Media are reporting a speech by a representative of a construction promoter, complaining that the city is making it difficult for them to build what they like, where they like. Someone needs to sit them down and explain things like zoning and urban planning.
Updates from May, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
La Presse notes that it’s 200 years since the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Mount Royal park as well as New York’s Central Park and other historic and important parks in the United States.
CE
I was just in Buffalo this weekend where, he designed a number of parks and parkways, and there were a few things around the city celebrating his 200th.
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Kate
Truck drivers are angry about traffic congestion on and around Montreal island, and want more and bigger roads built.
steph
They want belt-ways like other cities? We have the 30, that bypasses the city. Boo-hoo to those that setup shop in the wrong places. More roads only make more traffic.
carswell
Like a number of other cities, Montreal should ban large trucks outright or allow them to operate, say, only between 21:00 and 5:00. Would reduce traffic congestion, make streets safer, especially for active transport types, and probably reduce road wear. The number of vehicles on city streets and highways increases every year and non-local governments are mostly encouraging the trend, so the traffic situation is only going to get worse in the coming years.
Ephraim
Instead of a ban on trucks driving into and out of the city during rush hour, we should implement a charge of $50 per axle for vehicles with 3 or more axles from 6AM to 10AM into the city. And from 3PM to 7PM leaving the city. At $150 or more, a lot more will decide to take the 30 instead. And if that isn’t enough of a deterrent, you just keep on increasing it.
Daniel D
This was an interesting article I read recently: “Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse” (https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand)
The article talks about induced demand, which I’d thought was enough of a well-known phenomenon that we’d stop seeing articles published about how adding more roads / larger roads is the answer.
I’d love to see Montreal introduce congestion charging (massive success in my original hometown of London), but I think
(a) Transit in the suburbs is too non-existant for many suburbanites to have any other choice than to drive into Montreal. London has excellent transit all over the place, so it makes more sense to drive to your local station and take the train into town. Good luck doing that if you live somewhere on an exo line and you want to travel outside of rush hour.
(b) I suspect any municipal government introducing a congestion charge would immediately be branded as anti-driver and lose the next election.
(c) Could Montreal even do this without the blessing of the province anyway?
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Kate
Changes in the unpopular plans for the REM de l’Est will be announced Monday which seems like a short period of time to properly rethink the monstrosity.
carswell
Lipstick on a pig.
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Kate
I realize getting a bullet fired into your building can’t be fun, but the endless scare talk about violence in Montreal is contradicted by weekends like this, where the only incident reported is a stray bullet and no victims.
It’s a mystery to me why guys are driving around firing bullets at buildings – I suppose it’s a “message” although I’ll bet a lot of them are fired at the wrong places. Or it just might be frustrated gangbangers letting off ammo for kicks, who knows. I mean, what’s the point of packing a gun if you don’t occasionally get to fire it?
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Kate
In the Plateau, tenants in a rooming house are fearing renoviction by the new owner, who has already started work without a permit.
In Ville-Émard, a rooming house has been emptied out so the building can be flipped for profit.
mare
There’s a building around the corner from me that’s technically not a rooming house, but had 10 small units, rented by the month. One unit was rented by a caretaker, the rest by marginal-ish people, and there was a lot of turnaround. (2 ½ with open kitchen, rents around $400). It has been emptied in 2020, and slowly converted into studios with nicer kitchen cabinets and bathrooms. They’ve also added two basement units. There’s now a sign in the front yard saying they’re for rent for $1250, clearly aimed at a different kind of tenant. Stainless steel appliances included, so at least there’s that.
(Landlords only have to mention the lowest rent during the last 12 months on the lease, so even if new tenants know the previous rent, they have no recourse at the TAL/Regie.)
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Kate
Covid is still killing people and the death rate in Quebec is higher than anywhere else in Canada, as it has been throughout the pandemic.
I spotted a tweet recalling this quote: “Je trouve ça dur 20 décès en une journée. C’est énorme. (…) C’est inacceptable.” – François Legault, October 22, 2020.
But we’ve had 20 deaths a day for weeks, and all Legault does is promise we can soon take our masks off. Not so énorme any more, it seems to be accepted now as normal.
mare
In 2020 the victims were all unvaccinated, now we’ve taken precautions and everybody is vaccinated (Not) and has had booster shots. (Not).
But they’re mostly old people, who just die a little earlier than they would have otherwise. (Not)We’re also conveniently ignoring Long Covid, which incidence might be as high as 10% to 30% of the cases from research in other countries. We don’t test so we have no idea of the number of cases, so no idea how much this is going to bite us in the ass.
We just have to add a bad flu season to our list of causes of death. Well, a few bad flu seasons per year. Fall, winter and spring.
Kevin
The first response to that tweet that i see is a urologist saying most of those dying from Covid had 18 months or less to live anyway.
https://twitter.com/fpuro/status/1520759733828956164?s=20&t=nPFU_pgeTsDN3eVDaODEhASo I guess callousness is a Quebec value that I don’t share.
jeather
You know, people with 18 months to live do, as a rule, actually want to live those 18 months, not be thrown away as unimportant since they will die soon; their families, also, would like those extra 18 months.
jeather
To be clear, I’m not responding to you, Kevin, but to that guy on twitter.
Michael 19:24 on 2022-05-01 Permalink
Just make more difficult every year so no new housing gets built. That should solve the housing crisis.
Kate 20:15 on 2022-05-01 Permalink
They did that in Griffintown.
Joey 10:13 on 2022-05-02 Permalink
A lot of her frustrations seem legit, even Luc Rabouin agrees that the city’s approach to working with developers (as in, the logistical aspects of actually buidling things, not the political tug-of-war between what the city wants and what developers want) needs improvement. Hardly a surprise to anyone who’s had the fortune to need something from their city or borough.
Ephraim 10:46 on 2022-05-02 Permalink
It should be easier to build, but set up a tax for occupancy permits that covers the cost of what they should be in affordable housing… if paid by the developer and double that amount if paid by the buyer. So the developer has an incentive to pay it.
Let’s be realistic, they don’t want to build affordable housing. Fine.. they take it in cash, put into a seperate development fund for affordable housing and just have them pay it out.