A Saint Henri woman is hoping the city will do something about a neighbouring taxi garage that makes loud noise all day and night.
Donna Lewzey only has a fence between her home on Ropery St. and the lot where the electric taxis are kept. She told CJAD 800 that since Téo Taxi moved in on Saint-Patrick St. about two year ago, neighbours have been forced to deal with loud noise from their gas compressor and car wash.
"You can go out at 3 O'clock in the morning and you can step out on the back gallery and all you hear is this compressor and water blasting," she said. "You can't sit outside in the evening time and say 'ok now I'm going to have a nice little evening.'"
Téo Taxi's garage in Pointe-Saint-Charles holds half of their 200 cabs and sits right next door to the company's repair shop. The other half of its fleet runs out of a garage on Rachel St. in Hochelaga. Neither Téo Taxi nor its parent company Taxelco could be reached for comment.
Lewzey says there's also been complaints about noisy taxi drivers playing loud music at night or yelling and slamming car doors.
"It's either music, screaming, or compressors," she said. "I don't understand, they stand at one end of the lot, where the garage is, and scream to the guy at the other end of the lot."
She said it's only recently, after going to complain to the shop several times, that they've conceded to turning down the music—though there's still other problems. She said she often finds trash scattered throughout her neighbouring lot and said that some taxi drivers flick their cigarette butts onto her grass. She said one of her neighbours, who lives farther away on Saint Charles and Ropery St., gets woken up nearly every night by bright lights from the cabs.
Borough Councillor Alain Vaillancourt said he hadn't heard about the loud noise from the garage until very recently, though Lewzey told CJAD 800 she sent a noise complaint to the city in June of 2017.
"I never heard a word back," she said.
Vaillancourt said someone from the borough will go to meet with the company as soon as posible.
"We'll meet with the owners and we're going to see how the problem can be solved," Vaillancourt said. "Most companies don't want to cause problems in the neighbourhood—they want things to be fixed."