New firm takes up downtown REM
Lemay architects, closely linked with the Caisse de dépôt already, has taken up the job of designing the elevated track that will thrust the REM system through the heart of downtown. Other firms declined to touch a project they felt would inevitably cause a defacement of the city. And yet the REM will be underground in Montreal North.
Update: A committee of experts has been struck to try to calm people down about the REM de l’est.
Bill Binns 09:54 on 2021-05-04 Permalink
St Catherine is “the heart of downtown”. Rene Levesque is one of the equally important but less glamourous organs like the liver or the pancreas.
I have been genuinely surprised that so many people give a damn about Rene Levesque. The street seems designed to make driving, cycling and walking equally miserable.
Kate 11:07 on 2021-05-04 Permalink
René is the heart of business downtown. Many big cities have a street like this, with the skyscrapers all in a row. It’s not a big strolling street but it really is one of the city’s major “big city” elements.
Is anyone proposing to run an elevated train down Fifth Avenue, or through La Défense?
A surface tram down the midline of the street, maybe. Rotterdam has something like this on a street not unlike René. But an elevated train is insane.
DisgruntledGoat 17:26 on 2021-05-04 Permalink
Look on the bright side: the uglier and more grotesque the final elevated design is, the more it will decrease nearby land prices and combat gentrification !
Bill Binns 18:06 on 2021-05-04 Permalink
What’s more “big city” than an elevated train passing between skyscrapers? Hasn’t hurt Chicago any. Nobody could accuse the train of blocking out the sun. The sun barely penetrates the unbroken walls of towers on either side of the street.
ant6n 19:06 on 2021-05-04 Permalink
An elevated train could perhaps work on Rene-Levesue – if it was built 80 years ago.
PO 05:49 on 2021-05-05 Permalink
I also just realized that this thing will end at Robert-Bourassa and René-Levesque… Sure it’s approximately equidistant between the Square Victoria and McGill stations, but that’s still one hell of a transfer. And not only distance, but also quite an altitude change as well.
qatzelok 10:00 on 2021-05-06 Permalink
Other cities in the world would make R-L a glamourous boulevard with a tramway and public places. In North America, MONEY sometimes treats neighborhoods and boulevards with all the finesse of a sewer network. And urban infra projects- for callous MONEY – are mainly a way of funelling resources from the less well-off to the extremely rich. (look at the service charges CDPQ is asking for per km)
The REM looks like it is mainly a wealth-transfer project, like the ones that Greece was so good at before it went bankrupt.