Updates from January, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 23:13 on 2022-01-10 Permalink | Reply  

    The STM and other transit services are facing a possible reduction in services as so many drivers are falling ill.

     
    • Kate 23:01 on 2022-01-10 Permalink | Reply  

      Dr Horacio Arruda has submitted his resignation and it has been accepted.

      The CIUSS du Nord-de-l’Île-de-Montréal is on maximum alert as its hospitals put off operations and procedures to meet the crisis.

      Homeless shelters are overwhelmed.

      Three orthodox Jewish schools have been ordered to stop in-person teaching. (Here’s a story I found telling a related story from the Orthodox side.)

       
      • David77 02:30 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        The vaccinated are completely secure in what concerns serious risk of harm or death, and almost everyone is vaccinated, so . . . what is this panic for?

        (And I say this as someone who is now triple vaxxed and also has had all three major iterations of covid)

      • David77 02:35 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        Basically, why are people being admitted to hospital – is there a real basis, or is a Covid diagnosis triggering an automatic admission? Is it really the case that we need to admit these Covid cases, or are we using old criteria in the pre-vax or pre-booster time? Has the government given us a good explanation of why their response is proportionate to the risk, considering the actual threat of the virus at this stage?

      • Raymond Lutz 08:39 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        Don’t look at the number of hospitalizations: “Les hospitalisations en cours correspondent au nombre de personnes actuellement à l’hôpital avec un diagnostic de COVID-19.” (source). So, those are not admitted _because_ they have covid but _with_ covid.

        The stat to watch is ICU beds. And we are at a 2 yr record high, and more importantly, we (in Québec) are at ICU capacity: hard choices will have to be made between patients (Covid or not).

        Omicron is 7x less severe than delta re needing ICU [1] but if we have 20x the number of infected people (Omicron is way more contagious) than it’s worse for the healthcare system.

        [1] “Early Estimates of Omicron Severity in Ontario based on a Matched Cohort Study, November 22 to December 25, 2021”

      • walkerp 09:49 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        David you actually believe they are going to let somebody in the hospital without symptoms simply because they tested positive? Have you been to the ER in Montreal before?

        And the vaccines are not completely secure in risk of harm or death.

      • Kate 12:10 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        david∞, there were 62 deaths from Covid in Quebec over the last 24 hours. Two years after this started, and you’re still in denial.

      • TeeOwe 13:15 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        Thank you Raymond for the reference, the article was easy to find, really helpful. Is there a reference for ’20X the number of infected people’? I mean, we see this sort of stat everywhere but I have trouble quoting a reliable source. Thanks!

      • Mark Côté 13:33 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        @TeeOwe The CBC interviewed the Canada Research Chair in viral control at Western University about measuring covid via wastewater analysis. He said it was very difficult to know the situation at a provincial level because of lack of (or lack of access to) data, but figured it might be 50 000 a day last week. That’s 14x the cases at the same time last year. And it could easily be higher.

      • Pinotte 18:05 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        The 62 deaths included deaths from other days. January is typically the number one month for dying in Quebec. The year 2018 – pre-covid – had more deaths than in any January during covid. There were no measures taken then.
        https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/document/births-deaths-and-marriages-by-month-and-quarter-quebec/tableau/births-deaths-and-marriages-by-month-and-quarter-quebec

        These death charts on Canada/Quebec demonstrate that there were two bad months at the start but the rest of the deaths totals have fairly insignificant. https://twitter.com/Milhouse_Van_Ho/status/1472591049172398090?s=20

      • Kate 18:39 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        Oh good, Pinotte. It’s all a big fuss over nothing!

      • qatzelok 19:13 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        So Pinotte, does that mean that the curve is finally flattened?

    • Kate 18:45 on 2022-01-10 Permalink | Reply  

      A man died after police dropped him at home after finding him disoriented on the street near midnight Sunday. Although this brief piece solicits help from witnesses, there’s no information about where this happened in town.

       
      • Jebediah Pallendrome 19:20 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

        They really should have written ‘dropped him off at his home” because it reads like they physically dropped a man causing his death

    • Kate 15:23 on 2022-01-10 Permalink | Reply  

      Montreal-area public transit was already in low water before the pandemic. Now the reduced ridership is leaving the STM and the others facing huge shortfalls in their budgets.

      One aspect mentioned almost in passing is the growing expense of providing adapted transit, a consequence of our aging population. And then the REM will force a general rethink of how the systems operate.

      If the CAQ had to choose to bail out either the REM or the STM, STL and the other public corporations, which do you think they’d pick?

       
      • Joey 15:29 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

        Isn’t the whole point of the REM that they don’t get to pick – they *have* to bail it out regardless?

      • Jebediah Pallendrome 15:39 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

        ^ Correct.

        And by they, they mean we.

      • EmilyG 15:39 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

        I don’t like riding public transit these days because so many of the passengers don’t wear their masks properly. The STM should enforce this.

      • Jonathan 16:03 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

        I haven’t read the article yet… But the STM needs to adapt to the new reality if they want transit to stay relevant. This means people need to be able to hop-on-hop-off travelling short distances. This is only done by having buses travel the Montreal grid on a reliable basis (up to every 15 minutes at the highest interval). It can be done by reducing peak service and readapting service that serves downtown. Peak-oriented service is the costliest part of providing transit because all the capacity (vehicles, personnel, etc) goes into this, including having to do a lot of deadheading (running a bus empty back to the beginning of the line).

        I would pay 85$ a month for a pass that would allow me a reliable service to just hop on and hop off short distances (to the plateau, the JT market, Petit Magreb, Little Italy, etc). But the two bus lines that intersect my neighbourhood (one east-west, the other north-south) run only every 30 minutes.

        I imagine it would be a game-changer for people with poussettes and in wheelchairs since buses are way more accessible than metros. Instead, families are buying cars just to be able to be mobile and wheelchair users have to use the unreliable adapted transit or else can’t go very far.

        The STM needs to get with the times.

      • mare 19:16 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

        The bailing out of the REM (CDPQInfra) is already done, the moment the Quebec government signed the REM contract.

      • Spi 19:30 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

        What part of the government money that went into the REM constitutes a bailout?

      • Uatu 20:49 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

        Everything regarding the aging population is ignored until the last minute. We need more doctors, nurses, cleaning staff, PABs, accessible infrastructure and transport and the last governments (Queen Pauline, fatty barrette) cut everything down to the bone and now they’re shocked ( shocked, I say) that the system’s fucked. I bet accessibility to the rem wasn’t even thought of since the promotional art is full of young, condo owning hipsters-the primary clients of the thing.

      • Spi 21:10 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

        Every station is designed to be universally accessible. It’s 2022, you’re going to have a really hard time finding any new public building/infrastructure that isn’t designed to that standard.

      • mare 21:41 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

        Hi Spi,
        (are you working for CDPQInfra and have a Google alert set up?)

        “L’arrangement entre le gouvernement et la Caisse se distingue aussi par sa durée. Selon cette entente avec CDPQ Infra, le gouvernement continuera à verser pendant 99 ans (avec prolongation possible pour un autre 99 ans) une contribution pour un équipement qui aura été entièrement payé au bout de 25 ou 30 ans.”

        (From a report by the IREC. It’s long and in French, but quite interesting reading material. https://irec.quebec/ressources/publications/Note-74.-Reseau-express-metropolitain.pdf)

        A contract for 200 years! A lot of things can (and will) change in that period. Looking back to 200 years ago, we didn’t even have any power source that wasn’t wind or animals.

        The report also mentions various other huge payments the government is making now that the initial cost projections turn out to be far too low.

      • Uatu 01:55 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        It’s a pretty shitty standard of accessibility. The original concept art of the Panama station had an uncovered pathway from the bus terminus building to the train platform. Now it’s going to be covered, but still exposed to the elements like y’know, winter. Try walking that with a cane or using a wheelchair in -20 Feb. I don’t want to and I’m not physically challenged. like, I said it’s an afterthought.

      • Spi 10:23 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        Remember when Hong Kong was a British colony and then was handed back to China because it came to the end of a 99-year lease? The people that initially put in 99 years thought it was as good as perpetuity. Just because something exceeds your lifetime doesn’t make it exceptional. There are still some perpetual bonds that date back to the 17th century that continue to pay interest today.

        The REM has certainly gotten some very generous treatment/contribution but nothing outside of what the government could have done for itself if it ran the project, through special laws/exproritations/ignoring BAPE recommendations.

      • Spi 10:37 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        Uatu, you mean walking or using a wheelchair like you would have had to in order to use the bus in the first place? We’re not underground mole people you are going to have to be outside for some period of time when taking public transit.

      • Tim S. 13:05 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        We’ve been over this so many times: right now, a resident of the South Shore can get on a rush hour bus that takes them directly to the underground terminal connected to Bonaventure metro. The REM set up will oblige them to get off their bus and go outside, so it will be worse. A day when it is -16 is not a great time to try to bullshit people on this.

      • Joey 14:55 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        It’s not -16 it’s -22.

      • Kate 22:07 on 2022-01-11 Permalink

        I don’t think he meant it was -16 as he was posting, but just as a general statement.

      • ant6n 04:40 on 2022-01-12 Permalink

        “The REM has certainly gotten some very generous treatment/contribution but nothing outside of what the government could have done for itself if it ran the project, through special laws/exproritations/ignoring BAPE recommendations.”

        But then the government wouldn’t have to pay hundreds of millions per year towards the returns of a pension fund. I’d say the REM`s operation (20-25c/km) can be paid almost by user fees, the hundreds of millions in annual “subsidies” towards the line (another 60c/km) is effectely profit for the caisse.

        Imagine if we had an extra 250-300M per year in transit spending that wasn’t just going to the Caisse, after fifteen years that’s half the pink line.

    • Kate 10:14 on 2022-01-10 Permalink | Reply  

      In 2020, Linda Gyulai at the Gazette got deeply into the story of some shifty land dealings by the city in Rivière‑des‑Prairies, and she now has something of a resolution in which some of the owners of the undeveloped lots have been compensated. But there’s no clear explanation why the city felt it had the right to take the land back in the first place.

       
      • Kate 10:09 on 2022-01-10 Permalink | Reply  

        It’s cold, Covid cases are growing among the homeless, and shelters are short of isolation spaces for them. And the Old Brewery Mission is all but begging people to come work there among the Covid‑positive.

         
        • Kate 10:07 on 2022-01-10 Permalink | Reply  

          Protesters against the Coastal Gaslink project in B.C. have been sabotaging railways and Royal Bank facilities here.

           
          • CE 12:11 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

            I guess that explains why all the windows on the RBC branch at Papineau and Mont-Royal are broken.

          • Kate 12:16 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

            Yes. RBC is a big investor in the project.

          • qatzelok 18:56 on 2022-01-10 Permalink

            Using “RBC” as their brand is a nice way to stop rubbing “royalty”-entitlement into everyone’s face.

            “Robaca” might work as a euphemism as well.

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