The City of Montreal will install ashtrays outside most of the city's metro stations in an effort to reduce littering.

About 180 of the metal ashtrays, worth $125 apiece, will be placed outside 60 stations across the island. 

"We don't have any way of enforcing it," said Claude Trudel, president of the Montreal Transit Corp. "I'm appealing to that sense of civisme of the population. It's a little gesture but everyone must do the gesture."

The city will dispatch 75 inspectors who will have the authority to issue littering fines.

The city also wants police to monitor littering, because it's a question of safety, said Marcel Tremblay, the Montreal executive committee member in charge of cleanliness.

"You walk on the street, you have your coffee [cup], there's the garbage there, and you throw it down on the [sidewalk]. The police should be there … they should give them a ticket, I'm sure of that," he said.

The Montreal Police Brotherhood isn't jumping at the suggestion.

"I'm not sure our citizens would be happy seeing police officer giving tickets for garbage problems," said union president Yves Francoeur.

"We have a lot more important things to do — we have street gang problems. It's at the end of the list because it's not a public security problem."

The city's ashtray announcement comes two weeks after the director of Tourism Montreal, Charles Lapointe, complained to the Chamber of Commerce about the city's dirty streets.