Montreal City Weblog

Kate 20:48 on 2020-01-10 Permalink Reply  

• Ian Cordner 21:43 on 2020-01-10 Permalink

  Demolish the whole damn thing!

• Dhomas 07:13 on 2020-01-11 Permalink

  Not sure about demolishing a major link in our transport infrastructure. However, I would have liked to see the government start to move the highway underground. Having the elevated highway is really ugly, dirty, and cumbersome to anyone not in a car. I can just imagine all the space that would be liberated if it was underground instead (put some parks up above!). But it seems no government is keen to do that kind of project since Boston’s Big Dig debacle, though.

• Spi 09:45 on 2020-01-11 Permalink

  You can’t convert it to a tunnel, the met is also a national highway through which dangerous materials transit every day (since they aren’t allowed in tunnels they can’t take the 20)

• Kate 10:01 on 2020-01-11 Permalink

  If the fire that broke out on the Met in 2016 had happened in a tunnel, more than one person would’ve perished, it’s true.

• Ephraim 14:36 on 2020-01-11 Permalink

  Dhomas… you mean like the “Big Dig” in Boston?

• Filp 20:24 on 2020-01-11 Permalink

  The big dig in Boston was transformative, but people have to remember that it was right through downtown Boston, which justified the project. We already have our big dig equivalent, which would be the Ville Marie and Viger tunnels. If Boston’s elevated highway was away from the city center like the Met is, they wouldn’t have sunk so much money into tunneling it, which is prohibitively expensive. Burying the met on that stretch would also probably make the big dig look like a bargain, considering the length would be almost twice as long (5km vs 2.5km according to Wikipedia).

• Jonathan 09:03 on 2020-01-12 Permalink

  If they are going to keep it more or less as an elevated highway, I would like to see them reorganise the columns so that busses could run on a dedicated lane underneath. I’ve seen this in many cities and it really does make sense. I would also love if the MTQ recognised that this goes through a very urbanised area and plant some damn trees along the met side as well as the cremazie sides (not sure who has jurisdiction of cremazie)

• Jack 11:10 on 2020-01-12 Permalink

  @ Flip the Big Dig cost 15 billion dollars and solved nothing , Boston traffic was just pushed farther out. I think the only way long term is to do two things , raise the gas tax and build no new auto infrastructure.
  https://www.wired.com/2008/11/youve-got-to-ha/

• qatzelok 11:44 on 2020-01-12 Permalink

  I understand the need for the Met for 18-wheelers and other commercial transportation. But we have to get all the single-passenger commuters off it:

  They have destroyed several neighborhoods (of St-Michel, St-Leonard, VSL, Parc X) with bad traffic manners, dangerous callousness towards the locals, and the accelarated deterioration of city streets in the very places where the locals don’t have the money to keep repaving them (for the uncaring and unpaying suburban zombies).

• DeWolf 13:55 on 2020-01-12 Permalink

  Here’s an idea: if the MTQ insists on rebuilding the Metropolitan, make sure Crémazie is traffic calmed so it isn’t such a horrible and dangerous street for pedestrians. Then open some markets in the space beneath the elevated structure: flower markets, flea markets, farmers markets. It’s an all-weather space that is currently being wasted on parking, and if Crémazie wasn’t such a traffic sewer, it could serve as a point of connection between the surrounding neighbourhoods, rather than a barrier.