Montreal City Weblog

Updates from November, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• Kate 20:49 on 2019-11-11 Permalink | Reply  

  On Monday, the mayor announced various means the city will use to tackle winter including the Info‑Neige app and drones to check on snow dump conditions. After last winter, it’s also nice to hear they’re going to work harder on de-icing sidewalks.

  Maybe it’s fair balance to bring in a sneer from Lionel Perez, but given that nobody can say right now how much snow or ice we’ll see this winter, he’s just throwing more mud in the Ensemble manner. Note that city hall is planning its snow crusade without a major boost in budget, which is being criticized by Perez: he would’ve been perfectly ready to snipe at city hall if it had devoted a larger budget to the process. Ensemble has no vision and no plan: the only item on its agenda is “make Projet look bad if at all possible.”

   

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• Kate 14:10 on 2019-11-11 Permalink | Reply  

  The STM took delivery of 30 electric buses Monday, a new model that charges slowly but runs independently longer than ones they’ve been using successfully on the 36 Monk route. The new buses won’t be carrying passengers right away, but will be tested through the winter.

  Dhomas, Faiz Imam, Tim S., and 2 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Ephraim 14:59 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    Assuming that the city bought the largest battery (466 kWh) and from the pictures, the charger is CCS level 1. The rating is 150 kWh charging max, so just over 3 hours to fully charge, though the top and bottom ends of charging are slower and it’s not optimal to fully charge batteries, because it means that the regenerative breaks can’t top off the battery until it’s a bit depleted anyway, which means it’s a little less than optimally effecient. I assume they will charge these to 90% at night, so plenty of time.

    To give you an idea, the “fast” charging stations from the Electric Circuit are 50 kWh and $11.50 per hour. So they would need over 9 hours to charge one bus, but it would be just over $100 to charge (at the Electric Circuit/Flo rates).

    The hybrid buses supposedly get 47.5 litres per 100 km. The electric get about 360 km per charge. So assuming the numbers are correct, that’s 171 litres of diesel for the same distance. At $1.25 per litre that’s $213.75 but we also have to assume that Hydro gives them a preferential rate. Anyone know what the commercial negotiated rates are like?

    But, the most important part is… when you buy gas, most of the money exits the province and of course, GHG. But in the case of the electric, almost 100% of the money stays in the province, powering the economy (and the generations fund, since half of surpluses automatically go there.) and almost no GHGs.

  • Faiz Imam 15:57 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    Just to put a number down, 450kwh at residential rates would be $27 to charge a bus for the day.

    So that’s $185 savings at least.

    And that’s assuming a fully dead battery every night.

    A real question to ask though. How beefy a sub station will they have to build to recharge hundreds of buses every night? We are talking a Megawatt supply to charge ~7 buses. That’s 21 buses in 9 hours.

    10 MW gets you 200 buses charged.

    Once they scale up the fleet, this will become a challenge, though if they are able to cycle some in during the day that should help a lot.

  • jeather 16:12 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    I wonder if they will get a discount for using electricity in off-hours.If they are mostly charging from 10pm to 5am, there’s a lot more power available for them than 6-8 am or pm.

  • Faiz imam 18:18 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    That reminds me. I was invited into Hydro Quebec’s new dynamic pricing program.

    Instead of a flat 6 cents. I’ll pay 4 cents. But every couple weeks over the winter if they have a shortage of power (usually when its ultra cold) they’ll notify me to reduce mt usage.

    It’ll either be from 6am to 9am, or 4pm to 8pm. And my rate at such times with be 50 cents per kwh.

    But I did the math, I’m not active during those morning hours anyways, and I can pretty easilly shift my usage in the evening if they ask. So I should see a reduction in cost.

  • Tim S. 21:15 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    Interesting, Faiz. Unfortunately, I, like most people with a 9-5, am pretty active during those periods. So hopefully this dynamic pricing remains voluntary.

  • Faiz imam 21:18 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    The one Im on is called “Flex D”

    They have a second option called “winter credit”. In that one they analyses your usage hour by hour. If you don’t use less, nothing changes. But if you are able to cut down usage below your typical use, you get money back.

    But yes, for now the basic plan is sticking around, but long term I don’t see the harm of everyone getting put on the “winter credit” option.

    This website explains both options:

    http://www.hydroquebec.com/residential/customer-space/rates/dynamic-pricing.html

  • Faiz imam 21:19 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    oh btw. this will only occur on weekdays. all weekends as well as major holidays are exempt.

  • Dhomas 07:12 on 2019-11-12 Permalink

    HQ also just launched a “Smart Home” program called “Hilo” where you get a bunch of smart devices that help to control your electricity usage. They’re letting people test it for free for just under a year, if anyone is interested:
    https://www.hiloenergie.com/en-ca/

• Kate 08:58 on 2019-11-11 Permalink | Reply  

  The Alouettes will not be winning the Grey Cup this year.

   

• Kate 08:51 on 2019-11-11 Permalink | Reply  

  The Journal talks to an expert (who used to be PQ urban affairs minister) who says the city has to offer a lot more free parking to attract suburbanites and keep its commercial streets viable. But a second expert notes that the suburbs have diversified a lot in recent years, and pairing that with online shopping means people don’t so much need the city for shopping or eating out.

  Jack, Chris, Douglas, and 6 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Jack 10:52 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    This is where this visionary started his political career “Il commence toutefois son implication politique comme conseiller municipal de la municipalité de Saint-Guillaume-de-Granada de 1983 à 1988.”
    I’m sure he had a lot of time to consider the urban experience in a place where people shopped at Couche Tard. The idea that more parking is an answer for downtown is insane.

  • Ephraim 12:21 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    So, where is the expert’s degree in urban planning from?

  • Spi 14:02 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    It’s shocking to me that in the 21st century some still think it’s a good idea to have people drive ten’s of kilometers to buy the same trinkets and objects that they could get closer to home.

  • CE 15:14 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    Do any of these “experts” ask the people living in cities if they want suburbanites driving more cars into the city or if they want to pay for them to leave their cars all over the city when for free?

  • qatzelok 15:40 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    “Miser sur le transport actif ou collectif n’est pas une stratégie gagnante pour attirer les banlieusards, a fait remarquer M. Trudel.”

    Trudel seems to suggest that suburbanites are welded-to-their-trucks, but if this is so (hopefully it isn’t), they probably do far more harm than good when they transit urban neighborhoods.

  • david100 15:44 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    Even if this bozo is correct and trips from the suburbs into Montreal will decline without the city’s taxpayers paying for the suburbanites to park, and even if this leads to a decline in the viability of some businesses in Montreal, and even if this leads to business closures . . . at the end of this chain, what we have is a cascading decline in the value of commercial space, with concomitant declines in commercial rents. We’d see an unpleasant transition, no question, but lower commercial rents foster greater variety and novelty in goods and services on offer, making the city even better.

  • Blork 17:17 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    I’m just one voice, but as someone who lives in the suburbs but spends time and money in the city, I don’t care about *free* parking. I don’t mind paying for parking. But there’s got to be parking in commercial areas (paid or otherwise).

  • Douglas 17:24 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    Free parking doesn’t work in areas where there are too many people.
    They will just park all day and leave their car there.

  • Chris 21:05 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    Douglas: which is the exact reason the parking meter was invented way the hell back in 1935.

    After all these decades, how much more evidence do free parking advocates need for its failure?!?

  • Jack 21:21 on 2019-11-11 Permalink

    By the way Trudel’s academic background is in school administration, not urban planning. His expertise was playing political footsie to get that Ministry. He was a federal NDP candidate , lost and became a PQ MNA.

• Kate 08:33 on 2019-11-11 Permalink | Reply  

  Le Devoir looks at how the coming of the REM will change Nuns’ Island.

  Faiz Imam is discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • Faiz Imam 07:58 on 2019-11-12 Permalink

    I will get on one of my M as n’y high horses to say that the only reason the municipality is making such significant changes to its landuse plan, in great opposition to the wishes of most residents, is because the PMAD forces them to do so.

• Kate 08:29 on 2019-11-11 Permalink | Reply  

  A man was stabbed at Guy and Ste-Catherine near midnight Sunday. He’s not expected to die.

   

• Kate 07:54 on 2019-11-11 Permalink | Reply  

  In the second instance of an attack on Douglas Hospital staff this year, a patient knocked a psychiatrist out with a chair. A recent CNESST report says hospital workers get hurt twice as often as other workers, on average; not all these injuries are caused by patients, of course.

   

• Kate 07:44 on 2019-11-11 Permalink | Reply  

  Some notes about Remembrance Day ceremonies. Westmount already held its ceremony Sunday: photos in the Gazette.