.

What the Government Actually Said This is not an interpretation. This is not reading between lines. This is documented government policy stated in official communications across multiple agencies over multiple years. The Quebec Transport Ministry implemented park-and-ride lots with buses bringing drivers directly to the Radisson Metro station in Montreal’s east end as official mitigation measures for the Lafontaine Tunnel closure. CBC News Shuttle buses linking the east ends of Montreal and the South Shore specifically stop at the Radisson Metro station, next to the Place Versailles mall. CBC News The Quebec government’s official mitigation page directed commuters to use the Radisson terminal — with free shuttle buses from the South Shore connecting directly to that location — and explicitly encouraged drivers to change their commuting habits and use public transit to ease traffic near the tunnel. Gouvernement du Québec The Ministère encouraged users to change their commuting habits and use public transit to ease traffic near the tunnel. Shuttles serving the South Shore park-and-ride lots and the Radisson terminal in Montréal were made free for three years specifically to incentivize this behavior. Gouv Three years of free buses. Government press conferences. Transport Ministry spokespeople on Radio-Canada telling 120,000 daily drivers to leave their cars and take transit to Radisson. Valérie Plante in talks with the Transport Minister about how to get more drivers out of their cars. The Chamber of Commerce president suggesting they ban solo drivers from the tunnel entirely to force the behavioral shift the government was begging for. The entire institutional weight of every level of government in Montreal pointed at one message, repeated for years, backed by millions in public spending: Park near Place Versailles. Take the Radisson metro. This is the plan. And then the Agence de mobilité durable sent an officer to Place Versailles and ticketed the people who did it.

The Geometry of the Betrayal Radisson station is directly adjacent to Place Versailles mall. It serves as the metropolitan bus terminus where shuttle lines from the South Shore, Laval, and surrounding regions converge — and was specifically expanded as part of the Lafontaine tunnel mitigation measures starting December 2021. Wikipedia This is not a driver who stumbled onto private property by accident. This is not someone who misread a sign or parked in a clearly restricted area. This is a person who did exactly what years of government messaging told him to do — park near the metro, take transit, reduce congestion, be part of the solution — at the exact location the government spent millions designating as the place to do it. He parked at 5 in the morning. An hour when the lot has hundreds of empty spaces. An hour when no business operating in that mall is open. An hour when the only logical reason anyone is in that parking lot is precisely the reason he was there: to leave a car and take public transit into the city. The ticket appeared between 8 and 10 in the morning. While he was already downtown. Working. Having done everything right.

Two Arms of the Same Government. Zero Communication Between Them. What this incident reveals is not just hypocrisy. Hypocrisy implies awareness — knowing the right thing and doing the wrong thing anyway. What happened here is worse than hypocrisy. It is institutional dissociation. The Quebec Transport Ministry spent years building transit infrastructure around Radisson and Place Versailles specifically to attract park-and-ride commuters. The City of Montreal’s mayor built a political career on sustainable mobility and getting drivers out of their cars. The Agence de mobilité durable — whose name literally means the agency of sustainable mobility — sent an enforcement officer to ticket a man for parking his car at the government’s own designated park-and-ride hub and taking the metro. These entities are not enemies. They are not separate governments. They operate in the same city, under the same provincial framework, theoretically in service of the same residents. And yet the enforcement apparatus had absolutely no communication with, no awareness of, and no regard for the transit policy that the same government had been publicly promoting at that exact location for years. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. And the person who paid for that gap in communication is the worker who came home at 4 in the afternoon to a fine on his windshield.

The Revenue Logic Exposed There is only one explanation for how this happens in a functioning institutional system: the enforcement apparatus is not designed around policy goals. It is designed around revenue targets. Two cameras near the Lafontaine Tunnel on Highway 25 issued 40,499 tickets in 2025, generating $13.57 million for the city. MTL Blog The tunnel disruption did not just create a transit crisis — it created a revenue opportunity. More drivers in more unusual places, more congestion, more desperate parking decisions, more enforcement actions, more fines. The same infrastructure failure that forced drivers to change their behavior also created the conditions for ticketing them for changing it. Place Versailles sits directly in that geography. A large, busy, highly visible commercial lot next to a major metro and bus terminal, packed every morning with cars belonging to people who drove partway and transited the rest. For an enforcement officer working a morning shift, it is an obvious target. Dozens of cars. No meters to check. No obvious paid parking to verify. Just vehicles sitting in a commercial lot that the city can classify as private and write a ticket against — knowing that most people will simply pay rather than navigate the contest process. The policy said: park here, take the metro. The enforcement system said: that will be $90 please. Both are products of the same city. Only one of them is honest about what it is.

What Every Commuter Near Radisson Needs to Know If you have been parking at Place Versailles or the surrounding commercial lots near Radisson station to take the metro — because the government told you to, because it was free, because it made sense, because you were trying to avoid adding to the tunnel congestion that has paralyzed the east end of this city for years — you need to know that this ticket exists. You need to know that the Agence de mobilité durable does not coordinate its enforcement activity with the Transport Ministry’s mitigation strategy. You need to know that parking in the exact location two levels of government directed you toward does not protect you from a municipal fine. You need to know that the implicit contract between the commuter and the city — do your part and the city will do its part — is not enforceable. It never was. If you receive this ticket, contest it within 30 days. Enter a not-guilty plea online or in person. The argument is straightforward and documented: the Quebec government itself designated this area as the primary transit hub for Lafontaine tunnel mitigation, spent public money building infrastructure to bring drivers here, and issued official communications directing commuters to park near Radisson and take the metro for years. Ville de Montréal Print those government communications. Bring them to court. Make the city explain how its enforcement officer ticketed someone at the government’s own designated park-and-ride location for parking at the government’s own designated park-and-ride location. Put that on the record.

The Sentence That Ends This The Quebec government built a transit hub at Place Versailles. Spent millions directing drivers to it. Called it sustainable mobility. Put the mayor’s face on the campaign. Made the buses free. Held press conferences about behavioral change and reducing congestion and building the green city of the future. Then sent an officer to ticket the man who believed them. If you want to understand in one story what is wrong with how Montreal and Quebec govern themselves — not the deficit numbers, not the cartel trains, not the credit downgrade, not the hockey joke — just this: A worker woke up at 5 in the morning and did exactly what his government asked him to do. And the same government fined him for it. That is not a parking ticket. That is a confession.

SIIIOCULI — Intelligence. Sovereignty. Awareness. siiioculi.lilxbrxaker.com