Cargo bikes will be appearing on downtown streets soon, circulating from a new depot at the old bus terminus at Berri.
Updates from September, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The new aquatic complex in Rosemont, meant to be completed next year, will have unisex changing rooms on the basis of some theory of social innovation, although the article hints at authorities tiptoeing around whether everyone is comfortable with this. The project is an enlargement of this rather nice Art Deco building on 8e Avenue.
Update: Friday, the Journal also has this story, with more quotes from the city’s Nathalie Goulet, who somehow equates this step with allowing women into jobs previously only held by men. Sorry, Mme Goulet, that’s nonsense.
Michael Black
Is it social innovation, or concern about people who may not fit a binary view of the world?
A year or two Westmount High added a unisex bathroom. And certainly there is some level of concern about people in the “wrong” bathroom, either real or imagined concern.
i recall a story from I think last year about people being too naked in a swimming pool changing room somewhere in Montreal. I think someone complained, but it didn’t sound like the too-naked person was doing something inappropriate for a changing room. Some people are more comfortable than others. I somehow got the impression that women were less comfortable in changing rooms.
Michael
Kate
Nathalie Goulet is quoted saying “Il faut réaliser ces projets-là […] pour innover socialement.”
Michael, I will probably reveal myself to be old-fashioned here, but I’d prefer not to see any wobbling willies in a public place where I’m getting undressed. Note that the article says the actual changing cubicles will be closed, but there will be people who won’t respect that.
You are right that the question of too much nudity in swimming pool changing rooms was an issue, at least in Brossard two years ago.
I suppose it’s progress if, instead of people being relaxed around members of their own gender, the facility is “inclusive” but everyone has to shower and change in an individual cubicle. More expensive to build, though.
Faiz Imam
“but there will be people who won’t respect that.”
As someone who has spent enough time in a lock room to see plenty of things i’d have rather not seen, I feel like people will react to how the space is contextualized. Architecture affects socialization. and If people see other people grabbing their clothes and heading towards the private changing stalls, then they’ll do the same.
I probably will never visit this place, but I’m very interested to see what this actually looks like. If its designed right, then issues *should* be minimal.
But yeah. They should expect miscommunication and complaints for a while. I’m sure there will be more than a few incidents.
Tim S.
It depends on if there are enough cubicles. There’s a family changing room at the new pool in NDG, but only 3 cubicles, I think, which is completely inadequate, especially at the beginning and end of lessons. So there are sometimes naked people. On the other hand, I went to one in Switzerland that had a common locker area, many cubicles, and gender-segregated washrooms. It was great.
In sum, if you make it practical, there’s no need for this to be an ideological issue. If you start with ideology, on the other hand, it will probably turn out annoying.GC
I’ve been to piscine Lévesque and it didn’t seem like a big deal to anyone. If I recall correctly, the showers were still open, implying you had to shower while still wearing your swimwear. But, yes, there were private changing stalls and everyone was using them.
Faiz Imam
“implying you had to shower while still wearing your swimwear.”
All pools have two sets of showers. one is right outside the pool area, and is there to wash away excess chlorine. Suppose to be a quick rinse.
Then inside the lockrooms there is usually a second set of showers for normal use.
JaneyB
Showering with swimwear on and cubicles enough for 100 changers or I assume, waiting in line until one becomes free. I’m sure I’m not alone in finding this idiotic. Is it too hard to make another room for the trans/non-binary/intersex folk?
I recently learned that the too-naked anxiety in women’s changing rooms is because of the ubiquity of smartphones and their cameras. At the YMCA downtown, this seems less evident to me. I think they have signs reminding people about the camera problem and it seems to be working for the moment.
Chris
Maybe people are just skipping the shower and that’s why we have so much BO on the bus? 🙂
GC
Faiz Imam, I’m just describing what I remember at Lévesque. I don’t know how the plans for Rosemont might differ. The shower area inside the unisex locker room was an open room, without cubicles, so the only way to have privacy was in the changing cubicles–not in the shower. Since I was heading home after, this was not a big deal.
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Kate
A group of sellers at Jean-Talon market was turned down in court in an attempt to block the creation of a new board of directors. Now a new board will be chosen next month.
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Kate
Despite STM plans to add trains and shorten wait times on the orange line at rush hour, some users have not felt any improvement. The STM is blaming this on delays caused by the underground garage construction at Côte-Vertu, and the jam mostly takes place on the line’s western side, giving those passengers a taste of what it can be like on a train coming down from MoMo at 8 a.m.
They’d best get used to it, because once the REM starts running, it’ll be like that all the time.
Kevin
This is how dedicated straphangers become car owners. When it takes almost an hour to get downtown from NDG, and you spend the whole way packed like a sardine, the extra expense of a vehicle is justified by the lack of BO and the return of personal space.
Kate
But from Vendôme it’s just 2 stops to L-G, and then you can go to the green line if you want. It’s not all that long a ride even if you stay on the orange line till Square Vicky or thereabouts.
All last year I was riding down to L-G from Jarry, so forgive me if I find the trip from NDG negligible by comparison.
If the schedule works, you know what’s great? Take the train from Vendôme downtown. It’s minutes and it’s never crowded. Of course the schedule almost never does work.
jeather
The green line downtown is not exactly a relaxing empty train in the morning either. I’m generally packed in as a sardine also, and can’t always fit on the first train. (L-G headed east.)
Blork
What I find even more stressful than being packed into a Metro car is when the platform is packed and you have to wait 2 or 3 trains before you can squeeze in. If that happens only occasionally it’s fine (lucky for me it rarely happens) but I really feel for the people on the Orange line around Rosemont and whatnot, many of whom (I hear) experience this every day.
Kevin
Kate, just getting to the metro line has become a nightmare this year. It’s not unusual for buses to take 15 minutes to move 5 blocks around Vendome. e.g. https://twitter.com/terryomtl/status/1171911101061193728
I’ve developed a new habit: I don’t go anywhere through NDG, be it public transit or on my own wheels, without checking real-time traffic maps and coming up with a new route.
Jack
@ Kevin that BO thing is getting old. One thing that’s not is your car’s exhaust contributing to our species extinction. Keep up the good work !
ant6n
The CP-line between Mo-West and Vendome is a low hanging fruit for potential rapid transit… There’s been low level talk that the A(R)TM wanted to buy the line for what feels like decades. And incidentally, the Pink Line as proposed before the elections was going along that corridor as well.
Mark Côté
Indeed, recently I walked about 20 minutes to both Villa Maria and Snowdon and beat several buses there. It’s fine for now but not going to be fun if this continues in the winter.
I haven’t considered taking the train though… I should look into that.
Frankie
Twice in the last two weeks, there have been shouting matches in my Metro car between people getting angry about pushing. The argument yesterday actually escalated to the “Meet me outside” level. Once on the Orange line and once on the Green line. There was also a shouting match between two women last week on the no. 10 bus, also about stop pushing, you are in my way stuff. It is only going to get worse in the winter when everyone is wearing heavy coats with those furry hoods. One way around this is to really get companies to buy into the work from home option.
Kate
Mark Côté, it’s not logical, but I believe you would need to have extra tickets on your Opus card to do that, although the new Exo site is so cumbersome I can’t tell what the fare zones are any more.
Kevin
Jack
Has being holier-than-thou ever convinced anyone? Especially when the person with pretensions is wrong?I only drive a car when doing groceries or travelling with at least one other person. My commuting vehicle is a motorcycle.
Either way, the impact from my family’s vehicles does nothing in the grand scheme of things.Globally, transportation is only 14% of GHG emissions. Demanding every driver change their life happens to be an easy target for the holier-than-thou crowd, even if it’s ineffective.
Get countries and companies to ditch their coal, natural gas, or oil-burning electrical plants, which produce about half of the world’s GHG’s, and we’ll never talk about climate change again. We need to take the big steps, not little ones.
And honestly, the stench of others is a serious deterrent. Forget fare dodgers – the STM needs a campaign to tell people to bathe and use deodorant and use less cologne.
Filp
Okay let’s exaggerate a bit less now. I’ve been taking the most crowded part of the network every day for years, and have not experienced seriously foul smelling people at the frequency which you describe. Maybe once every month , about the same amount as passing someone smelly on the street. If the smell of public transit is seriously the reason to take your car, you never really considered transit in the first place. Lol
Of course I’m not implying that overcrowding and busses being stuck in traffic aren’t deterrents. Just that smell is something that gets mentioned constantly (almost always by people who rarely take transit) as being a major issue. It simply isn’t. Like something my aunt would mention at Easter about the one time she took the metro (in 1990)
Kevin
Flip
I never mentioned a frequency…
I rely on public transit about 5 months a year and encounter a serious assault on my nostrils in a metro car at least 2x a week. More if I take the bus, so I rarely take the bus.There are puddles of urine on the platform at the metro station near my office at least 4 days a week, but they don’t seem to care much about that.
Shit, now that they clean up pretty quickly, but that’s only a once-a-year thing. And last year it was diarrhea from a dog, not a human.Kate
Some people do have more sensitive noses, and some buses serve areas where more physical labour is done, meaning people occasionally do smell of sweat on the hotter days of the year. I ride buses and the metro daily yet I don’t encounter stinky people as often as Kevin does, although it happens. On the other hand, I’ve never seen puddles of platform pee. Not once.
Blork
The old saw about BO can be interpreted as a general dislike of being squeezed up next to people due to issues around personal space and whatnot. For most people it’s not really about the BO, it’s about the psychological discomfort of being pressed in on all sides by people.
This is made worse in people who have anxiety disorders, which is in no way rare or obscure, and is significantly on the rise in recent years. (Some estimates say one in five people have some level of anxiety disorder.) Psychologies are now treating people with “climate anxiety” on a regular basis, plus things like the global rise in populism and the way all of the bad news is constantly bombarding people on social media is creating a new “age of anxiety” right now, and nothing sends anxiety through the roof (for many people) like being crammed onto a subway or bus with hundreds of people where you can’t move, can’t escape, etc.
So no, it’s not really about the BO.
Meezly
I’m a HSP with an aversion to crowds, and most likely the former informs the latter.
Public transit during rush hour is horrible but I would also hate the money-sink and headache involved with car ownership in the Plateau.
Cheap perfume is what my sensitive nasal passages encounter most, then smokers reeking of tar and toxins. I take transit in winter, but notice the BO factor is higher during summer, esp. when synthetic fibres are so common. And then there are the zombies who cannot be unglued from their devices no matter how packed the train or bus gets.What gets me through these trying transit times are a pair of good headphones, reading material and a nicely scented scarf to put over my nose!
JP
I recently became a car owner after three years of commuting from New Bordeaux/Ahuntsic to Pointe Claire. It wasn’t the length of the commute or the transfers or the BO. But, what it was can be boiled down to personal space and not having to deal with other users. It had never been an issue in the past when I used mostly the metro to get to cegep and university. However, my 470 bus ride involved the following: A young man, probably in his 30s, who’d passively aggressively call me a “bitch” under his breath almost every day (probably because I liked standing in front near the driver…the bus was rarely that full, so it was doable, but he liked that spot). There were also a few incidents of people clipping their nails. When they made it so that you could get on from any door, people acted really aggressively and uncivilly. At least in my car, there’s no risk of having a naii fly into my face and I don’t have to deal with the same guy verbally abusing me every day. Even with it’s a normal line, people love to pretend to be oblivious and push ahead. On top of avoiding all this, I now get around faster
Meezly
Indeed, with that distance to cover, it made way more sense for you to become a car owner. Just not feasible for me for many reasons. Enjoy your new mode of transport!
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Kate
Police made 24 arrests Wednesday after seeing a rise in fentanyl overdoses, but this piece, and the Gazette’s lede on the same story, mention the spike but only later clarify that it happened two summers ago.
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Kate
It’s a brief story about the renovation of a library in Montreal North, but what surprises me is that the expensive mistake – the breakage of a hydraulic conduit – “n’a pas pu être évité, car il était impossible de détecter ce conduit au préalable par géolocalisation.” Aren’t there engineering plans for buildings like this that should be consulted before someone starts digging?
Mr.Chinaski
Going up to the end of the 80’s, most construction plans for engineering. were often “schematic” hand drawn plans. Until the widespread usage of AutoCAD, that’s how you worked. Same for electrical inside buildings.
This is why there are contingency budgets in project management.
walkerp
Same excuse for the gas line that these incompetent and corrupt construction companies chop into on a weekly basis?
Mr.Chinaski
Well yes.. and no. Perhaps they use this to their advantage, but having dealt with “info-excavation” (the company in charge of telling you what’s under the ground, yes the fluorescent paint lines that you don’t know the meaning of), they also are within the limits of their knowledge.
History is not keen in keeping good records of underground utilities and even if they have the information, tolerance of hand-drawn maps multipled by the scant construction techniques of the past are no good when you need half an inch precision in your digging methods.
Kevin
Last summer Bell was digging in my back alley and their map for an underground line was about 2 metres off.
My neighbour told them that the map was wrong, but they didn’t believe him until they’d spent 6 hours digging and not finding what they were looking for.
It’s the difference between where things were supposed to go, and the guys who put down the line 40 years ago deciding that there was no way they were going to move the giant rock that was in the ground, so they went around it — and nobody updating the corrected map kept in the archives.
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Kate
Last month it was Airbnb tweeting to users to agitate in their favour with government. Now it’s Lime, emailing its users to ask them to put pressure on city hall – this even though no Lime rider has yet been fined for breaking rules, and scooters are routinely left on sidewalks, presumably because users don’t know any different.
Media were called to a presser Wednesday held only in English in which they were told little or nothing about Lime’s progress here.
Ephraim
Lime says they aren’t doing anything, the article says… “Riders have to take a picture of where they parked their e-scooter at the end of their ride, but Lime uses the photos solely for analytical purposes — it does not fine non-compliant riders.”
And they are annoying the heck out of pedestrians and they will end up being banned because of it. They need to look at the photos, take a look at the reports and tell people what they are doing wrong… or the whole project will soon come to an end.
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Kate
It’s not a firm promise yet – Global puts a question mark on its headline on this story – but the CAQ may spare the anglophone side when it does whatever it’s going to do to school boards. I seem to recall the CAQ originally said they were planning to abolish them, but now the word being used is “reform”, which could mean anything.
Jack
At least now we know why “our ” school boards survived.
«Ils trouvent qu’ils les ont pas mal brassés avec la loi sur la laïcité qui n’est pas appuyée beaucoup du côté anglophone et donc le gouvernement de la CAQ a décidé de ménager la communauté anglophone en leur conservant les commissions scolaires… Les élections scolaires de la minorité anglophone sont préservées.»
Bernard Drainville, 98,5 FM
If you dont think there was a backdoor deal between “our” Boards and the CAQ, with the caveat to play ball on Law 21 you have never worked for one of these boards.
So we have our school boards and we are now complicit in promoting discrimination, racism and hate. They have their paycheques and privilege and trust me wont bat an eye.
A great day for our “community”.
The funny thing knowing these folks how could I have honestly expected anything else.Kevin
I suspect it’s that Sonia Lebel told the rest of the CAQ that facing one constitutional challenge at a time was enough.
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