Urbanist Gérard Beaudet examines how CDPQ Infra ordains transit for the Montreal area without any consultation with the city or with the ARTM, the entity that’s supposed to orchestrate transit planning for the greater urban area.
Updates from December, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Heritage Montreal’s blog has a look at ten years of the Montreal Signs Project.
MarcG
Wow, Mars Comics, was that a crazy place or what? I spent hours rummaging through their junk with my friends as a teen.
Kate
Where was it? I wasn’t a comics buff myself (not having realized, as a teen, that I would grow up into an entertainment world dominated by comics and the aesthetic of comic books).
Update: I see from this PDF of a very old sci-fi newsletter that it was at 531A Ste‑Catherine West.
MarcG
That looks right to me. They moved to a location across the street at some point and were there for a few years before they closed. I didn’t go for the comics – they had piles of vinyl, casettes, and CDs, and a mishmash of other junk.
Uatu
Wow monsffa! That’s a real blast from the past!
Michael Black
Monsffa still exists, they’ve been having virtual meetings this year.
But they were about to leave their long time hotel, about January they started looking for a new location because the room rental was going up in a few months. They had narrowed it down to a few locations when the pandemic hit.I think they’re church basement bound, though maybe they’ll stay with virtual meetings.
They have a used book sale every November. A few years back they had one after a member moved and gave the club a lot of SF books. But they’ve kept it as an annual event. It preceeds the November meeting (when things are normal) and is open to the public. A better chance of finding good SF, and finding.people who want it. I went to one used book sale a few years ago, and they ended up with a lot of SF books, obviously from one person. And I figured most of it wouod remain afterwards, not enough interested people.
Kevin
Michael Black
Cool!I really do need to make a better list of things I want to read/make up the missing volumes in my collection. Last year I picked up the Conan book I had been trying to find since the early 00s.
DeWolf
I guess it was before the Signs Project was officially launched, but I remember meeting Matt Soar in 2007 and he showed me some of the signs he had already managed to collect. I really hope that one day the signs can be properly displayed in a permanent exhibition.
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Kate
Emergency room nurses are being told to cancel their vacations and make themselves more available to work over the holidays.
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Kate
Does a three-hour Christmas radio show from the 1970s count as a local tradition? Evidently the Gazette thinks so, and gives a lot of play here to the Paul Reid show from that era.
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Kate
The mayor has extended the free parking arrangement in Ville-Marie into January, even though stores considered non-essential will be shut down during at least some of that time.
Kevin
Come park and window shop!
I’ve lost track of how many times PM has tried to relaunch Montreal with the same idea since the pandemic started. 7 times?
Kate
I can’t blame them for pushing back against their “anti-car” reputation by making parking easier, but it does seem fairly pointless when stores will mostly be closed.
Chris
So win-win then? Good non-anti-car optics, without actually increasing car use (since there’s nothing to drive to).
Kate
People can order things and pick them up, they just can’t shop, so there’s that. And some categories of store are considered essential – pharmacies, groceries and so on.
Uatu
Well at least weekend shift workers at the Neuro and the Gen can park downtown for free
Bill Binns
I have been to some places that were doing the “essential businesses only” thing. I think you are all about to be very surprised by what is considered “essential”. In some places businesses are allowed to decide for themselves if they are essential. If clothing and shoes are considered essential then St Cat could look pretty normal.
DeWolf
They aren’t, Bill. The government has published a list of what is considered essential and it’s more restrictive than in the spring:
https://www.quebec.ca/sante/problemes-de-sante/a-z/coronavirus-2019/liste-commerces-prioritaires/
I’m curious what ideas Kevin has to relaunch Montreal during the pandemic.
Joey
Since the pint of meter parking is to ration scarce parking spaces, and since everything is more or less closed, there’s really no reason to charge for parking.
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Kate
CTV has a brief look at the bike courier services operating out of the old bus station on Berri, and how busy they have been.
DeWolf
So far these bike couriers have proven way more reliable than Canada Post or anybody else. It’s also nice knowing that the coffee beans I order (for instance) aren’t being sent to me by way of a big truck trundling through the streets, polluting the atmosphere.
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Kate
Federal numbers show that in December, 40 flights landing at Trudeau had someone aboard who tested positive for Covid-19.
The last 24 hours broke a Quebec record, with 2,247 new cases diagnosed, and 74 deaths.
Update: Canada has extended its embargo on flights from the UK for another 72 hours while Justin Trudeau reminds us that this is no time for trips abroad.
Thomas H
With YUL averaging 110 flights and 8,000 passengers per day these days, those numbers seem fairly on track with the amount of active cases in Quebec/Canada. The question is: “is there transmission to other passengers on board?”. With universal mask-wearing and air that recycles every three minutes, I suspect the answer is “not very much”.
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Kate
Forecasts say we’ll see a high of 9° on the 24th and up to 13° or possibly 15° on Christmas, with wind and rain.
Michael Black
My birthday is Oct 23, my sister’s is Nov 20, and Christmas Dec 25. 4, 4, and 5 weeks apart, always on the same day. If Friday actually happens, all three had abnormally high temperatures.
EmilyG
I’m dreaming of a wet Christmas.
Tim
Very on-brand for 2020.
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Kate
Here’s a big surprise: with a serious lockdown coming as of Boxing Day, people are crowding into shopping malls. “Be careful!” says François Legault.
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Kate
The Gazette’s Brendan Kelly talked to a honcho at Evenko about a year with no concerts.
What can I say, we’re into the Christmas news lull now.
Michael Black
But this sort of thing can be written ahead of time, so there’s content at a time when many get time off.
More to gripe about is that Brendan Kelly seems to be writing about people he knows, and they most so far have it pretty good. The Westmount High gym teacher may be more everyman than a major event planner or an online poker mogul, but it has left out the people who’ve had a really bad pandemic year.
All these 9 months there’s not been much mention of people without credit cards, how online grocery ordering is really aimed at convenience for people with money, how difficult it seems to be to get a big bag of brown rice or beans sent to your home. What happens when you can’t get to multiple grocery stores to buy things because they are on sale, or when there are no rummage or book sales or garage sales?
A few of these things get mentioned, but not much. And there are endless stories about businesses closing or adapting, and well off people get prominent column coverage, but very little written from the viewpoint of someone with little money.
EmilyG
This isn’t particularly “lull” news for arts workers.
I know that it’s easy to criticize higher-ups at big organizations for having a hard year. And I know it’s easy for a lot of people to dismiss the arts/culture/music scene as though it’s something unimportant.
But so many of my friends and colleagues are musicians, or otherwise work in the arts, and they’ve had a dismal year. (Which ties in with Michael Black’s comment above, about how people who have had a really bad year tend to not be written about.)
Yes, Osheaga is a huge event with a lot of successful, big-name artists, but there are also many smaller bands who play there and at other, smaller events. Many of the musicians I know have lost a whole lot of money in touring revenue (which wouldn’t have even been a huge amount of money.) And the big majority of musicians hardly make any money from streaming services.
Kate
Sorry, EmilyG. Interesting stories are often scarce this time of year and i was link-diving. Did not mean to dismiss the troubles being felt by people in the arts.
EmilyG
I understand.
Perhaps it’s telling about media reporting on arts in general, that this story is being published during a time when there are more quiet news days (though artists have been having a hard time all year.)
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Kate
Quebec issued thousands of masks to daycare centres from May to November, but is now admitting they were no good or at least “non conformes”. I suppose it’s possible they still worked as a barrier, if worn properly, just not to the level specified.
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Kate
La Presse has a story with photos about a meals on wheels service and how it works.
Another story a day later about meal deliveries to itinerants around Place Émilie-Gamelin.
Daniel D 22:54 on 2020-12-23 Permalink
Allowing a private organisation free rein to build what it wants is one thing (and not a good thing), but if I’ve understood correctly the CDPQ can actively prevent competing transit from being built, or even revoke existing transit routes?
Etienne 23:50 on 2020-12-23 Permalink
I hate to be that guy, but if we just look at the big picture, before cdpq was given their « superpowers » nothing never got built in montreal. Blue line extension stalled for 30 years… now we finally have movement and projects getting built.
In my opinion, more transit is the goal and it is what we are getting and it’s great.
I cannot explain why the “old” way was not working for transit projects to always be stalled by consultation after consultation after study but at least now the future looks bright.
It might not be the perfect solution nor fill the need entirely but it is at least SOMETHING and also pretty fast.
Taylor Noakes 00:18 on 2020-12-24 Permalink
To Etienne’s comment:
1- Montreal is legally prohibited, by the province, from building mass transit infrastructure. This has been the case since 1988.
2- the province stalled or cancelled all the projects that went nowhere in the past
So “the old way didn’t work” because we can’t do it ourselves and are dependent on provincial politicians to do anything, and they’re not incentivized or motivated to get it done.
Ergo a city with excellent public transit has had control handed over to a private interest whose built a monorail to replace high capacity trains, in the process arranging to profit off it for themselves.
We had no choice. We were screwed.
Kevin 00:21 on 2020-12-24 Permalink
I’m projecting, but I think that when the REM launches the Deux Montagnes line, the pandemic WFH aftereffects will be the only thing that prevents disaster.
Daniel D 10:18 on 2020-12-24 Permalink
“Montreal is legally prohibited, by the province, from building mass transit infrastructure. This has been the case since 1988”
I’m curious, what’s the history behind such a draconian policy?
Kate 12:58 on 2020-12-24 Permalink
I’m hoping Taylor Noakes comes back and explains in more detail, but I suspect that a lot of what Montreal administrations have experienced since 1976 derive from the excesses of the Olympics, when Quebec had to clamp down on massive cost overruns sparked by both poor planning and corruption. In a sense, Montreal’s been in tutelage to Quebec ever since that time.
DeWolf 13:58 on 2020-12-24 Permalink
Taylor makes some very salient points but I think they’d be even more credible without the hyperbole. The REM is deeply flawed but it’s not a monorail, even in the Simpsons sense, and it doesn’t reduce capacity on the Deux-Montagnes line – it increases it by 2.5 times. The problem with the REM has to do with the CDPQ’s planning and management, and the Quebec government’s imperious neglect of regional planning, not with the technology or rolling stock, which is already in use in dozens of cities around the world.
GC 14:14 on 2020-12-24 Permalink
My first thought was the Olympics, too, but then why did it take until 1988? Did it just need a particular government with the right majority? I was still a child in 1988, but I’m guessing we knew about the Olympics corruption before that…
Ant6n 14:37 on 2020-12-24 Permalink
The infrastructure does indeed reduce capacity. The problem in the dm line was an operating one, coupled with a lack of vehicles. So the old schedules operated at a fraction of the capacity, the new rem will operate at the limit — except at the high peak, where the capacities were somewhat similar.
But it’s true this is just one of the problems of the project. And given our governance and the impossibility to inform the public about the problems of a project like this, it’s kind of a lost cause.
DeWolf 15:16 on 2020-12-24 Permalink
Yes, you’re right, the DM line’s theoretical capacity was higher, if new trains were added and some of the more fundamental problems were fixed (turns out there was unexploded ordinance in the tunnel!). But given the political realities that would never have happened. It should have happened a long time ago, but it didn’t.
It seems like the only two acceptable positions on the REM are naïve boosterism or outright cynical rejection. How about a bit of nuance? Isn’t it possible to acknowledge that for all its flaws, REM will be a net improvement for public transit connectivity in Greater Montreal, while also acknowledging that the process that led to its creation is deeply problematic? Some people seem to be rooting for the REM to fail, which seems like pure dogmatism.
Taylor Noakes 18:10 on 2020-12-24 Permalink
Oh what fun!
To answer some of your many excellent questions:
1. Yes, it’s somewhat related to the Olympics. My understanding is that the city pushed the province to partly finance the Green Line extension towards Honore-Beaugrand and the province’s responsibility increased from that point onward. The initial system was entirely within the city limits, with the exceptions of Atwater & Longueuil, but to my knowledge Montreal worked out agreements with each on a one-on-one basis. There was a predecessor to the AMT called the BMT, whose job was to continue managing Metro expansion. IIRC the BMT helped figure out the jurisdictional issues relating to the subsequent expansions, which would have involved separate communities (i.e. VSL, Lasalle, Verdun, Outremont etc).There was also the planned use of disused CNR tracks for a “Metro de surface’ which would, many many years later become the AMT’s Deux-Montagnes and Mascouche lines. In truth, the original proposal would have involved service rates closer to Metro levels than those of commuter trains.
There was nonetheless a jurisdictional issue between the STCUM and the BMT in the early 1980s. One early mention of the idea to propose a moratorium on Metro construction is a Gazette editorial from 1983, arguing it’s too expensive and the population density doesn’t merit it. Old arguments of the right on transit die hard. My understanding is that the moratorium came into effect during the second Bourassa admin, and is partly why the Blue Line was never completed all the way out to Anjou as was proposed back in the late 1970s. It’s also why the White Line was never built. Riders of the Blue Line will also note the trains are three cars shorter than the Orange and Green lines even though the stations (or at least the Westernmost stations) have fullsize platforms. There was concern the Blue Line wouldn’t be used as much as the others, as the city was still depopulating well into the 1990s. Whether the city never got more trains to run full size trains on the Blue Line or not enough is something I still need to research.
So yes to Kate’s point, I think tutelage is an apt description, at least with regards to transit.
Craig Sauve once told me there’s an additional complication in that the city can’t independently raise the funds for such massive capital projects.
It’s also worth considering the nature of the Metro as originally built, which is to say, Drapeau got a great deal on construction costs because the Metro was built, in a sense, in the cheapest way possible. Tunnels weren’t bored, for the most part, but rather whole sections of street were excavated (much like in the case of the McGill REM station). In the case of the Green Line’s Atwater to Place des Arts section, the city just destroyed buildings in a straight line and put de Maisonneuve on top.
Also I think a dozen people died during the construction. Such were the days of radical urban depopulation and large non-unionized immigrant workforces. Urban residents, mostly renters, had no vote back in the mid-1960s (not that it really mattered anyways when the SPVM could randomly throw out ballots) so Drapeau could do pretty much whatever he wanted. This too plays into why the Quebec govt got involved.
2. @DeWolf – see I disagree, I think Sabia is very much like Lyle Lanley and that Coderre was very much like Mayor Quimby. Where our situation differs is that Sabia sold the REM to Couillard who then decided this would solve Montreal’s transit problems. Montreal didn’t win several billion dollars that were then exploited by an unsrupulous snakeoil salesman, rather, the snakeoil salesman decided both price and technology and put Quebec and Canadian taxpayers on the hook, both on the front and back end.
I think there are other aspects of the project that are worth additional scrutiny, in addition to those you mentioned. I’m concerned with the control the CDPQ has been given over setting fares, in the redundancy that’s been eliminated, in the profit motive.
The REM was designed to make money by and for people who generally do not use public transit. Sabia doesn’t ride the bus. Moreover, the REM connects properties owned by Ivanhoe-Cambridge, the CDPQ’s real estate arm.
It’s more than a little peculiar that the CDPQ is building a new REM station under McGill College when the REM is supposed to use the existing train station at Gare Centrale. Weirder still that there’s no thru-connection. Guess who owns nearly every building on McGill College, including Place Montreal Trust, the Eaton Centre, Place Ville Marie, as well as the Queen Elizabeth?
My biggest issue with the technology and rolling stock is that we’ve sacrificed local construction for cheaper foreign imports, and ensured they’d be automated to eliminate needing to hire unionized transit workers. Again, this project is driven by profit over all else.
I’m also not crazy that the REM was supposed to seamlessly integrate onto an existing track system and now everything is being rebuilt such that only the REM can use it. The system could have been designed so that multiple rail vehicles could have used the same track, but this would bite into the potential profit to be extracted from it. It needlessly limits adaptation to future requirements, essentially meaning that we’ll need full rebuilds every time we need to expand. That said, it now seesm that the REM is the only option, so there’s a path dependency problem on top of everything else.
I’m not rooting for the REM to fail, I write about it and will continue to analyse and opine on it because I want Montreal to take control of it and try to fix some of the very important problems now before it’s really too late. I also think that, expensive though it may be, expanding the Metro is the most sensible thing to do.
I’m concerned the REM will not operate ideally in winter. This isn’t a ridiculous thing to be concerned about either, the original Champlain Bridge didn’t take winter into account.
Our city should be fully in charge of transit planning and infrastructure development, and it should always and only be designed to maximize accessibility and connectivity. I feel too much of the thinking behind the REM was “we absolutely need an airport connection” or “trains are cool, people need to see that” or even still that this would be a great way to force new ‘transit oriented development’.
At the end of the day my over-riding concern is that, 10 years from now this thing won’t be working as well as it could and that there’ll be a trickle-down effect that undermines the vitality and utility of our transit system, just as we need it to be working at its best level. And we’ll all be wondering how we got to this point, and will have no choice but to coninue using something that wasn’t very well designed in the first place.
In other words, that we’ll have learned nothing from the Metro’s flaws.
Kate 18:24 on 2020-12-24 Permalink
Thank you, Mr Noakes.
GC 00:58 on 2020-12-25 Permalink
I didn’t even know about the proposed White Line, so I just Googled that one… Interesting.
ant6n 08:44 on 2020-12-25 Permalink
@DeWolf
I’d say it’s a strawman to pretend that our opinions are black and white, and only yours is the only nuanced one. I think all opinions are nuanced to some extend, and we’re all on a white to black spectrum (except faiz imam, who’s an unapologetic booster). My position is a pretty dark gray, Taylor Noakes position is an even darker gray. I don’t think I have to cheer the REM at all or acknowledge that yes, omg, finally some sort of rapid transit is getting built. CDPQInfra with its PR minions and stretching of the truth has already convinced most people of that, and virtually the whole political class is playing along.
Btw, to those who say nothing is getting built in Montreal in the last 30 years (usually referring to the blue line), that’s not true. Almost a billion dollars was spent on the Deux-Montagnes line to almost make it a rapid transit line between 1990 and 2016, we got another 900M for the Mascouche line, 175Mio for parking, etc. etc. Look at the listing below extracted from all capital plans (I linked a spreadsheet where I’d extracted all the data some days ago). I hope you see a pattern. Spoiler: the province spent it’s money on suburban centric projects, the money that went towards the metro is either for suburbia (Laval Extension) or necessary repair (new trains, maintenance facilities).
Another point: excusing that the DM line was not upgraded to proper rapid transit standards, which could’ve done for perhaps 200-400Mio, by saying it was not possible within the “political realities” is to me an unapologetic boosting of the REM. It was a failure by AMT and politicians, and claiming it would’ve been impossible is just an attempt boost the myth of the CDPQ as our savior.
AMT Capital Spending ~1993-1016
System (or commuter rail line); Mio$
DM 867
VH 417
SJ 593
SH 370
CA 208
MA 866
metro 982
bus 433
other 188
parking 175