Updates from February, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 20:05 on 2023-02-19 Permalink | Reply  

    There’s no homicide number yet, but police were called when a man was stabbed in a Park Ex apartment on Sunday afternoon, and a woman was found dead in another apartment nearby. A woman has been arrested.

     
    • Kate 19:43 on 2023-02-19 Permalink | Reply  

      The underpass at Christophe-Colomb and Des Carrières has always been dicey for cyclists and pedestrians, so the city is going to redo the bike path and sidewalk to make it pleasanter and safer to use.

       
      • Chris 23:37 on 2023-02-19 Permalink

        I hope they don’t build the new bike path at street level, as opposed to sidewalk level. It’s always so annoying to lose the energy going further down then further up again.

      • mare 00:43 on 2023-02-20 Permalink

        One of the reasons it’s so dicey is that the lowest point, where the potholes spring up, is exactly on the border between two boroughs. So it’s always a hassle to decide who has to do the maintenance, despite the fact that the voirie is almost right above it. So the patches are of really bad quality and fail very soon after being fixed. I’m glad this will be part of the Christophe-Coulomb bike path remake.

        (Years ago I saw a sidewalk snowplough stop halfway the underpass and turn around, leaving a pile of snow in the middle of the sidewalk. “Not my snow.” That was before the bike paths were even plowed.)

      • DeWolf 11:41 on 2023-02-20 Permalink

        I’m not sure how much of a change there will be to the underpass, other than converting the existing bidirectional bike path into uni-directional and adding another one on the east side of the street. It seems like most of the work will focus on redoing des Carrières, which really is awful in that particular section.

        François Limoges shared some renderings on Facebook:

        https://www.facebook.com/francois.limoges/posts/pfbid08tobciYfpVYn1eHPShhnL27iV7bTH7RjDh9GemAha7KeEir5Zwm4ciX1RG9HFi63l

        What’s most disappointing to me is that we’re still operating in the old mode of designing intersections, which is to say that pedestrians and cyclists need to descend to car level in order to cross the street. This would be a perfect opportunity to install raised crosswalks but there don’t appear to be any in the renderings.

      • Orr 14:19 on 2023-02-21 Permalink

        I am happy to have the bike & pedestrian sidewalks on each side of the road so cyclists travelling in the direction of traffic stay on their side. Do not like two-direction bike traffic on narrow sidewalks.
        An interesting thing about this project is that parts of this semi-large infrastructure project are going to be prefabricated in a factory, not built on site.
        A little east at the Papineau underpass water is leaking through the walls of this underpass onto the sidewalk and making very pretty but pretty dangerous ice-falls. Would think it’s going to need replacement soon too.

    • Kate 16:00 on 2023-02-19 Permalink | Reply  

      Deconstructing the old Champlain bridge has to be done very carefully not to throw junk into the river or damage its ecosystem.

       
      • Orr 14:20 on 2023-02-21 Permalink

        Not like the old days when even new Quebec bridges fell right into the river.

    • Kate 15:07 on 2023-02-19 Permalink | Reply  

      This is a test post for Mastodon.

      OK, ça marche. https://mstdn.ca/@mtlweblog for all your Montreal City Weblog needs on Mastodon.

       
      • Orr 14:29 on 2023-02-21 Permalink

        Tested.
        Wish there was an easy way to push a button and automatically refollow on mastodon all the folks I follow on my twitter who have transferred over there. I have an very curated feed and it’s not going to be easy to replicate it given it took me ten years of work to build it in the first place.

      • Sean 16:49 on 2023-02-24 Permalink

        Orr, there were a few out there that did this, but they died when Twitter cut off access to their API

      • Sean 16:52 on 2023-02-24 Permalink

        Kate, you should look at getting ActivityPub to work with this blog. Once that’s set up, Mastodon users will be able to follow your posts natively.

        Check this post for an example: https://lucahammer.com/2022/05/08/joining-the-fediverse-with-wordpress

      • Kate 23:18 on 2023-02-24 Permalink

        I’ll look into that – thank you.

    • Kate 12:50 on 2023-02-19 Permalink | Reply  

      The idea of extending the western branch of the metro’s orange line has been in the air for years, but now there’s some agitation for action coming from St‑Laurent’s Alan DeSousa and Laval mayor Stéphane Boyer. Connecting it to the REM’s Bois‑Franc station is the first obvious step, but will Quebec agree to fund two metro extensions at once?

       
      • DeWolf 14:05 on 2023-02-19 Permalink

        “Montréal espère un prolongement pur et simple du métro, mais le gouvernement dit vouloir envisager toutes les options.”

        Sigh.

      • Vazken 15:09 on 2023-02-19 Permalink

        The orange line should be a loop, honestly.

        Or extended all the way to the west island.

      • Ephraim 16:04 on 2023-02-19 Permalink

        Vazken – It will NEVER go to the West Island. The CAQ/PQ can’t get votes there and the Liberals can easily get votes there. It will only built where votes can be swayed

      • steph 18:59 on 2023-02-19 Permalink

        A loop would alleviate the current crowded east branch.

      • Benoit 10:51 on 2023-02-20 Permalink

        “The metro should be extended to the West Island”: really? Have you heard about the REM? The West Island is getting a brand new light metro, with 3 separate branches!

      • Ian 17:58 on 2023-02-20 Permalink

        Lol, with even worse service than the existing train line. Have you ever been west of Dorval?

    • Kate 11:48 on 2023-02-19 Permalink | Reply  

      A coroner’s report says inmates die at Bordeaux Jail because it has poor healthcare facilities. Item references a Globe & Mail article I can’t link to.

       
      • Kate 11:22 on 2023-02-19 Permalink | Reply  

        Statistics Canada show that Montrealers are working and indeed that Quebec has the lowest unemployment rate in Canada.

         
        • Kate 11:20 on 2023-02-19 Permalink | Reply  

          The city is being criticized for supposed inaction on HIV/AIDS although, if true, the numbers showing that the city has surpassed the goals of the Paris Declaration are a solid defense. And it’s not as if the city is primarily responsible for healthcare.

           
          • Kate 11:07 on 2023-02-19 Permalink | Reply  

            Daniel Renaud spins one of his stories about the mob – in fact, about a mob‑owned café in Little Italy where certain police are known to have warned the owner that a raid was imminent during the 2021 Covid measures when no establishment should have been full of people. The two patrolmen are still working for the SPVM but have been “given other tasks.”

             
            • Kate 00:07 on 2023-02-19 Permalink | Reply  

              According to a commercial air quality firm’s report, Montreal is the most polluted city in Canada, with living here being equivalent to smoking 124 cigarettes a year.

               
              • Mark 11:20 on 2023-02-19 Permalink

                Using pm 2.5 is only one way to measure overall air quality. The CTV article should have linked to their site, which hosts the original blog post and explains their methodology
                https://housefresh.com/secondhand-smoke-world-map/

                The basically scrapped average fine particulate data from this site (https://aqicn.org/), and converted it “cigarettes per year”. It does strike me as a bit of pseudo science hiding their real goal which is to create marketing hype for air purifiers ( it also offers lots of reviews).

                So many review sites turn out to be sponsored by the companies…deck paint is one very well known example. Not sure yet if house fresh falls into that category.

              • Em 10:47 on 2023-02-20 Permalink

                Remember a few years ago when our air pollution monitors went through the roof, and it turned out it was because of a nearby pizza oven? I’ve been skeptical ever since.

              • Orr 14:35 on 2023-02-21 Permalink

                According to https://aqicn.org/city/montreal/ today is a good air quality day.
                I am a fan of the wood-stove and wood fireplace ban (technically, disallowing non-epa-approved wood stoves) Montreal enacted a few years ago. Air quality is much better.
                There is a NFB film about Rick Leckner doing traffic reporting from a helicopter and he says at one point not to fly too low bc the air is not breathable (days of every building had a garbage incinerator in the building & low-quality bunker-oil furnaces)

              • Kate 15:07 on 2023-02-21 Permalink

                Leckner must be ancient. He was quoted in the media just this week, but I remember him doing helicopter traffic reports when I was a kid.

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