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Updates from January, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• Kate 17:02 on 2021-01-02 Permalink | Reply  

  In the list of urban projects linked earlier, the REM gets a nod from urban development expert Marc-André Carignan. But Anton Dubrau, who often comments here, has given me permission to reproduce two photos of Hamburg he posted to Twitter recently, showing what an elevated train looks like in that city.

  

  

  Someone else in that thread mentioned an elevated train that goes through The Hague in the Netherlands. The image from that article that seems most like René-Lévesque is this one (and it’s worth looking at the article in that link for other views):

  

  The REM was one thing when we were speaking airily about running it across bridges to Brossard. I have a feeling it will be another thing entirely when some version of this is occupying space on René-Lévesque – the street where the city has insisted that parades like the Carifiesta must take place. The street will have an entirely different character once some version of this is slicing through downtown.

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  • DeWolf 18:04 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    I personally think the example you’ve shown of the Hague looks very nice, but given the political realities of this province, we’d be much more likely to get the Hamburg monstrosity. I know I argued in another thread that elevated structures are not inherently bad (I think the Hague railway proves my point), but I do agree that it’s a mistake to build one on René-Lévesque.

    Best case scenario, the whole REM de l’Est is scrapped and that money is invested in the Pink Line and a tramway to Pointe-aux-Trembles. Second best case, somebody coughs up extra cash to tunnel the REM through downtown. Third best case, there’s an international design competition for both the elevated structure and the public space underneath.

    Sadly my money is not on any of those scenarios taking place.

  • Bill Binns 18:20 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    I was all for an elevated train down the middle of Rene Levesque but that 2nd photo reminded me that our version would almost certainly be covered with graffiti long before it even opened. RL may be the worst street downtown to be pedestrian but at least it looks ok for the moment.

  • ant6n 18:23 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    I’m dreaming East-West tunnel trunk line under Rene-Levesque, urban streetcar trunk on Rene-Levesque.

  • MarcG 19:04 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    I like the pink. Imagine hanging over the edge and risking your life for that.

  • Tim F 19:20 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    I remember once upon a time seeing someone (a railfan, not a professional outfit) dreaming of sacrificing two lanes in each direction through the Ville-Marie tunnel to build a public transit line that would connect the Westmount division of the CPR that goes to the Bell Centre and build a crosstown rail line to the east end. A pipe dream, I’m sure, but one I’ve been thinking about ever since they announced the REM de l’Est.

  • PO 20:52 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    Aesthetically, I like it. Be it a winner of a design contest or a concrete monstrosity, I like it. I have no reason other than that I just think it’s neat. And I’m not buying into the maybe-cynical view that it’ll ruin the streetscape or be desolate and creepy below. The areas of new York I’ve been that are covered with those steel tracks and trusses are always brimming with life and activity – and ReneLevesque is already well traversed by pedestriants so I see no issue.

  • Kevin 21:07 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    All I think of is the Rem East running alongside a new development by the old Rad Can building and blocking the view of the gates to Chinatown.

  • david247 01:06 on 2021-01-03 Permalink

    I mean, is this really the discourse?

    First, there’s very little chance that the 10 billion dollar project will be built, we all know that.

    Second, if something did come together, it’s going to be far more expensive to do it by tunnel, so that these aesthetic concerns are actually anti-transit positions. That is, if you say ‘I only want it if I can’t see it’ or ‘I only want it if I find it attractive’ then you’re really saying ‘I don’t want it,’ ‘I want it to be more expensive’ or ‘I want it to serve fewer communities and stations.’ I know you have only fifty dollars, and I’m in earnest that I want to have dinner with you tonight, but I’ll only eat dinner with you if at Toqué.

    Third, how could anyone conceive it to be some egregious urban intervention that some elevated train would run down one of Montreal’s ugliest and most deliberately functional streets? It would be great!! People would love it! Elevated trains are far better than underground trains on every single level, aside from waiting outside for them in winter.

    Finally and more broadly, in this day and age, can we still consider urban rail transportation as this dainty thing that has to aesthetically improve the city? Sprawl has fundamentally upended the economics that created the great stations and the rest, and it’s no Europe. An Anton – for whom it’s perfect or nothing – can roll back to Europe and scoff at the simple rubes in Montreal trying to make it work but, come on, that’s just not in the cards here. There’s a minimal chance this thing will be built, and if it is, we should be thrilled.

  • Ant6n 08:36 on 2021-01-03 Permalink

    Dude calm down. I just posted some pictures of what cheap elevated concrete construction looks like after a couple of years. You’re turning this discourse into a bunch of personal attacks on a strawman.

    Just fyi, I agree elevated rail has its place. I think it was a mistake that the Montreal metro doesnt support outside extensions. But I don’t think it should go everywhere, and I think we should think about improving our downtown hellscapes.

    @Tim F
    I’d proposed using the 720 for transit, for example at Montreal downtown consultations. See slides: https://ocpm.qc.ca/sites/ocpm.qc.ca/files/pdf/P-83/7.39.1_ocpm_presentation_-_centre-ville_-_2016.pdf

  • Tim F 12:06 on 2021-01-03 Permalink

    @Ant6n: nice presentation! Re: using the Ville-Marie, it was not the one I saw but it was the same idea.

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• Kate 15:55 on 2021-01-02 Permalink | Reply  

  News media have given up on telling us that the urban agglomeration’s state of emergency has been renewed for another five-day block. I suppose some provision in the law determines that states of emergency lapse after 5 days if not renewed? In any case, the emergency has been in place, renewed every five days uninterruptedly since March 27, 2020.

  What would they do if some other emergency came along, like an earthquake or a meteor strike? Is there a state of super-emergency available?

  In other pandemic news, CTV points out that the Covid numbers we see over the next few days will decide whether this period of lockdown ends on January 11 or not. And we’ve yet to see the inevitable spike from holiday gatherings, so don’t get out your dancing shoes yet.

  Update: Aaron Derfel’s Twitter thread about the current state of things, which includes a link to this Gazette op-ed by two doctors strongly in favour of a no-exceptions lockdown to break the chain of transmission.

   

• Kate 15:51 on 2021-01-02 Permalink | Reply  

  The city has tweeted that snow removal will begin soon.

   

• Kate 12:52 on 2021-01-02 Permalink | Reply  

  Some of the last wetlands in Montreal are out near the airport, and people want them protected. On Flickr, in the Montreal nature group I manage, here’s a selection of photos tagged Technoparc, which gives a sense of the complex ecosystem of the area.

   

• Kate 12:04 on 2021-01-02 Permalink | Reply  

  The Port of Montreal saw a 14% drop in throughput in 2020, which TVA is blaming not only on the pandemic, but also on rail blockades early in the year and labour actions by some port employees.

  A city this size would have needed the same amount of food in lockdown, and we might have bought more electronics to amuse ourselves and make it easier to work from home. Along with the working from home, I imagine we bought less clothes, except for slippers and soft pants, which probably saw a boom…

   

• Kate 11:59 on 2021-01-02 Permalink | Reply  

  A QMI writer talked to a couple of urbanism experts about the top five best and top five worst projects in the urban area currently. Not all my readers will agree with all these opinions, but the piece is worth a read.

  Marian Scott at the Gazette lists ways in which the pandemic will shape the city, how we work, buy and live. Interesting takeaway: only roughly four in ten jobs can be done from home. The majority of jobs are hands-on.

  Photos of 2020 from CBC.

  JP Karwacki ends 2020 with a toast to Montreal.

  Tim F, DeWolf, Kevin, and 3 others are discussing. Toggle Comments

   

  • DeWolf 13:26 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    A few thoughts on that QMI list:

    Royalmount is definitely deserves its place at the top of the list. As it is currently conceived it’s a terrible project.

    They don’t really give any good reasons to oppose the densification of Nun’s Island. The Pointe Nord is already quite dense, and the rezoning on the other side is focused on the commercial area, which is currently a suburban mess of giant parking lots and strip malls. As far as I’m aware, nobody is talking about demolishing existing housing.

    It feels a bit disingenuous to include Ste-Catherine on the bad list when it received nothing but praise from the experts – except for the lack of heated sidewalks, which as we know was Coderre’s pet project. I also agree that heated sidewalks would have been good, but at the same time I have no doubt that if they had been built, QMI’s pundits would be howling with outrage at the high cost and inevitably technical difficulties.

    Funny to see the REV on the good list when it was the target of so much orchestrated QMI outrage. Not surprisingly many of the critics are coming around now that they can see how much it has improved the atmosphere on St-Denis. My only qualm with the REV is its branding. Réseau express vélo makes it sound like it’s full of lycra-clad road warriors, but it’s just the opposite, because it’s designed for ordinary people going relatively slowly, not somebody who wants to zoom down the street at 40 km/h on their $5,000 bike.

    Strange to see the Place Simon-Valois on this list since it’s already several years old. That said, it really is a good square.

    Including the Triangle on the good list but Griffintown on the bad list makes no sense to me. Griffintown is a bit of a mess, but the city is doing good remedial work to build parks and redesign streets to be more pedestrian-friendly. And dare I say it, but the somewhat chaotic nature of its development has resulted in an eclectic urban form with more variety than if it had been master planned. Once the dust settles I think it will be a fairly interesting area. By contrast, development in the Triangle is more tightly managed, and yet it feels very bland and vaguely suburban. All the buildings have setbacks with useless grassy patches and the architecture is just as ugly as in Griffintown. It’s not terrible but I certainly wouldn’t highlight it as an urban planning success story.

  • Kevin 14:32 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    The Gazette article with its experts from around the globe is quite chilling.

    I have been hearing similar viewpoints over the past year but I can no longer hope otherwise: downtown Montreal as we knew it is dead and gone.
    All the infrastructure, zoning decisions, lifestyle choices, the corruption, that made the core a region of office workers commuting from the ‘burbs was overlooked until the pandemic laid it bare: the city has hollowed out.

  • Kate 14:33 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    Kevin: has it, though? What about the trend for so many new residential condo towers right in the heart of downtown?

  • DeWolf 18:45 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    Montreal has never had a one-dimensional downtown. Unless you think the universities and colleges will shut down, 150,000 people will abandon their downtown apartments, all festivals will be cancelled forever, and nobody is ever going to take public transit again, downtown will be just fine.

    There’s a lot of conjecture in that Gazette article that isn’t going to age well. Newspaper archives are full of prognosticating about the future of cities that looks ridiculous in hindsight. Even in the Gazette article, the experts interviewed are all contradicting each other. One says that street-level retail is going to be wiped out. Another points out that neighbourhood shops have actually seen an increase in business during the pandemic.

    There will be people who are so traumatized by the pandemic that they will move to the countryside and forever avoid any kind of crowded situation, but I suspect that most people will go back to their old urban habits, as they have consistently done through history.

  • PO 20:59 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    Kevin : with all due respect, what the hell are you talking about? Look at ANY other city in North America with a population of ~2 million and tell me downtown Montreal is dead. I couldn’t disagree with you more. I’m too young to give any perspective as to how it compares to decades before I was born, but as far as 2020 goes, I challenge you to name a city this size on this continent (and there are plenty) that can even come close to Montreal.

  • Michael Black 21:57 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    It’s premature to make a forecast. People can extrapolate from now, but there are lots of variables.

    But I suspect our image of downtown wasn’t accurate. Growing up, it was medical appointments and deparment stores, and Classic Books, and the Santa Claus parade. Or a place to walk through on the way to Victoria Square. So I thought of it as a destination. Now all these stories are saying it’s business,, and the restaurants and stores are support. So maybe it does depend on whether work from home is a glitch, or permanent.

    I used to go to the department stores, habit maybe, but now only The Bay remains, and it’s less a department store than more expensive clothing and furniture. I like walking along St. Catherine street, but between Guy and University, Indigo is the only thing that really matters. Well Laura Secord, they’ve closed a lot of stores in recent years. I stopped going to movies 20 years ago when they closed the smaller theatres for the really big plexes. The rent is too high for diversity, but to me it’s a bland street other than the people. If business was the anchor, tnere go the crowds

    Art isn’t made at Place des Arts, it’s perforned to an audience around there. It’s created elsewhere, where rent is affordable.When the festivals were small, they were something to take in, once large, they became targets. I’m not sure art draws people, at least not without other reasipons to be down there.

    People have always lived downtown, just not so visible. The grocery stores have been mostly at the western end, the Provigo now gone. But there’s little green space, and no playgrounds. In fifty years, a lot of grass has been lost at PdA and around Place Bonaventure, people used to flock to tye grass at lunch hour.

    A lot has built up in fifty years, some of it may have to come down if business doesn’t return. It can’t be dense residential without green space.

  • Kevin 22:10 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    Kate:
    I don’t think the condo towers make up for the hundreds of thousands of missing office workers. At least not in the next 5-10 years.

    DeWolf:
    They aren’t contradicting each other, but are instead describing a shift in how people are living and spending. Retail strips in neighbourhoods with a good residential mix are thriving while areas that rely on office workers are struggling.

    PO:
    I guess you don’t remember the 90s…

    Montreal has more workers living further away from the city core than anywhere except Toronto, and a lot of people living 25 km+ away. If they have been telecommuting they have no reason to come back.

    That is the change I’m talking about.

    Festivals? They are great if you’re already downtown, but if you’ve moved to Hudson or have spent 9 months working from your chalet, will you come to town every day to watch jazz?

    I know for many people the answer is no. People who have spent 20 years commuting from the burbs and can now stop? It’s an environmental amazement, but it is going to require a massive change to ensure our city survives.

  • DeWolf 22:46 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    That’s absolutely true, there will be changes. I’m not saying things will simply revert to how they were before 2020. Businesses that cater to office workers will die because even after the pandemic, offices won’t be quite as full as they were before. But that will gradually be offset by the increase in downtown residents. And I think the REM will help keep the connection to the suburbs alive, if only because people like the experience of being downtown (including festivals) and it’s much easier to partake in that if you can hop on a frequent train instead of driving for 45 minutes and worrying about parking.

    In any case, don’t forget that even if the whole metropolitan area is sprawling, Montreal is quite densely populated and there is about a million people who live within 10km of downtown.

  • Tim F 12:47 on 2021-01-03 Permalink

    I suspect there will be a new normal—a reversion toward the mean but not a full return to the baseline in 2019. On one hand, middle management craves control, creatives crave the synergy and serendipity of a shared workspace, IT will be told to cut costs, employees want camaraderie. Execs, on the other hand, will be happy to save while outsourcing office footprint, heating costs etc. to their employees, and employees will want to retain the flexibility and new quality time they gained from not commuting. I can envisage some companies finding a new equilibrium where office space is reduced and more communal, where employees rotate and come in once or twice a week for team meetings and project work.

• Kate 11:22 on 2021-01-02 Permalink | Reply  

  Does anyone have an opinion whether Quebec is acting wisely or not in the change of plans meaning it won’t hold back doses for booster shots but instead give more people a single dose of the Covid vaccine? Is this decision based on science or on politics?

  Additionally: CBC has a piece on how we’ll know when it’s our turn. Canada can’t ordain this, since health care is a provincial matter, but the article has links to provincial health care systems, including Quebec’s. (Read the page now if you prefer to read in English – I imagine this won’t be available for long.)

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  • Michael Black 11:28 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    The drug company had set the protocol, but has now said this is okay. That seems to imply that the supply can be relied on for the second dose.

  • vasi 11:51 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    Yeah, this isn’t “give people one dose” versus “give people both doses”. We’re definitely still giving two doses. It’s just a logistical question of whether to physically hold onto the second dose for three weeks, or rely on the second dose being shipped just-in-time.

    It’s like the difference between buying three weeks worth of toilet paper all at once, or getting a couple rolls from the store every week. The first could cause potential shortages, but the second means relying on consistent supply.

  • jeather 12:23 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    I think that relying on consistent supply is taking a risk at the very finish line, and also if things go wrong is nicely setting up for vaccine-resistant strains. I grant that there are arguments either way, from people who have more expertise than I do, but I’ve been more convinced by the “better safe than sorry” people, probably because I would tend that way naturally.

  • Ephraim 12:24 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    Meanwhile, in Israel, over 1 million people, an eighth of the population has been vaccinated. You get texted to set up your appointment. You get your second appointment (and a text to confirm it) when you get your dose. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-covid-vaccinations-1.5859396 and they are going to have to have break of 2 weeks because they are ahead of supply.

    One of my friends got texted to make their appointments. They are running the clinic in an empty shopping mall, doing the actual vaccinations in an empty store. Orderly, quick, 15 minute wait. Next.

    I’m in group 6 in Quebec. I’ll be lucky if I see it in March! Our healthcare system needs to be better organized and more electronic. Now is the time to invest and fix the damn infrastructure…. because we can see that we need it.

  • Blork 12:33 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    I think it makes sense. I had read a while ago that even a vaccine with 45% efficacy would make a big difference, but there was pressure to make vaccines that showed much higher numbers.

    I also heard some scientists on the radio last week saying that the first shot in the two-shot vaccine still provides something like 52% immunity, so that’s still pretty good.

    So what it comes down to is something like this: is it better to have a small number of people achieve 95% immunity, or to have twice as many people achieve 52% immunity? It’s a bit of a crap shoot.

  • Blork 12:35 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    …and my understanding is that the Moderna vaccine is significantly more effective than the Pfizer one after a single shot. Plus the goal is to get everyone that second shot, but to move fast by getting twice as many people the first shot quickly.

  • Chris 12:42 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    What Blork said, plus: waiting longer than the prescribed 3 weeks for the second shot isn’t expected to reduce efficacy. It’s more that taking it after *less* than 3 weeks isn’t good.

    Also, in general, the best choice depends on what one is optimizing for: are we trying to minimise deaths?, minimise spread?, minimise severity of symptoms?, etc. They are not necessarily the same. Hoarding doses may be better for one but not the other.

  • Raymond Lutz 14:31 on 2021-01-02 Permalink

    Hmm, d’après le peu que je comprends, il n’y a rien de tel que 100% immunisé… Quelque soit le type de vaccin, on “attrape” toujours la maladie: l’agent infectieux (virus ou bactérie) pénètre _toujours_ dans le corps, mais la réponse du système immunitaire est accélérée quand on a déjà été exposé. L’infection progresse donc moins, autant en sévérité (réplication au site d’entrée) qu’en étendue dans les autres organes: on est donc “moins malade”.

    Wanna go down the rabbit hole of biology Intricacies ? You think quantum mechanics, General Relativity and Montréal parking signage are complex? This Kurzgesagt serie on our immune system will make your head explode.

  • vasi 19:03 on 2021-01-04 Permalink

    Seems I was wrong, it looks like we are actually delaying second doses: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-following-new-vaccine-policy-to-the-letter-as-montreal-care-home-misses-second-shots-1.5253074 . Not sure how I feel about this!