Updates from December, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 20:59 on 2022-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

    CultMTL had Toula Drimonis interview Mayor Plante. On Twitter, Toula adds “This interview took place weeks ago, before Fady Dagher was appointed SPVM police chief and the 2023 budget was released, otherwise I would have probably had a few additional questions.”

    Plante reminds us of the massive change that we’re still coming to terms with: “Before COVID, we were trying to find solutions for congestion on the Orange Line, and now it’s the opposite; we’re working super hard to get people back on the subway and on the buses.”

     

    • MarcG 09:51 on 2022-12-02 Permalink

      The only way that they can get me back on public transit is to reduce the likelihood that I’ll get sick while riding it.

    • Kate 10:22 on 2022-12-02 Permalink

      I feel a bit that way, but sometimes I have to use it. Can’t afford taxis everywhere.

    • M 12:23 on 2022-12-02 Permalink

      I couldn’t help but let out a sigh of despair in reading this interview. I am satisfied that Plante has been and continues to be mayor compared with the alternative, but this admin’s posturing helplessness combined with the obviously consultant-crafted talking points primarily targeting the parties donor base are a bit much….

      in my estimation, they’re setting up a pretty classic recipe for polarization towards political extremes when these mildly social democratic parties can’t get things working while talking about large scale projects disconnected from most people’s lives.

      please forgive me for not providing the receipts for my reasoning, but I don’t think anyone would appreciate an essay on the topic published on this very nice and otherwise tidy space.

    • Kate 13:06 on 2022-12-02 Permalink

      There’s room, M, if you want to outline what you think Plante should be doing instead of what she is.

  • Kate 18:57 on 2022-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

    Shots were exchanged between occupants of two cars in the parking lot of an IGA in St‑Léonard on Thursday afternoon, but no injured victims have turned up.

    Update: There have been three arrests.

     

    • Kate 18:05 on 2022-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

      As mentioned previously, a clinic operated by nurse practitioners has opened this week at the CLSC Olivier-Guimond near Cadillac metro station. Two similar clinics are planned to open shortly at Notre‑Dame hospital and in Verdun.

      A lot of hope is being pinned on these new clinics to lighten the load on emergency wards.

      Meantime, Christian Dubé is begging nurses who’ve gone to the private side or retired to come back and answer calls to 811, which has been overwhelmed recently.

       

      • Ephraim 18:23 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

        I guess I shouldn’t suggest they get them to answer the calls in Kinshasa and Abidjan, should I?

      • Kate 22:37 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

        French is used in both those towns, so it’s not such a bizarre idea. But they’d have to have instant access to quite a database of advice and information.

      • Ephraim 08:41 on 2022-12-02 Permalink

        The database isn’t the problem… can we understand their accent? Can they understand the culture, etc. Just because you speak French doesn’t mean that you understand

    • Kate 11:55 on 2022-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

      The three Parti Québécois members elected in October have been denied entry to the National Assembly over their refusal to take the oath to the King. And I’m all out of popcorn.

      François Legault is promising to change the law so they don’t have to take that oath. Can he do that while Quebec is still part of Canada? Tune in next week…

       

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

        Money has been spent by the STM, Exo and other transit authorities on promotional advertising, but it isn’t working: people are simply not flocking back.

        The article mentions ads in the metro and on the bus, which strikes me as pointless: if you see these, you’re already taking public transit.

        I don’t want to see transit cuts, but we may have to face the fact that things have changed, that people are not commuting in pre‑pandemic numbers or in pre‑pandemic patterns, and that – as a reader suggested in a recent comment – focusing on reliability rather than quantity might be more to the point now.

         

        • Blork 10:19 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          And this isn’t just a local problem. Cities all over Canada and the US (and likely beyond) are facing the same issues. There was an article in the NY Times this week where someone was saying we might be on the verge of urban decline similar to what happened in the 1950s due to all the people leaving cities for the suburbs. Perhaps the golden age of cities that we’ve experienced over the past 30 years or so is about to come to an end. (Doom! Gloom!)

        • qatzelok 10:48 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          The best way to promote mass transit (and biking) will be 3-dollar liters of gasoline and real road taxes for drivers.

        • Meezly 11:19 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          I admit I’m less familiar with bus routes here than in Vancouver where I grew up, but I I find Montreal bus routes quite fragmented as 95% of the routes rely on a metro stop. So if you want to cross more than 2 boroughs, you usually need to take a bus-metro-bus combination. Especially if you need to cross downtown, so many bus routes end in the downtown area. Why is this?

          I don’t live near a metro but I live in the Plateau. I shouldn’t need to take a minimum of 2 buses to get from the Plateau to Griffintown. In Vancouver, many bus routes cross multiple boroughs including downtown, mostly because the bus routes were designed before the SkyTrain. If the STM can redesign more bus routes to have longer, more continuous routes that allow riders to not have to take a metro or a connection, I think it may reduce the number of bus routes and buses.

        • DeWolf 11:41 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          Public transit ridership may be permanently lower than before the pandemic, and yet there’s still a ton of traffic on the roads. People are still going places, just not in the same rush hour crush as before. Frequencies shouldn’t be cut, they should be redistributed. More than ever, people aren’t using transit to go to the same place at the same time every day. They need flexibility, which means they need frequency. A bus that comes every 30 minutes is not very helpful if you don’t know exactly when you’ll need to take it.

          @Blork, I saw that article too (it was an op-ed, not a news story) and it’s based on flawed data. The author pointed to census estimates from the summer of 2021 that showed Manhattan had 200,000 fewer households than before the pandemic (equivalent to 1/3 of its total number of households!), but that obviously isn’t the case anymore. Residential vacancy rates in NYC are lower than they were at 2019 and rents are even higher. The next census estimates will certainly not show such a massive drop in population.

        • Kate 11:48 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          Meezly, if you compare a bus or tram route map from before the metro (if you can find one – I don’t have one handy, but I’ve seen one) and a modern one, it’s very clear they redesigned the route map to do exactly what you describe. Buses are seen as collectors and distributors for the metro, while passengers are meant to think in terms of the main part of their trip being by metro. It sticks many people with the bus‑metro‑bus combo as you point out, which can stretch a trip out when you have to wait indefinite amounts of time for both buses.

          South Shore residents are facing a similar rearrangement as their bus routes become feeders for the REM; there’s been discussion of reorganizing West Island bus routes for the same reason.

        • Meezly 12:14 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          “Meezly, if you compare a bus or tram route map from before the metro (if you can find one – I don’t have one handy, but I’ve seen one) and a modern one, it’s very clear they redesigned the route map to do exactly what you describe. Buses are seen as collectors and distributors for the metro, while passengers are meant to think in terms of the main part of their trip being by metro.”

          Thanks for confirming that, Kate. Vancouver has not redesigned their legacy bus routes after the SkyTrain expanded so that bus routes are independent entities, and they’ve added supplementary routes – which makes so much sense.

          Years ago, I complained about this on the STM and actually got a callback from one of their bus route planners. He made some good points defending their design, saying that he takes the 24 Sherbrooke all the time, which is an example of a bus route running parallel to the green line. But that’s just one of a few exceptions. Try to go from northeast to southwest and you’re stuck with the bus-metro-bus combo.

        • Blork 12:15 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          @DeWolf, yeah, it was an opinion piece, and I’m not buying it wholesale, but I thought it was interesting to think about. You’re probably right about the flawed data regarding New York, but that city is an exception in many ways, and I wonder if the patterns the writer was concerned with aren’t legit for “regular” cities.

          Regarding bus lines, I agree that having to change vehicle is a major hindrance to having an enjoyable (or at least less unenjoyable) public transit experience. OTOH, having long lines that feed into downtown or other high traffic areas runs the risk of creating a situation like the Orange line, where the people who board at the far ends of the line get seats and by the time the vehicle is half way to its destination there’s no room left, leaving the people who live closer to the destination stranded.

          One solution is MORE BUSES but that’s apparently not really an option.

          So it seems that what we have here is a typical tension between the efficiency of the SYSTEM (which works better if it’s more like a mesh than a series of long lines) and comfort of PASSENGERS. IOW, as usual, there are no easy answers.

        • Kevin 12:17 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          The Globe had an article last week showing that Montreal is the only big city in Canada with commuting that is almost the same as pre-pandemic levels. Vancouver and Toronto are down by about 40-50%.

          I think this is largely due to post-secondary students, since we have so many schools in the Ville Marie borough.

          Throw in the increase in office vacancies (currently 17%, forecasts of 30% by end of the decade) and the increasing dissatisfaction with working in an office in general, and I think the city and the Chamber of Commerce need to drastically rethink how downtown is used.

        • Uatu 13:08 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          I recently took a weekday bus at 1130am and it was loaded with students. They were heading home and the bus that came in unloaded even more students. Add in shift workers and retirees and there’s lots of passengers using the system. My only thing is that if you’re going to make reliable>frequency then at least make the waiting areas heated, sheltered or connected to shops, cafes, grocery etc. Right now if I miss my connection at the Panama bus depot I’ll be waiting for 30-45min in what’s essentially a giant bus parking lot. Really annoying for $184 a month(an ABC pass) That’s just an indirect way of convincing me to use my car

        • Orr 13:12 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          Allez-retour ticket is now over $6 so I can walk, bike, or drive & park for less than that. As an infrequent user of routes where transit is useful, the monthly pass is useless to me.
          Quebec needs an actual carbon tax that is used to provide low-cost transit services, and not this “Carbon market where inside-players get rich” system that we have here right now.

        • CE 14:55 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          A good example of the fragmentation of the bus routes is the Olympic Stadium. I needed to get some tourists to the insectarium from Papineau. It’s not that far but I would have had to take two buses on Sherbrooke or walk quite a distance if we were to take the 29 on Rachel. There’s really no direct bus route there. We ended up having to take the 45 all the way down to Papineau metro then it’s a 14 minute walk from the station because it’s at the southern side of the stadium.

          Regarding buses being full halfway through a route, what is done sometimes is that there is a shortened route that runs between buses and picks people up at choke points. The 24 does this for the eastern portion starting at Sherbrooke station but it doesn’t happen very often. It’s nice when it does though.

        • Joey 16:54 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

          @CE seems like the problem is just how massive the site of the Big O & adjacent attractions is – even the walk from the Metro to the entrance of the Stadium (fully integrated underground) is super long. Not sure there’s a solution.

          Sadly, the bus gets no love.

      • Kate 09:45 on 2022-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

        Preparations for COP15 are heating up. Place-d’Armes metro station is closed till December 20. The Ligue des droits et libertés has declared that the public has a right to demonstrate. But many delegates are still waiting for their visas.

         

        • Kate 09:41 on 2022-12-01 Permalink | Reply  

          This piece on an odd website called Nomad Lawyer reads like it was written by an AI: “Canada is situated on an island in the Saint Lawrence River” for example.

          Located on the island of Saint Helen’s in Quebec, Canada, La Ronde Amusement Park is a popular destination.

          During the summer, La Ronde offers concerts and fireworks shows. The park also hosts the annual L’International des Feux Loto-Quebec fireworks competition. The competition is one of the world’s most prestigious and is held each year on August 4.

          La Ronde is also home to Le Mondial SAQ. Le Mondial SAQ is the most prestigious fireworks competition in the world.

          The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is one of the largest and most popular art museums in the country. The museum houses one of North America’s finest encyclopedic collections.

           

          • Thomas 09:51 on 2022-12-01 Permalink

            According to their Twitter profile, ‘Nomad Lawyer is a travel site dedicated to humanKind, responsible tourism, Travel laws eco-tourism, caused based travel and culinary delight’ based in New Delhi. Fascinatingly confusing content at its finest.

            And yes, Montreal is Loving Place and you should definitely take your partner there sometime.

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