Updates from June, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 10:58 on 2019-06-08 Permalink | Reply  

    François Cardinal considers the decline of St-Denis as a commercial street and its merchants’ perverse rejection of a bike path. As a footnote, a CBC piece on five ways bike paths benefit cities, based on actual evidence from other places.

     
    • david100 20:45 on 2019-06-09 Permalink

      Saint Denis is a very heavily trafficked arterial, and the top thing that merchants should be campaigning for, in my opinion, should be that traffic is significantly slowed with timed lights, longer east/west pedestrian crossing lights, and the introduction of a green center median and narrowing of the traffic lanes. Another great thing that they’ll bitterly reject would be an extension of the sidewalks the entire width of the parking lanes, along with a row of trees and planters (and poles) to protect pedestrians on those sidewalks. The reasoning: Saint Denis could be a great walking street, a true destination like it used to be before all the other neighborhoods saw improved main streets.

      I hate to say it because I’m a pretty hardcore anti-car person, but probably the city would be justified in putting a parking garage in somewhere to help all these businesses. My recommendation would be to retool the Berri underpass – excavate and build a mechanical parking garage where there’s now road, and run the road over top and down the hill like it ran decades ago. The superfluous side roads could be running on either side of Sherbrooke could be sold to developers to help pay for it, or used for social housing or something.

    • Kate 23:28 on 2019-06-09 Permalink

      david100, that location is too far away from the area in question. On the map the distance is nothing much but there’s a whole dead block and a possible uphill walk from there. Not going to help, especially in wintertime.

      Maybe you could just get away with putting in a multi-storey parking garage behind the Très Saint Sacrement, next to Mont-Royal metro. It’s already a parking lot, and although there was some loose talk about the borough building a new library there, I haven’t seen anything about that for some time. I’ve a feeling that nearby residents would kick up a fuss because those things are always ugly and they’d massacre property values on adjoining streets.

    • david 18:29 on 2019-06-11 Permalink

      I know the area well, lived on Square Saint Louis for 10+ years, it’s really not all that far. But I take your point that some people are unlikely to want to walk so far, if their main goal is some shop near Mont-Royal. Plus, yeah, there’s that psychological gap with that Cherrier/Pine/Roy block and the government building, makes St. Denis feel like it hasn’t yet begun, though I wouldn’t call it a “dead block” per se, they should definitely build on those goddamned parking lots like they were making noises about a few years ago.

      I don’t think putting a parking structure makes a lot of sense just outright, I think it does make sense though if you take out street parking on St. Denis. My idea with Berri was because it would be salutory for the neighborhood to rebuild that underpass, and it’s already mostly excavated, saving big money.

    • Jonathan 09:27 on 2019-06-12 Permalink

      I don’t understand why Cardinal doesn’t propose just disallowing parking on each side of the street during the respective rush hours. This is done on so many roads in the city. It would create a lane in the direction of rush hour and still keep available parking during the majority of the day. I also agree with David but have reservations about the underground parking.

  • Kate 10:37 on 2019-06-08 Permalink | Reply  

    The federal government is pouring millions into the plan to extend Autoroute 19 up into Laval. Nothing’s said here about the effect this will have on the island of Montreal, because it seems nobody’s talking any more about the hazards created by channeling an autoroute’s worth of traffic onto Papineau.

     
    • mare 14:39 on 2019-06-08 Permalink

      I can only imagine how all that traffic will pass between the intersections with Beaubien and des Carrieres, where Papineau is just one lane. Currently that’s a bottleneck causing “nightmares” for drivers, that has to be upgraded to “hell on earth”.

    • Jonathan 22:51 on 2019-06-08 Permalink

      so sad.

  • Kate 10:04 on 2019-06-08 Permalink | Reply  

    The National Post works itself into a remarkable snit over how Westmount had a boil water advisory over the last week. Why should people living in multimillion-dollar mansions face the major inconvenience of having to boil water for a minute? “A boil water advisory does not fit the narrative of the oasis on the mountain.”

     
    • Uatu 14:39 on 2019-06-08 Permalink

      Eh. It’s the national Post. Nothing unusual for it to grumble about having the help make the extra step of boiling water before making a scotch and soda. If you really want to be impressed, read the op eds on the”vindication” of Lord Black and marvel at how someone can apparently write a column while simultaneously fellating Conrad Black .

    • Kate 09:19 on 2019-06-09 Permalink

      Rereading the lede, I notice also “The city shares its water network with Montreal” – imagine, it shares water with the plebes. You really would think Westmount could at least distribute Evian through its mains.

  • Kate 09:13 on 2019-06-08 Permalink | Reply  

    Two sidewalk stories: sidewalk pavement in such poor shape on boulevard Industriel in Montreal North that a business owner is trying to force the city to fix it; mistakes made in a sidewalk pouring site on Marie-Anne West mean a part of the work has to be redone.

     
    • Kate 09:03 on 2019-06-08 Permalink | Reply  

      An orderly at the Douglas, not a young man, was badly injured in an attack by a patient on Thursday. There’s talk of beefing up security, just as there was after a psych patient attacked a nurse at the General in 2017.

       
      • Kate 08:44 on 2019-06-08 Permalink | Reply  

        La Presse looks at the traffic incident numbers for 2018: fewer parking tickets, and fewer fatal crashes between vehicles, or involving bicycles, but a higher number of pedestrian fatalities than the previous year.

         
        • Kate 08:17 on 2019-06-08 Permalink | Reply  

          Some notes on how the Grand Prix takes over the city; Radio-Canada profiles the medical team who participate as volunteers; Le Devoir visits the new paddocks; TVA eyes the busy pimp business this weekend; workers at Parc Jean-Drapeau signed a new contract days before the big event.

           
          • Kate 08:05 on 2019-06-08 Permalink | Reply  

            The renovation of the firehall on Mont-Royal at des Érables, damaged by a fire in 1999, is taking a long time, noted last month by the Journal but now spelled out in more detail by Radio‑Canada.

             
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