Proof that the east side of Montreal has way too many gas stations

   These two chunks of land are somewhat roughly the same size, measuring around two kilometers wide by six kilometers on the north/south scale. The area on the left spans the canal to the back river and Cavendish to Westminister. There are something like 30 gas stations sitting on that land, including many sensibly station along the service road of the Decarie Expressway.
   Now the area between Park and Pie IX has somewhere around 85 gas stations, many on smaller streets, many very close to each other.
   So while it might be more convenient to find a gas station on that side of town, it also mans that there's more ugly semi-industrial ugly blights sitting around.
   There's also the environmental factor. Back in the 70s gas stations posed a hazard, as lead would get into the atmosphere and poison people's brains. In fact that could be one of the reasons that the crime rate was so much higher back then: people used leaded gas and it damaged people's brains much in the same way that it led to the fall of the Roman Empire.
   There's no serious price competition between gas stations in the Montreal area, and so it must be asked whether all of those stations are really needed on the east side of town.
   Many gas stations have been removed from the city in recent years and replaced by housing, perhaps most dramatically at the corner of Desmarchais and Verdun where all four corners house a service-station related operation until about a decade ago, when they were all built into condos.