There are some ramp closures on the Turcot overnight Friday, and not much else in the road closures dossier. Other notes from TVA.
Updates from February, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Lionel Perez knows there’s one phrase he can always trot out against Projet: the claim that they’re “at war with the car.” It’s brought out, dusted off and used again in response to the increase of parking vignette pricing in Ville-Marie. That vignette prices hadn’t been raised in the area since 1989 (before there even were boroughs), and the highest it goes is $250 a year which is, I dare to suggest, still a damn good deal for a year’s parking in the heart of the city, is not acknowledged by Mr. Perez, who’s just making hay as usual.
Chris
It’s a damn damn damn good deal.
The current price, $52 in 1989-dollars, with inflation, is $93 in 2019-dollars. So the increase to $100 for small cars is nothing.
Even the $250 for big cars doesn’t even reach the break-even point for the City.
So the supposedly anti-car zealots at Projet are *still* subsidizing motorists with tax payer dollars. Many people in Ville Marie don’t own cars. Their taxes are subsidizing car owners. So backwards.
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Kate
Names for 25 of the 26 initial REM stations have been unveiled, with one exception – the “Griffintown-Bernard-Landry” station whose announcement caused a minor furore in December.
However, “[the Irish community] found it offensive to name the station after Landry, who they associate with the destruction of Cree burial sites in northwestern Quebec in favour of Hydro‑Quebec projects”? This is the first I’ve heard of this, and if someone is claiming this to be true, it’s such bullshit. The Irish are not losing sleep over Cree burial sites, but their spokesman knows this is a more politically canny rationalization than the truth: most members of the Irish community are anglophones and Landry was a Péquiste. Nobody wants to spell it out, so I will.
Em
They also have continually refused to reveal the location of the station. There’s clearly some sort of discussions happening, perhaps regarding the addition of a second station at Bassin Peel to serve the future hypothetical baseball stadium. Then they could name one after Landry and one after the Irish. Problem solved!
Faiz Imam
Reports have already come out that the station will be built on rue Ottawa, and in the future a 2nd station may pop up south of the basin if a new development gets done (baseball stadium or not).
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2019/11/16/la-station-du-rem-pres-de-la-gare-centrale
I like the other names. It’s good that the terminal is not called dix30. Its not ideal to use a commercial trademark, even if its technically a geographical term.
“Ville-de-Mont-Royal” is a bit cumbersome though.
Marie Curie is a nice idea.
The rest seem pretty obvious and reasonable.
Ephraim
Will Marie Curie station glow iridescently?
Kate
We can hope so.
Ian
It only makes sense the city continue to slowly erase the history of Griffintown & its Irish, whether it’s the open racism of a Drapeau or the oblique small-mindedness of Plante.
Donovan King
Just to clarify some errors, 40% of Quebeckers have Irish roots whereas only 9% of Quebeckers are anglophones. Also, the Irish community shows solidarity with First Nations people and empathizes with British colonization, genocide and cemetery destruction. The REM just dug up over a dozen of our ancestors to plant a pylon through our Famine burial ground. You can read the rationale and follow the links through the posted website (OTL Blog).
Michael Black
Well Annie Bannantyne in Red River was of Irish descent, she’s known for horsewhipping Charles Mair in Feb 1869 for his commemts about the Metis women of Red River. She’s related to Louis Riel, I think through her mother. I’ve seen it suggested that Annie’s action influenced Louis to act.
Of course, the real surprise is that Louis was really only interested in Metis rights, not native rights. But James Ross certainly argued that they be included.
But Kate’s point is valid. Like I said last week, people leverage with what is most likely to work. The fuss about the name has been about the Irish. Just because someone invokes the cousins doesn’t mean it’s something everyone wants. And everytime a European gets outraged about the way the cousins are treated it often means they are speaking rather than letting the cousins speak for themselves.
If you think native people can’t be tour guides in Montreal, I’d say either you are leveraging, or stereotyping the cousins as poor and uneducated.
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Kate
Not having seen his name in the media for a couple of weeks, Lionel Perez says he wants city hall to vote to condemn the actions of radical vegans.
David100
A real piece of work, this guy.
Obviously those moronic vandals should be tossed into the slammer for a spell to get them some perspective. But it’s a (very minor) police and judicial matter, not something important.
Chris
David100, since you seem to be agreeing with him, why is he “a real piece of work”? Honest question.
david100
I’m not agreeing with him at all.
Obviously, the vandals are morons.
But I don’t agree that this is a matter that the city should condemn.
Michael Black
The story I saw in the Gazette this morning seemed to suggest he’s concerned with “invasion” type activity, rather than the specific cause. Going into a place is different from standing outside with signs.
Come November it will be forty years since Tooker organized such a thing, at a fundraiser/meet in a church basement for a federal candidate in Outremont. They weren’t happy we showed up, and I would never do it again, it did cross a line.
How to protest is separate from the cause. Over the past twenty years there has been a shift in protest, to be obnoxious or obstructing, but without a willingness to pay the consequences.
Not different from people thinking they need to wear masks, or block traffic and then run off.
Sixty years ago this month, students sat down at lunch counters to try to be served. They either got lunch, were harrassed or arrested. They knew what they wanted was right, so they could use that alone. Gandhi’s truth force.
John Lewis was one of them, still talking about nonviolence. He’s built to last, but is being treated for cancer.
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Kate
A woman was knocked down by a vehicle in a private garage entrance in Anjou on Wednesday evening, and later died in hospital.
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Kate
Railway blockage protests are continuing, with VIA Rail not expected to resume anytime soon, and Exo’s Candiac line out of service.
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Kate
An urbanist’s recent study shows that it’s the commercial streets with the least parking spots that have the fewest empty storefronts and thus the liveliest mercantile life. An interesting graph is included.
Ian
Correlation doesn’t equal causation…
I don’t think that the goal of a neighbourhood should be to make it convenient for people to park there above all else and I definitely disagree with business owners that kvetch endlessly about how people from the burbs don’t go to their business areas because there isn’t any parking…
But I’m getting a little tired of these studies being trotted out that are obviously tainted by confirmation bias.
Hm let’s think why else business might do better in le Quartier Latin than Ste Kitty…
Maybe smaller streets with less room for parking are already more of a neighbourhood, with more local shoppers. Maybe they’re also adjacent to residential neighbourhoods, so that their clientele tends to walk more. Maybe rent tends to be lower on these smaller streets so more businesses stay open. Maybe more diverse business areas with more small businesses do better than business areas on large commercial streets in times of downturn as their business models tend to be more flexible and not as dependent on constant high volume sales.
Hmm so many maybes…. maybe parking is only one small factor and is actually an emergent property and not a cause.
Kate
I don’t think the case is correlation-causation, mostly that the numbers shown are entirely opposite to the usual claim that the way to revive commercial streets is to offer more parking. As you suggest, there are a lot of other factors in the equation.
Ian
When conducting a study, it is easy to find an answer you are actively seeking to be true.
Matthew
Obviously then there’s no point in studying anything ever, and should just base all planning decisions on grudges and hunches and anecdotes.
Kevin
Looking at the chart it seems about half of the areas he analyzed do not show the correlation that is referred to.
The smallest number of parking spaces has the highest vacancy rate. The second-lowest parking is ranked #7 out of 16 for vacancy.It seems like a very selective interpretation of data
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