Long weekend traffic warnings are out.
Updates from June, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Somebody is clearly still unhappy that a firm of architects in St‑Henri worked on a federal migrant detention centre: an architect’s car was torched last week outside his home. La Presse’s writer says “militants d’extrême gauche” claimed the act on a website, and are threatening more damage to the firm’s projects. There have been no arrests.
Mr.Chinaski
It’s not just a firm, it’s the biggest firm in Québec (4th in Canada and part of the top 100 in the world according to the WA100 list).
DeWolf
I guess the strategy is to pressure Lemay into withdrawing from the project. But then another architecture firm would take its place. Wouldn’t it make more sense to be applying pressure to the government to change its policies?
Steve Q
@DeWolf: What you are saying make sense. But these people are far left wing zealot anarchists looking for chaos and out to destroy anything that represents what works in western societies, therefor, they are not on the same state of mind as you or me, per example !
David100
What’s the endgame? Terrorize various people so that the government decides just to let foreign criminals and illegal aliens roam the streets?
Marc
Wow, that degenerated quickly.
Kate
Sure did.
Marc
Here’s a FAQ from Solidarity Across Borders: http://www.solidarityacrossborders.org/en/background-immigration-detention-in-canada-and-the-new-refugee-prison-in-laval
david100
I don’t follow how it’s a “degeneration” of discourse to ask why any group would think torching someone’s vehicle (what’s next, his home?) would be a legitimate way of advocating for unqualified unlimited immigration to Canada.
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Kate
A woman and her daughter were shot at in Park Extension midday Wednesday, nobody hurt, and three suspects have already been caught. Journal account emphasizes that there are schools nearby and so on – yes, Park Ex is a neighbourhood.
Steve Q
Serious prison time just for carrying a gun should be a minimum. And even more severe for having used it, obviously.
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Kate
Lot of REM stories this week, with La Presse finding out about massive cranes named Anne and Marie and various media covering the technology being used to build the section in the West Island.
Brossard residents are waking up to the possibility of more traffic in their streets near the REM station. I’m noting this Journal’s immediate reference to the “train de la caisse de dépôt” in the lede, because that reference has been cropping up – a little late.
A friend told me recently he had chatted at his gym with a guy working as a site supervisor at one of the West Island REM sites, and the guy said he’d never seen such chaotic ad-hockery on a big site before. For what it’s worth.
Spi
They’re following a design-build process for the construction of the REM. Meaning the design and plans aren’t finalized before construction begins, rather they are done simultaneously so it makes sense that there would be a certain level of ad-hockery.
Mark Côté
Agile construction? huh
Blork
That’s what I was thinking. It can work well for software, but for “hardware?” Are they following an actual method or just winging it?
dwgs
I make stuff for a living and teach young people how to make stuff. Design build in that sense can work well for furniture and other small scale stuff but rail lines and stations?!
Mr.Chinaski
People confuse design-build with fast-track. DB is a single-point of responsability (contractor). Fast-track is to have project delivery shorter in time by having specific tender information as specs (called PFT – Programme fonctionnel technique in french) where a builder must apply his project to these specs.
qatzelok
This is another sign that the REM is a project to enrich the 1% rather than a way to provide convenience to the other 99. Each dollar is weighted, contracts are written between closed doors with no public input, and the building process is spontaneous – ad hoc.
This should have been a public project, if there is any public left, that is.
*goes back to staring at cellphone*
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Kate
Motivated by recent news about a snow removal firm cheating the city with half truckloads or less, the city’s blue collar workers are asking to take the task back to the city’s own internal workers.
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Kate
The city’s auditor-general is doubtful that we need a thousand charging stations for electric cars but city hall intends to continue adding them.
Faiz Imam
Well yeah, right now EVs make up about 2% of vehicle sales.
Its a chicken and egg issue. If we want more people to buy them and use them, they’ll need places to charge.
If we are seriously electrifying our entire economy, we will need thousands of these chargers eventually.
A bigger problem is how to best manage our use of these chargers.
Right now they serve as both chargers and multi hour parking spaces, which means only a few of them can be used each day. And they’ll often sit idle once the car is fully charged up.
I don’t know how well it works downtown streets, but in parking lots I’ve seen EVs park in a spot in the morning and be there all day.
Ephraim
First of all, too many of these are 240V AC and not 400V DC, which leads to the question of if they will change these, since obviously cars that can charge on DC charge faster. For example, the GM volt was only at 3.6kw and took 4.5h to charge. They moved it up on newer models to 7.2kw and takes only 2.3h to charge. But a Nissan Leaf at 7.2kw is about 6h to fully charge…. bump it up to DC charging at 400V and assuming you have 50kw, you should be charge in less than an hour. Of course, you are paying (on the flo network) about $11.50 an hour for a 400V DC charge… and the GM cars can’t take that charge… they are slow charge.
Tesla is currently at 150kw in pairs or 72kw per individual, but they are moving to 250kw per individual charger (part of the ramp up to pickup trucks and zero emission trucks). Assuming the Model 3 battery is 62kwh, that means that at 250kw we are talking about 20 minutes to an 80% charge (it slows after that). Tesla charges a per minute charge for their chargers, which are 44c per minute at 60kW and 22c per minute below 60kW. Assuming you are on the higher charge with a 62kwh battery from 20% to 80% is 36 minutes of charging (about $16). But they charge an idle fee, if you don’t move your car within 5 minutes of finishing. That’s 65c a minute in Canada if it’s just sitting there. If the station is full, that’s $1.30 a minute.
These public chargers aren’t charging for idle time… it’s like getting parking at $1 per hour instead of $3… though some charge both fees…. so it’s $4 an hour.
(Disclosure, I am now on the Tesla Destination Charger network… I have 2 chargers, but they only work for Tesla cars…. most of the other cars use J1772 240V chargers. The DC chargers are on SAE and CHAdeMO.) Have we confused you enough with all the charging information?
Raymond Lutz
Charging should be free, as discovered by the study “Consumer behavioral adaption in EV fast charging through pricing” (Yutaka Motoaki, Matthew G. Shirk, 2017). They concluded that “a flat-rate fee has a negative effect on the usage efficiency of DCFC stations.” When people are paying, they tend to stay too long at the charger. And after about 80% the charge rate decreases exponentially (Yes, Kate) so the high power charger pass that threshold is not efficiently used. Pour ceux interessés, j’ai rédigé un texte ‘grand-public’ sur le processus de charge CC-CV, il est publié sur un forum de l’AVEQ (l’Association des véhicules électriques du Québec).
Faiz Imam
I agree there is a valid debate that can be had over the cost of charging up a car. But the key point I think we all agree on is that once your car is mostly topped up, then there needs to be significant penalties to limit overstay.
Chris
“Charging should be free” -> Strong disagree here. That would be subsidizing cars. Don’t fall for the greenwashing about electric cars being “green”. Cars get way too many subsidies already, we should be subsidizing them less, not more.
Raymond Lutz
Subsidizing? You mean subsidized like the 3.3 G$ we give annually to the oil industries? Talking about policies, I don’t care at what level (muni, provincial or federal) infrastructure is being deployed, financed and maintained. The argument “but its federal” or “but its provincial” is moot. Beside, everything should be subsidized: yes I’m a fucking lunatic pinko socialist.
And you’re right about the ecological footprint of cars (electric or thermal): they are an enormous waste of resource and emit loads of pollutants (debilitating us like PM2.5 from brakes and tires wear). We will eventually ban individually owned car like we banned wood stoves (or tax them to oblivion), replacing them with transportation as a service (TAAS). “aucune transition écologique ne se fera sans contrainte. Il est temps de le dire, et de le dire clairement.“
Faiz Imam
Chris. I’m very much in favor for making driving harder, but I also want to incentivize EVs.
Charging a EV doesn’t cost too much electricity, and I think the marketing message of the low cost is a major way to attract users.
But at the same time you are right that we don’t want to overly subsidize driving. So I think the compromise it to attack parking, which is the major underlying issue.
If you make parking much more difficult, it doesn’t matter if the charging is subsidized. You still greatly modify behavior while still shifting to EV cars.
Ephraim
The legacy car manufacturers are using too slow a charging system…. and it tends to clog up the system. There are just 8 CHAdeMO/SAE charging spots in Montreal. So other than some Japanese EVs and some Teslas, these 240V charging spots are essentially parking spots for 4 to 8 hours at a time. And since the chargers only charge by the hour…. and it’s cheaper than the meters, people tend to stick to them. It’s $1 an hour… no idle fees.
So anytime you think that GM and Ford are actually trying to successfully compete with their EV cars, you need to realize that they are far behind the curve. Years behind the curve… maybe even a full decade behind the curve. They are fine as a city car, but they need a parking space or a garage because you are constantly needing to top up.
Take a car that can fast charge (Tesla or Japanese), someone travelling 25K a year…. the range is 400km and you charge at 20% and stop at maybe 80% (for efficiency) that means that you are adding 240km per charge. So that’s 300km a week, they need to charge 1.25x per week or 65 times a year. On a fast charge that’s about 60 hours a year in charging time…. put it down to 32A and that’s 520 hours of charging. Have an older GM car and that’s over 1000 hours of charging.
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Kate
A culture of elaborate practical jokes within the SPVM’s motorcycle squad has been revealed and condemned by a labour mediator, who says it has led to psychological harassment.
David100
That Pichet driver retaliation sounds like intimidation bordering on a threat.
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Kate
Health authorities are warning of possible exposure to measles in a couple of public places in Laval. Background news: a study shows that worldwide mistrust of vaccines is putting populations at risk from preventable diseases – and ironically, areas with higher education are more prone to buying ill‑founded, unscientific anti‑vaccine notions.
Raymond Lutz
Kate, it’s probably an occurrence of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I saw a number of well educated people in flatearth videos when I studied the subject for my agnotoly Ph.D. at PragerU
Marc
“my agnotoly Ph.D. at PragerU” I feel like there’s a good joke in there but I don’t get it…
Raymond Lutz
La blague c’est qu’il n’existe probablement pas (encore) de département universitaire dédié à l’agnotologie. Mais c’est effectivement un sujet d’étude qui me fascine (à l’intersection de la socio, la neurologie et la psycho). J’ai imaginé une Université qui cadrerait bien avec l’agnotologie et j’ai pensé à Prager U, où enseigne, entre autres, l’éminent professeur Jordan B Peterson.
Marc
“l’éminent professeur Jordan B Peterson”. Now there’s a joke I can understand.
Raymond Lutz
This guy is éminent: he’s making 800 000$ a year in donation alone from alt-right, fachists, incels, and anti-SJW de tout acabit.
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Kate
Francine Pelletier has a thoughful piece on Bill 21 in Le Devoir, where she fulsomely acknowledges the (to her) charm of François Legault before turning to analyze what the CAQ is trying to do. Good piece.
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