The city starts work on 53 bike path projects Tuesday, spending $30 million on extensive work including the first section of the REV on Henri‑Bourassa in St‑Laurent.
Updates from May, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Lucien-L’Allier train terminus is going to close starting next April so work can be done on the open-air quais – including building an awning structure over them. It will partially reopen October 2024 but won’t reopen completely till the following April.
Thomas
Not to be a pedantic train nerd (even though I absolutely am), but in English we call them platforms 😉
LJ
What a complete waste of funds that could be much better used elsewhere. At that terminus everyone can wait indoors during inclement weather, and in nicer weather no one needs the awning. I see no purpose to having it at all. Reminds me of the rebuilt waiting station for some buses outside Lionel-Groulx, which made everyone walk much further than necessary, provided no useful shelter, and has now been closed for a very long time.
Kate
I’m willing to believe the external platforms (thank you, Thomas) need some work, since they’ve been sitting out there since 1976. Maybe the awning is meant to protect the infrastructure and will only protect passengers as a side effect?
I still need to find out which incredible idiots decided it was a great idea to build a hockey arena directly on top of the tracks leading into Windsor Station, which could have been in use for centuries for trains, but is now meaningless.
shawn
Yes the loss of Windsor Station as a working train station still hurts – for me, anyway.
Kevin
I assume it was Dore, looking at a wasteland in the wake of the Overdale debacle.
Kate
Kevin, you’re right that Jean Doré was mayor in 1993 when construction began on what was then called the Molson Centre. Why did CP allow it, I wonder.
shawn
I don’t think CP cared. Windsor was being used only for commuter rail and CP stopped operating the line in 1982.
Taylor
If memory serves Mulroney facilitated the deal.
The fact that CP left Montreal two years later may have had something to do with it too… I think Shawn may be on the money, they probably simply didn’t care anymore as most of their business had, by that time, shifted to Western Canada, and commuter rail operations had been transferred to the AMT.
That being said, never say never (again)
The Bell Ctr is nearly 30 years old and the NHL will invariably start getting fussy about the age of the arena in a few years
The railway right of way is a possible route for a downtown TGV terminus
If you demolished the Bell Ctr you can still access Windsor Station
In my dreams, this is what will happen. They’ll recycle the old Forum into a new arena, bring hockey back to where it belongs, and turn Windsor Station back into a jewel of a train station. Better still, in a major redevelopment of Windsor Station, they vacate the commercial properties within and make it a hotel.
Don’t discount the ‘moving back to the Forum’ thing either… it would be the mother of all sports marketing/PR efforts… quite possibly the only way to convince locals to spend public money on a new arena. They’d have a parade with 24 replica stanley cups brought from one location to the other. Big parade. The Molsons could potentially make a fortune selling their land back to the gov’t for a train station. And then there’d be the whole hockey nostalgia angle… people eat that up. I’d be surprised if they weren’t already working on such a plan.
shawn
I am the furthest thing from a rail guy but according to Wikipedia, that line and the old CN line to the west island were actually sold to and run by the old STCUM: the Montreal urban community transit authority. The AMT – that didn’t exist until the 90s.
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Kate
I was reminded by a Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweet that this is the date of Manhattanhenge, and that we have a henge effect too, as has been discussed in our media previously. The Gazette gave it the date of June 12 in a 2011 piece, and Spacing, back in 2009 – citing an earlier recension of this very blog – also cites June 12, at least from the Plateau grid that’s in line with most downtown streets – a grid that runs east to d’Iberville and north to Jean‑Talon, and is shared by NDG and lower Westmount as well. Other parts of town will not be henging on June 12.
EmilyG
I seem to remember around June 21st, the setting sun can be seen down St-Laurent or St-Denis street.
Kate
There would be 2 every year of course, as the sun goes and then comes back.
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Kate
It’s not quite a Montreal story, but most of Quebec is under an open fire ban as a hot dry week continues, and as fires sizzle Alberta and Nova Scotia.
Facing the hot week, the city is opening the taps on some of the splash pads in parks and may open cooling stations if needed.
It didn’t feel too hot to me Sunday, maybe because it wasn’t humid, but the daytime high broke a record.
DeWolf
The lack of humidity is a real blessing. When it’s 31 and dry you can sit in filtered sun and feel pretty good. If it wasn’t so dry, even the shade would be uncomfortable.
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Kate
A new committee announced Monday by a joint Montreal-Quebec power quartet is going to work on finding a way to build housing on the Blue Bonnets site without breaking the bank.
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Kate
Quebec is putting in $5.7 million against armed violence in Montreal, but from recent incident reports I think they’d be better off looking for the guys with matches and canisters of gasoline.
walkerp
100%. Unfortunately the bosses of those guys with the matches have a very powerful lobby.
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Kate
A mention in a Washington Post item, suggesting Montreal as a summer vacation spot, has spawned a La Presse piece about Montreal as a luxury destination. The WPost piece pitches the city as an alternative to New York, a bit of a novelty since we’re usually the cut‑price Paris, safely still in North America and without the strikes.
Ian
Brooklyn in Miniature, maybe. Utterly unlike Paris, though.
To be honest I would be VERY surprised if you couldn’t better French dining in New York than here.
Shawn Goldwater
Well I can only say that I once went with friends on the upper west side to a French place and thought that it was inferior to what we have.
But that was just one place, not high-end.
I personally am a fan of L’Express.
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Kate
Quebec actor Michel Côté has died. He was in many things – Broue, Omertà, C.R.A.Z.Y., La petite vie. He was 72.
Update: Pieces about Côté from Le Devoir, La Presse, Métro, the Journal, four pieces from Radio‑Canada.
Deb Prothero
A sad day. I enjoyed his performance in C.R.A.Z.Y.
JaneyB
That is sad. De Père en flic was priceless. So many good ones. RIP.
PatrickC
A propos of C.R.A.Z.Y., it’s too bad more people can’t see the film. The producers failed to secure the proper rights for the songs they included, and so the film can’t be screened commercially in the US and no doubt elsewhere.
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Kate
The Journal’s Danièle Lorain drew the “we hates Montreal” straw this week, so she writes a piece laced with sneery sarcasm – you know when they begin a column with “Madame la mairesse” that you’re in for a bumpy ride – about driving difficulties in town.
She starts off with a list of highway closures that can’t be blamed on city hall because they’re ordained by the Quebec transport ministry. Then she slams the pedestrianization of a few streets for summer as if every major artery in town has been shut down, even though the popularity of these streets is evident.
I bet this gets a lot of people in Joliette really steamed, though.
bumper carz
For all those frustrated drivers who live in bungalows that have replaced forests, this video might be a wake-up call. A text analysis would reveal that the victim says “car” more than any other word.
DeWolf
Mont-Royal was slammed all weekend. Busier than I recall it being any previous summer. Pedestrian streets are extremely popular but they’ll always be a convenient boogeyman for people who never actually come into the city.
Aineko Marcx
Securing some minimum guaranteed readership by hitchhiking the “hatred towards cars” topic seldom fails. After all vehicles are our sacrosanct avatars in the asphalt-concrete subuniverse.
I always expect new products of such specific variety cultivated from the Journal.shawn
BTW Le Devoir article gets it slightly wrong? While St-Denis is indeed pedestrian-only during the comic fest, Mount Royal Ave. is once again pedestrians and slow biking… https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/791899/urbanisme-les-pietons-ont-conquis-le-plateau-mont-royal
Ian
I was just down by Mt Royal and Papineau, most of Mt Royal in there is closed fir the installation of street planters and soforth, everyone is walking AND bicycling on the sidewalks. It’s a bit of a log jam in spots as nobody wants to walk their bikes and pedestrians are refusing to give up their right of way.
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Kate
A teenage driver is in critical condition after colliding with a wall in St‑Léonard early Monday. Firefighters had to pry him out of the vehicle.
shawn
BTW that driver near Joliette who tried to avoid hitting a family of ducks on the road has been found guilty, even though the oncoming teenaged motorcyclist was speeding around the curve. https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/justice-et-faits-divers/2023-01-26/canards-sur-la-route/eric-rondeau-coupable-de-conduite-dangereuse-causant-la-mort.php
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Kate
There were two valuable musical instruments at the Bon‑Pasteur, a harpsichord dating from 1772 and a Fazioli piano. It looks like they have been saved although they will have to be carefully looked after and restored after water damage.
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Kate
24hrs spent a morning at Vintage Parc, which will be closing at the end of the summer.
Ian
I have actually bought a couple of pieces there over the years, they are pretty good for unupholstered furniture. One of the last remaining “junk shop” style furniture stores in the area, I guess it’s a victim of changing demographics to some extent … but they’ve had that “closing sale” sign up for well over 5 years now, I’m sure that didn’t help drive repeat customers. It’s like the lamp store that used to be on Parc just north of Laurier, it had a perpetual closing sale sign for so long that when it finally did close I was surprised it was still there even though I passed it almost every day.
Joey
I think the current going out of business sign in September or whenever has been up for more than a year, but maybe this time it’s for real. Hard to imagine the landlord finding a tenant willing to pay significantly more, given how little activity there is on that stretch of the block – there’s gotta be one or two empty storefronts already.
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Kate
Big traffic snarls are the main story on Sunday evening.
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Kate
A Montreal filmmaker is documenting the gentrification of Chinatowns across North America.
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Kate
Odd TVA piece here about an SPVM cop who claims he didn’t racially profile a man named Mohammed Hizebry – instead, he spotted a loaded pistol in his bag. In any case, the judge believed the cop, and Hizebry has to return to court, presumably on firearms charges. Nice bit of French slang in the headline.
DeWolf 09:48 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
Very excited about Christophe-Colomb. Now that I live a few blocks away, I can see what a real tragedy it is to have such a pedestrian- and cyclist-hostile environment on an otherwise beautiful street. The temporary arrangements in 2020 were a revelation. It will be nice to have a proper alternative to St-Denis (which already gets congested at rush hours) and the horrible Boyer, which such a narrow, bumpy, unpleasant path, I can’t believe it was the best we had until just a few years ago.
The extended path on de la Commune will be great too. The way the bike path suddenly vanishes at St-Laurent before picking up again just past the Bonsecours Market has always been such nonsense. The signage is very confusing, with bikes officially banned along one obvious cycling corridor next to the train tracks, and an uncomfortable situation passing through crowds of tourists if you want to head over to the waterfront road.
Too bad we don’t have an announcement about finishing the missing links in the REV Viger-St-Jacques-St-Antoine. So far this year, there have been some improvements to the way the existing bit downtown has been managed, but it’s still a shit show compared to anything on the Plateau or in Rosemont. There are some serious problems with the way Ville-Marie works as a borough considering it is constantly lagging behind on these sorts of things.
Kate 09:54 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
Not surprising, given that Ville-Marie has such a deficient governance structure. It seriously needs its own borough mayor and more councillors answerable to voters.
CE 16:34 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
I lived on Christophe-Colomb years ago, right across the street from Saint-Arsène school. It was a terrible street to live on and I can’t imagine it was good for the students. I used to imagine taking a lane out and putting a half lane bike path on either side (with the middle lane alternating for car traffic like on Parc). It was impossible to think that the bike path that’s being built now would ever be able to happen (let alone the same thing on St-Denis), and that was only about 10 years ago.
The Boyer/Brébeuf bike path used to be the busiest in North America until the de Maisonneuve path opened in 2007 or 2008. Now, neither of them are even in the top 10 in Montreal.
DeWolf 18:14 on 2023-05-30 Permalink
Ironically, the only pushback to the Christophe-Colomb plan has been from people living in that big condo complex along the highway-style section just north of Crémazie. Pretty much everyone in RPP, Villeray and upper Ahuntsic seems pretty happy about the plan, maybe because they know what a horrible place it is right now for everyone (including drivers). In 2020, I remember driving along it and thinking it was so much less stressful when there was only one lane of traffic instead of two lanes with drivers constantly trying to overtake you if you did anything close to the speed limit.
Kate 14:56 on 2023-05-31 Permalink
Seems a lot of people are happy as clams about the Christophe‑Colomb plans.
Of course there’s already a bike path along the west side along a bit of it, Jarry to Crémazie. North of the 40 it moves away from the traffic and becomes a separate path in the parklike space beside the road. I used to do that route occasionally when I was still cycling.