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Updates from April, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• Kate 21:16 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  City hall opposition made a bid for 24-hour metro service in summertime, but the STM said no, holding to its view that, not having dual tracks like many subway systems, our metro has to fully close for a few hours in the cycle for cleaning and maintenance. I like how Plante scoffs here at Ensemble making the suggestion before even inquiring whether it would be possible.

  Another idea Plante has brushed off – for the moment – is an access toll like New York City plans for 2021, or London’s congestion charge.

  ant6n, Faiz Imam, JaneyB, and 1 other are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Faiz Imam 21:37 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    They do do it a couple times a year, and it would be useful if the STM can see if it makes sense to expand it to a select few more key days a year where people would most benefit from it. Formula 1 weekend? jazz fest or JFL weekends?

    like, can we go from 364 days a year to 360? 350?

    Also could it make sense to keep some lines active while others are shut down instead of closing the whole system? We already have night buses that cover most of the routes the lines run.

    I roll my eyes hard at the opposition making senseless proposal’s, but Some creative thinking might find some wiggle room.

  • Kate 06:56 on 2019-04-03 Permalink

    Every time they do it, it costs money in overtime, and probably means extra cleaning the next day. I’m not sure it’s where the STM ought to be putting its funds.

  • JaneyB 09:38 on 2019-04-03 Permalink

    Maybe they could double the night bus service instead on Fri and Sat night. Not as wonderful as a 24 hour metro but I’d go for that.

  • Faiz Imam 15:16 on 2019-04-03 Permalink

    That’s very true. The current night bus is decent, and there is capacity to make it much better, especially since at night there is zero congestion.

  • ant6n 16:38 on 2019-04-03 Permalink

    The 4-track argument is BS. There exist few subway systems that make heavy use of 4 tracks – basically only New York. And NYC has 24h service even on 2-track sections.
    Maintenance is a big issue for a 24h system, as is the running cost. Some systems offer service at night on the weekends (e.g. Fr, Sa), organizing the maintenance on the remaining days. This should be doable even in Montreal, and still quite useful.

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• Kate 21:13 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  Radio-Canada has some driving notes for the Turcot well in advance this week as demolitions continue.

   

• Kate 14:45 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  Citizens are invited to call the police if they see someone flouting the secularity law.

  Oh, this will be fun.

  Another minister says conscientious objection is right out.

  The New York Times has a piece on the new bill Tuesday.

  dhomas, Anon, walkerp, and 2 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Uatu 17:16 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    Wow. That’s really doubleplus ungood.

  • Kevin 19:12 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    Legault promptly walked back Guilbeault’s declaration.

    Although I can see students keeping that tactic in their back pocket for impending exams.

  • walkerp 14:51 on 2019-04-03 Permalink

    It’s like our very own Sharia law!

  • Anon 21:01 on 2019-04-03 Permalink

    It’s of course nothing like Sharia. Look at Brunei to see what Sharia is. Despite Quebec’s disagreeable new clothing rules, it treats Muslims better than Islam does. No death penalty, no lashings, no amputations.

  • dhomas 05:20 on 2019-04-04 Permalink

    CAQ: “We don’t want men to dictate what women should wear.”
    Also CAQ: Here is what women should wear.

• Kate 09:52 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  Hydro-Quebec rates have just gone up by 0.9%, topic of a protest Monday downtown. TVA notes that the coming of April means 50,000 clients may have the plug pulled for non-payment, a means of leverage the utility is forbidden to use in wintertime.

  What happened to that $1.5 billion Hydro-Quebec has wrongly pocketed? I’d be happy if they used some of that to pay up the arrears of residential customers before divvying it up and giving us all a break with it. Or is it just going to quietly be shuffled away into government coffers?

  Raymond Lutz, Faiz Imam, Brett, and 3 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Kevin 10:52 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    The extra money collected was placed into general coffers.
    To compensate, Hydro increases were well below the rate of inflation for the past three years.
    Hydro went up .7% in 2017, 0.3 % last year, and 0.9% this year, while inflation has been about 1.5% each year.

    In other words, everyone already got their discount, but because the individual amounts involved are so small nobody noticed.

  • Douglas 11:26 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    Hydro Quebec doesn’t have any competition for energy supply. Its a shame they get to do whatever they want.

  • Kate 11:40 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    Douglas, is it not sufficient that Hydro floods vast areas of northern Quebec for its dams and puts pylons wherever it likes? We don’t need multiple utilities competing to despoil the landscape.

    We pay less for electricity here than almost anywhere. My complaint is not with the rates, it’s that after having it clearly demonstrated that Hydro over-collects, it just sits there like a dragon on its pile of gold.

    Competition is not always the golden calf.

  • Faiz Imam 14:02 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    It also shows a lack of knowledge to other jurisdictions with more private power companies.

    All sorts of jurisdictions have private power, from single private entities that own everything from the generation to the home, to more complex systems where production, transportation and last mile metering are separate. With payments being made for various services rendered.

    Sometimes its effective, but often its less safe, more expensive and poorly managed than how we do it.

    Also, we are not a completely private system either. If you want to build your own wind farm, you can do it and sell your power to HQ and make a profit, a number of groups are doing just that, with various amounts of subsides.

  • Brett 09:03 on 2019-04-04 Permalink

    If they’re doing it with subsidies, that can’t mean that they’re making a profit. Otherwise whats the point of the subsidy?

  • Faiz Imam 15:38 on 2019-04-04 Permalink

    The idea of a subsidy is mostly for early projects. major development in windfarms basically didn’t exist a decade ago, so there was little experience and little appetite to take on the risk to try it.

    But now that a bunch of them are up and running, the idea is we can reduce or eliminate the subsidies and the industry can sustain itself.

    Also, prices for wind energy have gone down dramatically in the past decade, which also increases its competitiveness and reduces need for help.

  • Raymond Lutz 09:08 on 2019-04-05 Permalink

    “But now that a bunch of them are up and running, the idea is we can reduce or eliminate the subsidies and the industry can sustain itself.” Like the nascent oil industry? Canada Leads The G7 In Oil And Gas Subsidies

• Kate 09:45 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  The Olympic installations board foresees spending $750 million over 15 years to modernize the Olympic park.

   

• Kate 07:11 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  A boarded-up old sports bar on Jarry, just east of where the street dips under the Met, was the site of a fire overnight. Not a great architectural loss, its disappearance may well be a convenience to somebody. The arson squad is on it.

   

• Kate 07:10 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  Baldwin Park, one of the eastern Plateau’s unsung gems, is being enlarged for a second time by the borough, by removing parking spaces near a school. Seven years ago the borough abolished two blocks of Marie-Anne to join up the two halves of the park, and there was a fuss about it at the time. This step doesn’t seem so controversial.

  david100, walkerp, Joey, and 1 other are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • David100 20:13 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    That’s fantastic. Now they just need to do the same for Lafontaine Park.

  • David100 20:23 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    Also, I’d like to add that I love that article. You have a well-written article that gets pretty much everything (aside from renderings) in there, and shows us that (1) the parents are engaged; (2) the city and school board are engaged and responding to real problems; (3) they’re coming up with great solutions, for the right reasons, and doing so in a reasonable way; and (4) that the whole thing is done in an orderly, well informed and accountable way. You can just trust everything about the process from the conception of the problem/solution to the way it was disseminated to the public.

    Now, obviously, there’s a lot of work to be done when it comes to awarding the construction contract and then relying on the quality of the work, but with the great success of the rest of Baldwin Park, and based on everything else in the equation, I feel optimistic on that count too.

  • Joey 09:06 on 2019-04-03 Permalink

    @David100 This is the exact opposite of how the city has treated Jeanne-Mance Park. While they are currently halfway through a consultation designed to inform a new plan directeur, the city has already completely rebuilt the playground (without consulting anyone), completely rebuilt the tennis courts (without consulting anyone) and, as we all know, destroyed the long-standing softball field on the northern edge (after promising the community of users that it would definitely not destroy the field). I’m glad to see the borough take a more appropriate approach to Baldwin Park, I only wish they would extend the same courtesy to the users of JMP.

  • walkerp 14:53 on 2019-04-03 Permalink

    Well put, Joey.

    FYI gofundme for the legal case to fight for softball at J-M parc is here:
    https://www.gofundme.com/savethenorthfield

  • david100 02:05 on 2019-04-08 Permalink

    I don’t know. Like the dog issue, I think a silent majority of neighbors (including me) supports a better use of the space than a baseball diamond.

• Kate 07:04 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  The REM dig around McGill College has begun in earnest and will bollix up foot and vehicle traffic all year.

  In other REM news, angry commuters held a protest at Central Station Monday over difficulties on the Deux-Montagnes and Mascouche lines caused by construction of the REM.

  Bert is discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Bert 07:38 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    For an off-hour user I can understand that the work on the REM on the DM line will have an impact. As a habitual DM line commuter I have little to complain about. There have been a few more delays this year but only very few. The only thing I have had to do is adjust my schedule based on the new train times. I appreciate that many work on a fixed schedule and that train schedule changes might have a more important impact.

    The Gazoos article is a bit disingenuous when it says “Many of the Deux-Montagnes line’s stations have been shut down because of construction on the Mont-Royal tunnel, forcing passengers to disembark at the Bois-Franc station”. Monday to Friday all stations are open, though Canora and Mont-Royal will be closed this summer with a temporary station placed between them.

• Kate 07:01 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  Purchases of property by foreign buyers rose markedly in Montreal in 2018 – a bump of 21.5%.

  I’m curious: I spoke recently with a colleague who’s here on a work visa from Europe. She wants to stay here, and is waiting to see if she gets permanent residency, because she can’t buy a place if she doesn’t get it.

  Another colleague said afterwards: if she can’t buy, how do all these foreign buyers get in? I suspect her problem is more about getting a mortgage than technically being allowed to buy property, and that if you came to buy a condo with cash up front, nobody would care about your citizenship status. But obviously I didn’t grill her. Am I correct?

  John B, Patrick, and Blork are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Blork 10:33 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    I don’t know the actual rules/laws, but I suspect you are correct. There is also the self-imposed restriction of not wanting to commit to a mortgage if you don’t know if you’ll be allowed to stay here and live in the place.

  • Patrick 12:01 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    Does personal residency matter if you can buy property in the name of a corporation (would it have to be Canada-registered?). People with a lot of assets they want to protect tend to do things like that.

  • John B 13:08 on 2019-04-02 Permalink

    There’s no law preventing a foreign citizen, resident of Canada or not, from owning property in Canada. However, it is harder to get a mortgage if you’re not considered a Resident, (info in the same link).

    I’m guessing your colleague is being responsible, and may not have the cash flow to finance a second home if she gets the boot from Canada.

• Kate 06:52 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  After a student’s complaint went locally viral, Concordia has increased campus security looking out for random men entering its buildings and harassing women – and taking their complaints seriously if this happens.

   

• Kate 06:49 on 2019-04-02 Permalink | Reply  

  A man was found in eastern downtown Monday night with a serious head injury and police need to figure out whether he was the victim of an attack or an accident. Given he was “known to police” odds are on the former possibility.