Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:58 on 2020-03-06 Permalink Reply  

• Francesco 10:26 on 2020-03-06 Permalink

  Park-&-ride is unacceptable at the West Island’s new REM stations set in the middle of nowhere, but it’ll be necessary for a metro in a dense neighbourhood.

  Bienvenue au Québec.

• Faiz imam 14:36 on 2020-03-06 Permalink

  Luckily this is an ongoing fight. We can push them indefinitely to develop that land, and I have to imagine eventually the parking will dissapear.

  All of Quebec’s development rules encourage TODs. This is explicitly against that.

  We see already that all the stations along the line are going to get density around them. Now its up to the community to show that a new neighborhood is more important than more parking.

• Ian 20:48 on 2020-03-06 Permalink

  Faiz, please. Do you really think discouraging park & ride is going to increase suburban ridership? Think as a user of the system instead of ideologically.

  Assuming there is no Park & Ride, let’s say you want to go from Sainte-Anne to downtown, for work. The REM station is north of the 40. You will have to figure out how to get to Sainte Anne by public transit and catch a shuttle bus to the REM station with enough time to spare to get to work. This will add about 50 minutes to your morning commute, which also includes taking public transit for another half hour or so from Bonaventure or Vendome to get to your actual work.

  Your other option is to drive the whole way, parking in a spot paid for by your company. Your total drive takes about an hour.

  Guess what most people will choose, given the option.

• Francesco 04:23 on 2020-03-07 Permalink

  Agree with Ian: ideologically, sure, we have to stop using cars; pragmatically, it doesn’t work currently. I see both points, but in our current paradigm doesn’t it make more sense to make some accommodations to get *more* people onto transit instead of discouraging them with restrictions? I don’t live in a TOD; when it opens, I’ll be about 3km by suburban, residential streets to the nearest REM station, streets that are hardly safe for walking along under the best conditions. Very few residential streets near me have sidewalks, but almost all appear to be superhighways to soccer mommies in SUVs and teenagers in Subarus. So when it opens, I’ll try to ride to the station (which will have all of 20 bike rack spaces), or maybe I’ll get an electric Bird-type scooter and bring it with me. In winter? Forget about it. With my current off-peak commute schedule, it takes me around 20 minutes both ways to cover the 13 km to and from work; by walk-bus-walk, it’s something like 95 minutes; by bike-REM-walk, I’m estimating around 40 minutes. The simple math suggests I should just drive. Ideologically, I’m ok with doubling my commute time. But make it easier for me in the winter.

• Spi 10:59 on 2020-03-07 Permalink

  @Ian, the problem with encouraging park & ride/investing in parking infrastructure is that you are shooting yourself in the foot down the line. Yes it’s ultimately better to complete some of the journey by public transit than none of it.

  The ultimate goal is to have people to complete as much of it as possible in public transit. By investing in parking you make it very difficult to convert those people from Walk + Drive + REM to Walk + Bus + REM. Let’s not even pretend that we would be able to remove those parking spots in the future.

• Francesco 15:43 on 2020-03-07 Permalink

  Yes yes, we get that, Spi. But again, not everything has to be a battle of absolutes based on ideology only. Step back from the pulpit and have a look at what the suburbs are really like. I’m not saying that the Anjou metro needs incentive parking, quite the opposite — it’s in a dense, built up area with sidewalks on both sides of every street. Well-designed transit goes where the people need it, not the other way around. The problem arises when poorly-conceived, mid-century suburbs sprawl outwards; even if transit is built for the thousands in the suburbs, very few are actually within a safe and reasonable walking distance of the stations. Few are even within safe walking range of bus stops on routes that meander through the neighbourhoods and eventually find their way to transit stations. Forcing restrictions on people in the sprawled suburbs, even those who *want* to adopt transit as a primary means of getting about, will only encourage them to hop back in their cars.

• Uatu 23:52 on 2020-03-07 Permalink

  Yes safety is an overlooked issue especially with irregular hours. My female co-workers either drive themselves home or are picked up by family members from the park and ride if they work past rush hour. I know of a young woman who barely escaped being assaulted while waiting at a bus stop for an early morning shift. The idea of only using public transport sounds great, but the reality is different when the sun sets and you have to walk home alone even in the burbs.

• Kevin 12:06 on 2020-03-08 Permalink

  Public transit advocates keep thinking of planning for the hypothetical future and neglecting the actual reality that exists.
  Which is why we have Azur handrails that nobody under 175 cm/5’9” can comfortably reach, and so the STM has to retrofit straps so people will move away from the doors.

  In other words, build a park and ride so the people in the regions can take some of their commute on transit.

• Ant6n 19:22 on 2020-03-08 Permalink

  that’s a straw man. Transit advocates have been complaining about the azur layout since day one.