The CAQ is changing how management of the Olympic park works to make it more responsive to business proposals. Part of this plan involves putting a new retractable roof on the thing in time for the World Cup matches that may be contested here in 2026. It’s a laugh to read the Gazette’s deck “Much-maligned stadium is getting a new lease on life” because they’ve led the loudest malignity against the structure for years.
Updates from May, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The CAQ now seems to be considering an extension of the orange line from Côte‑Vertu to Bois‑Franc, to link the metro to the REM in an effort to mitigate the motor traffic expected around Royalmount.
It’s sort of amazing to watch a trash fire like Royalmount happening. Everyone knows it will damage the city and cause chronic traffic bottlenecks, but it seems we can no more stop its progress than a natural disaster like a tornado.
In other REM news this morning, residents in TMR are heartily sick of construction noise but it gets worse: a chunk of Jean-Talon where it goes over the tracks at Canora is going to be demolished and rebuilt in stages throughout next year.
Tim S.
I’m actually surprised the outrage is coming from Montreal and not the West Island and Laval, because it’s the car commuters who live there who will be most affected (and who already have access to similar malls anyways).
Myles
Seeing as cities apparently don’t have to consider negative impacts on other cities, Montreal should just threaten to close every road into TMR if they don’t drop the Royalmount project.
JaneyB
@Myles – agreed. Obviously juvenile but it does get the point across. I just don’t get all the handwringing. Montreal has the power to make TMR change its mind. Seriously, Mtl should be thinking: ‘What would Westmount do?’ Montreal could and should really make life difficult for TMR in return for the certain Royalmount madness.
Chris
There’s various precedent too, like Montreal West blocking access to Ville St. Pierre.
Kevin
There really aren’t that many roads from Montreal into TMR. You’ve got Jean Talon and Laird (near Jean Talon and Cote de Neiges).
Almost every other access point is controlled by the provincial government.Kevin
*I suppose Lucerne too, but only the south end.
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Kate
It’s been such a chilly damp spring that it’s almost a surprise to find May is nearly over and the Tour de l’Île is this weekend.
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Kate
The city has a new plan for calming traffic on the Camillien-Houde: concrete barriers to deter U-turners (a bad U-turn having sparked this whole process), bollards and flower boxes, and traffic lights at the top.
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Kate
The new bridge has lighting effects built in, and some drivers had a preview of the effects Tuesday night.
SteveQ
Oh, I didn’t expect that. Seems like a nice lighting effect. This will make it even more beautiful.
Kevin
Ten years from now we’ll be condemning this, the Jacques Carter, and Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites as light pollution.
Blork
Nice! Probably not a light pollution problem because the lights don’t appear to be pointing up, and they are most likely LED and can be toned down easily.
While I’m not a fan of LED being used for street lighting, it has great potential for things like this, where it illuminates beautiful objects and landmarks without using much electricity. You see this on highway 132 in Longueuil, where the new passerelle that opened last year (the replacement for the one that was knocked down by a dump truck a few years ago) is nicely lit at night. In that particular case I think the lights are a bit too bright. It’s mostly indirect, but when you’re very close to it you get a brief blast of direct lighting. If the LEDs were half as bright it would have worked just as well without providing those harsh blasts if you look at it a certain way from a certain spot.
Faiz Imam
These are nice, but I’m really interested in what the lighting situation for the cable stay towers will be. That’s the most striking part of the bridge and needs to be lit correctly to look its best. A lot of different ways they could do it.
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Kate
People in the West Island want to start a class-action suit against the airport for noise. Global says they’re asking for “financial settlement due to damages caused by aircraft noise pollution.”
In another story, CBC uses the word “damages” correctly in the headline, but drops the ball in the lede: “a pothole so big it caused more than $1,200 in damages to Eric Choueke’s car.”
Damage is what happens to things. It’s an uncountable noun. Journalists like to sound clever by saying “damages” happened to things, but they don’t. Damages is a legal term defining what one person or entity is ordered to pay another as restitution for damage established to have been done.
Ephraim
It’s doubtful that they would win a class-action against the airport. Firstly, because the airport was there before the houses were. And two, because the airport keeps track of the noise and noise corridors and airplanes are getting quieter and quieter all the time.
Blork
Hmm. I’m not so sure. The airport has expanded significantly, so that might count for something.
Regarding planes getting quieter, that’s also not much of a solution, as they’ve basically gone from OMG THIS IS SO LOUD MY HEAD IS GOING TO EXPLODE to OMG THIS IS SO LOUD. A bit like when the kid across the street is blasting his music at 11 and then he turns it down to 9; still too loud.
I live right under the flight path, but in Longueuil, so it’s the downwind leg and a good 30km from touchdown, and the planes are at least 1000 metres up when they fly over (usually more). It’s not loud enough to be disturbing, but it makes me wonder what it’s like when the plane is right over your house at 100 or 200 metres. And that’s landing when the engines are basically at idle. Taking off is a whole other thing; sometimes when a plane from PET flies over my house on takeoff it’s loud enough that I have to raise my voice a bit if I’m talking. That’s in Longueuil. WTF is it like in Dorval or Pointe-Claire?
qatzelok
There’s also the problem that the suburban form does almost nothing to mitigate noise. Lawnmowers, traffic and other ambiant noises are also audible from most bungalows. City blocks can be designed to create sound barriers, whereas empty lawns and houses scattered at odd angles to one another do nothing for urban noise.
The easiest thing to do would be to demolish the parts of the West Island that are noise sewers for the airport.
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Kate
TVA has a very brief item on an orange line stoppage Tuesday evening. Odd thing, I was coming home at that time, the train stopped at Sherbrooke and an official announcement said it would be there for an hour (the 22:10 mentioned in the item). Some people sighed and left the train, but then the driver came on and said more or less “hang in there, we’ll be under way in a minute” and we were. So I don’t know what was up there.
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Kate
I find it odd that the CBC is reporting on two sailors stranded on a ship in Quebec City without mentioning that this is not the first time it’s happened in a port on the St. Lawrence. The mayor of Sorel put up a fundraising page to help a group of stranded Turkish sailors get home in 2014.
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Kate
Michel Cadotte has been sentenced to two years for having administered the coup de grâce to his wife.
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Kate
It’s bad for surrounding businesses and for the neighbourhood as a whole when storefronts are left vacant for years, but some landlords let this happen and there’s no deterrent. Eater looks into the phenomenon in the Mile End.
walkerp
I thought that there is some significant tax incentive for the landlords who keep commercial space empty but I have never actually known if that was true. Can anybody confirm?
mare
They probably eventually want to sell to a chain like Starbucks etc, and with the current real estate market in Mile End, renting it out is just a nuisance compared with the yearly value increase of the land and the building. Also an empty space is worth (much) more, since the new owner doesn’t have to wait until they can move in and doesn’t have to evict the current tenant with possible legal and PR troubles that could backfire.
Ephraim
Anyone know if the city rebates the property tax for unoccupied commercial space? Maybe the city should have a maximum rebate period, for example, up to 6 months in a 10 year period? And maybe after a period there should be an unoccupied space tax or a requirement to allow it to be used for community service at no charge while unoccupied (with a condition to empty the space within 30 days if rented. Sort of community service squatters.
Tim
I would love to know what happened to the Starbucks on Van Horne opposite the Outremont metro. One night it was there, the next morning it was gone. The place was always jammed, so it couldn’t have been lack of customers. It was only there for about a year. My best guess: the landlord jacked the rent and the multi-nationally backed chain balked.
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Kate
Carbonleo has submitted revised plans for Royalmount but Mayor Plante is holding out for more, saying it would still have more negative effects than positive ones.
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Kate
After years of encouraging people to engrave a number on their bike frames, which has done little to stop the pervasive bike theft in this town, police may be moving to a new system called Projet 529, which has reduced thefts in other cities, notably Vancouver where it began.
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Kate
A story here claims that severely autistic kids who have a crisis are shut into closets to calm them down, at one CSDM school. It may be true. But this story may be being told in this way at this time to leverage more school space out of other school boards.
It was the CSDM, or its previous incarnation as the Catholic school commission, that disposed of so many school buildings toward the end of the last century. Turned into condos, sold off for office space, or simply demolished after decades of neglect made them uninhabitable, I can think of several school buildings I know of that are no longer usable for the original purpose. Very short-sighted then – and now this.
EmilyG
It’s terrible the way autistic kids are treated sometimes.
Autistic adults who are considered more “high-functioning,” like me, can still find some aspects of daily life a challenge. What these kids are going through is much worse.
Kevin
Meanwhile the CSDM got $20 million today to build a water park at Henri Bourassa school.
walkerp
Was the CSDM the only people who didn’t know there was a baby boom in Quebec?
Kate
There’s a baby boom now, walkerp, but in the 1980s people were leaving Montreal and the birthrate was down. My guess is they had some demographic studies that supported shedding some buildings that were under-used at the time.
Mark Côté
The EMSB student population has also rebounded unexpectedly. Just a few short years ago there was talk of closing a couple in the West End. Now, largely due to temporary workers, they are adding mobile classrooms and rearranging schools to accommodate the influx.
Tim S.
Mark: do you have a source on the temporary workers? ‘I’m curious as it may explain some things, but most of the families I see in the area seem to be local.
Mark Côté
I heard it either from a school governing board chair or the commissioner. I think it was something like 30% of students at Westmount High School were children of temporary workers, with some similar figures at other schools in NDG.
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Kate
Good critical Jonathan Montpetit piece on CAQ denial of a link between racism and Bill 21. Here’s also the Concordia University statement on the bill.
Update: Toula Drimonis also dissects the CAQ’s obstinacy on Cultmtl.
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Kate
Mayor Plante announced the Réseau express vélo Monday – eventually to be a total of 184 km of separate bike lanes on major streets. Only 26 km will be built within the next two years. QMI immediately threw cold water on the plan with a headline saying some merchants expect to lose clientele.
Faiz Imam
A lot of pretty huge changes planned here. I’m excited to see it done.
The biggest one has to be St Denis going from 2 lanes each way to 1 lane each way.
Seems like they are taking the pragmatic path and going with simple concrete blocks to start, and more permanent construction over the years as convenient.
Great, the evidence is clear: painted lanes are much less effective at protecting riders, and even the simplest physical barrier does a dramatically better job.
26km does not seem like a lot, but these are the key 26km that have been among the more politically radioactive and difficult, as well as being the needed backbone of the system.
Awesome.
walkerp
Will it be a bike lane on each side or a two-way bike lane on one side?
Blork
Great news for cyclists! But I doubt it will take much pressure off the Orange line, as Plante asserts. Certainly not on rainy days or in winter. But that shouldn’t distract from an otherwise good idea. (I just hate it when people set themselves up to be easily disputed.)
Faiz Imam, where did you read that they will use concrete blocks? I’d like more details on that; sounds like it could be dangerous if not done right.
Kate
Blork, I didn’t comment here because I’d already responded to one journalist’s tweet: “Nice, but… winter. Sardine class is worst on orange line in winter months. Majority of folks are not going to adopt winter cycling. Some can’t – age, disability – many won’t.”
jeather
I’m sure they could have shared a less useful map for this. It would have been work but I think they could have done it.
Alex L
Good, good news!
Kevin
@walkerp
All the sketches show two lanes for cycling on one side of the street.Faiz Imam
Blork. I got it from Bartek. He works for Velo quebec and is one of the best people to follow on Twitter on the issues of mobility in Montreal, and in General.
Specifically this:
https://twitter.com/CyclistBartek/status/1133115094597087233
Looks like hes just summarizing the report, so it should all be in there.
Alex
Two lanes for cycling on one side of the road is a real shame and doesn’t seem well thought out, if you look at the panic on drivers faces before they turn into the path of a cyclist in their blind spot on de Maisonneuve and Rachel, drivers having to pay attention to cyclists coming in both directions before turning as well as oncoming traffic is not going to make for a fun time for anyone on that road
Kate
Alex, Marianne Giguère from city council is on CBC radio this noontime making exactly your point – the difficulty of streaming 2-way bike traffic across intersections.
Faiz Imam
Alex, Kate. According to the tweet I linked to above, the St Denis plan is two massive (2.5m each) uni-directional paths on either side of the road. So that’s doing it the right way.
I’m skimming their website and I can’t find the detailed designs, but I’m hoping they’ll make as many of them unidirectional as possible, though sometimes it gets complicated. Bi-directional paths are just much easier to integrate with the existing streets. But definitely less safe.
Blork
I don’t have a solution to offer, but I just want to also state that bike paths like de Maisonneuve (two opposing lanes running together on one side of the road) really are very tricky.
From the point of view of car drivers, there has always been the convention that when you are turning you only need to watch for on-coming traffic and crossing traffic. That’s already a lot to keep track of in some intersections. But with these bi-directional/one side bike lanes, the drivers also have to worry about traffic coming up alongside, going the same direction as they are.
It’s not just a matter of “getting used to it.” The convention I describe above is an international standard that has been in place for a century, and it’s not just based on tradition, it’s based on logic. There are no places on earth * where cars need to think about alongside car traffic when they are turning. So this style not only breaks with tradition, universal driving training, and logic; it does all that with soft-bodied cyclists.
There is no perfect solution, because the same problem exists if you put a cycle lane on either side of the road.
( * except maybe for some remote places where there are no road rules.)
Chris
Blork, I don’t see how anything you said means “It’s not just a matter of “getting used to it.””. Before automobiles existed, some could have said “there’s no roads on earth where buggy drivers need to look out for these motorcars blah blah blah”. So what? Things change, sometimes drastically. ‘tradition’ and ‘universal driving training’ can change too.
That said, cyclists, motorists, and pedestrians all hate those Rachel/Maisonneuve style bike paths, so hopefully PM won’t be dumb enough to add more.
Joey
Alex Norris was pretty defensive on FB when the re-designed bike path on Clark was criticized for being bi-directional. He basically hand-waved the (IMO valid) concerns by saying, IIRC, that the four-way stops at each intersections would sort things out (if someone has a better recollection of his defence, please feel free). Obviously this won’t cut it on a “bike autoroute” – some intersections, like Rache/St-Laurent, have dedicated lights for pedestrians, cyclists and cars, but we all know that Montrealers aren’t amazing at waiting their turn. If you’re going to build a bike highway, do it properly!
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