Work on extending the metro’s blue line will start Monday at Jean‑Talon and Langelier. Some road closures and bus route adjustments are expected.
Updates from July, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Every now and then the Montreal Economic Institute gets into the news with some new cockamamie right‑wing idea for improving things – like increasing our electricity bills.
Taylor
Isn’t it strange how they have a problem with us consuming an inexpensive renewable energy source but they have no problem with all the expensive non-renewable energy we consume?
Goober
Natural gas would be dirt cheap in Quebec if the Quebec Government allowed fracking.
Orr
MEI has offices in Montreal and in Calgary. So although they do not reveal their funders whose PR objectives they are processing into public opinion, I don’t think there is much doubt it is to make Canada the best place in the world for domestic and foreign oil companies, and if other large corporations want to toss some coin at the MEI, their PR talking-points will also be think-tanked into op-eds and “news” in all the newspapers.
Mitchell
Is this “plan” as absurd as Giguere makes it sound? Charge consumers more so that they can be reimbursed by the government. I admit that I don’t understand economics, but this sounds like a scam.
“The rate increase would also boost Hydro-Québec’s revenues, and by extension, the government’s revenues. With this money, Quebec could finance targeted measures to soften the blow for the less well-off and fund a tax cut that would indirectly offset the rising cost of electricity bills,” added Giguère.
steph
yes Mitchell their suggestion is absurd. Increasing costs of basic needs reverses progressive taxes. We need to tax the rich MORE.
Su
The extractivist sector is going to require MUCH more energy to supply the ten fold increase in mining and processing of elements required to fuel our “Green Transition”. The mines will require an increase in green renewable energy (ie more hydro dams) which can be financed by Hydro Quebec price increases or by privatised hydro development to supply extraction activities directly without Hydro Quebec involvement or an increase in fossil fuels.
MEI represents the private extractivist sector
. Perhaps Michael Sabia who has taken over the helm of HydroQuebec as of today will straighten all of this out.saintjacques
> Charge consumers more so that they can be reimbursed by the government.
You mean, like a carbon tax?
Joey
Or the GST…
Michael
Quebec needs to allow natural gas production. We import $2B worth a year.
Makes no sense.
Kate
Goober, Michael – do you actually not believe that burning hydrocarbons increases greenhouse gas emissions with the ultimate effect of heating the earth?
su
Goober/Michael
The only thing that ever made fracked gas cheap was government subsidies. Without those subsidies the Energy Return on Investment for fracked gas would have made it way too expensive.Ephraim
Increasing our electric bills does nothing but create surpluses which in turn go 50% to the Generations Fund and 50% have to be rebated in rates. Why don’t these idiots know that? You can’t profit excessively on electricity in Quebec
MarcG
A guy on the radio this morning was trying to sell it as a socialist idea, like “rich people spend more on electricity so they’ll be the ones who pay more and all of this new money will trickle down in the form of social programs for everyone”. But the reality is that if you’re low-income and your Hydro bill goes up $10/month that hurts a lot more than if you’re stinking rich and it goes up by $100/month. It’s like parking tickets, for some people it’s just the price of that parking spot, for others it means they’re fucked. If you think increasing taxes for the wealthy is a good idea, just do it.
Michael
Kate,
Natural gas is the cleanest form of hydrocarbons.
We need energy. Either we import it or produce it, we won’t ever be off hydrocarbons in our lifetimes.
Hydro electricity can only produce so much energy until we need to build more dams.
Kate
That’s common sense – and that “common sense” will kill us all.
Ian
Considering how little has been done in QC with wind, solar, and tidally generated electricity we aren’t out of options yet! What are we supposed to do, Michael, retrofit the generating stations for natural gas? Does your car run on natural gas? Your computer? Switching over to natural gas doesn’t make any sense at all. Even nuclear would make more sense than natural gas, and that’s a bad idea, too. Electric is the way to go.
If we go down rabbitholes at this point, time will run out – stay the course. _That_ is common sense – as opposed to sensus communis, which is a very different thing altogether and is often the opposite.
Goober
I didn’t say anything about hydrocarbons.
I merely pointed out that hydroelectricity is made artificially cheaper by the Government, while natural gas is artificially more expensive (also because of the Government).
Ultimately what makes any talk about the environment so dysfunctional in Canada, but especially in Quebec, is that we are a relatively small population spread over a huge landmass that’s frozen for half the year. To live a comfortable life with modern amenities, Canadians have to consume a fair bit of energy. And all forms of energy production have some sort of environmental cost.
It would make much more sense for our dense urban neighbourhoods to have totally separate energy laws from the rest of the province, but frankly our legislation is so centralized and our leaders so ossified that I see this as being highly unlikely.
Lastly, if you want to live a simple, pre-20th century off-the-grid lifestyle in order to reduce your carbon footprint, by all means, go for it. I suspect precious few people will follow you to your cabin in the woods, however.
Chris
MarcG what you said in your last comment is true, but also true of the carbon tax.
nau
No, it is not true of the carbon tax. The carbon tax program has rebates that are paid back to all households where it applies. (None of us get one because it doesn’t apply in Quebec, which has a different carbon pricing policy.) The federal govt claims that 80% of households get more back in rebates than they pay. There’s no way to verify that but in any case if that’s their claim, the point at which one pays more than one gets back should be well above whatever level is considered low income. Note as well that the federal tax credit provides a larger rebate to rural residents, so there are already different “energy laws” for different areas, and goober’s complaint about ossified, centralized gummint is just so much ideological bilge. Franchement, I lean anarchist, but let’s not just make up whatever nonsense appeals to our prejudices.
Chris
nau, yes, it is true of the carbon tax. Maybe we disagree about what the “it” is? Let me reword MarcG’s sentence: “But the reality is that if you’re low-income and your gas bill goes up $10/month that hurts a lot more than if you’re stinking rich and it goes up by $100/month.” This is *why* they have the rebate you mention. This MEI plan _could have a similar rebate system_. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not arguing for or against this MEI plan nor the carbon tax.
nau
Chris, I have applied the principle of interpretive generosity, but I still don’t see how your first comment could have been understood as you commenting on the MEI plan or the “why” of a rebate there. If that was your intent, as much as I’m for brevity, one has to include all the relevant words. Regarding the MEI plan, I didn’t hear the radio broadcast MarcG did, so I can’t comment on how the MEI’s mouthpiece presented it there. In the article, the idea presented is to increase everybody’s hydro bill and use the revenue to offset the impact on the poor and possibly give some unspecified tax cut. These sort of wealthy-donor-serving institutes have promoted changes to the tax codes for the last few decades to increase the wealth of those who already have the most by shifting the tax burden to the middle classes (they would put it on the poor too but Canada still has enough latent decency that doing that too obviously simply won’t fly and even the MEI types have figured that out). Personally, I imagine I’m better off with the current Hydro rates, then with whatever tax cut the MEI and the CAQ would cook up.
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Kate
A man has been arrested following vandalism to a mosque in Montreal North over the weekend.
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Kate
La Presse interviews a woman who’s been living in the same Villeray shoebox house since 1949, at times with half a dozen people sharing the same tiny space.
DeWolf
Cute story. Especially this quote:
“J’aime mieux être sur mon balcon plutôt qu’en arrière dans le jardin. Parce que les fleurs, ça ne parle pas, les humains, oui!”
Robert H
That was indeed pleasant to read. And DeWolf, yes, as that quote implies, she seems like a very sociable person, une vraie vedette du quartier and the sort that every neighborhood should have. Mind you, she’s also the sort of person whom I would have found annoying when I was a kid and thought less about the value of friendly eyes on the street than the possibility that news about what I was up to away from home would get back to my parents. And, she also seems to have created a lively, warm household. I do wish, however, that she had expanded upon her off hand comment about Édith Piaf being “Une emmerdeuse.” Hmmmmmm…
Kate
I miss a couple of my neighbours who used to sit on their front porches, who were usually happy to have a little chat. It’s a younger crowd now and people are too busy to hang around chatting.
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Kate
After a crazy weekend in which 120,000 people wanted to try the REM, it’s now in service as part of many commuters’ day. Some basic facts about the service.
There was a service interruption Monday morning, caused by an unspecified technical issue.
Faiz Imam
I wonder what CDPQs requirements in terms of communication strategy.
They gave decent info about this outage to start, but will we ever find out what happened? Are they required to tell us?
DeWolf
@Faiz it’s in the article:
« Le problème a vraiment été au niveau des aiguillages. Il y a un système qui s’est bloqué », a expliqué après coup le porte-parole du CDPQ Infra, Jean-Vincent Lacroix. Cet appareil, a précisé l’organisation, est celui qui permet à un train de changer de voie. On retrouve plusieurs types d’aiguillages dans les grandes gares et les systèmes de transport comme le REM.
Uatu
What a shitshow. Get on the train then off then on again then off. Nobody knows what’s going on. No sign of attendants who are supposed to answer questions. No info on the platform except vague announcements about service interruption. No info on when it it’ll resume. Everyone emptied out of the station unsure of where to go until someone pointed out that there’s a shuttle bus then a gigantic line formed that twisted back on itself then a twenty minute wait and also you have to make sure you’re heading on the one to downtown and not nuns island. I understand that it’s the first day, but at least have backup buses and staff to answer questions on standby. I had to figure out where to go by just following the crowd. Got to hear people express their frustrations in multiple languages though which was kinda entertaining. Cantonese, Russian, Spanish, French, English, Filipino…
Also heard “I want my bus back” .
There were also reporters and transit vloggers enthusiastically recording everything. This was not a good look for the REM whatever your opinion on it. Got to work 15min. late. Thank goodness I took an earlier bus…. 190$ for this…ughForgetful
Noooooooo! New metro, Same problem. At least the trains are outside. The times I’ve been stuck in the tunnels, train doors locked. I wish there would be a centralized channel managed by the ARTM where all services interruption would be announced. Now STM, exo, RTL, STL and REM all communicate separately.
Kate
Good to have a report from someone on the scene, Uatu. Thanks!
Tim F
Any news report about how the evening rush hour went well? No? We’re just gonna leave everyone with the first impression that it’s a forever broken thing?
Sigh…Kate
Tim F, I’ve had a look at all the usual media sites and found nothing about the evening rush hour. It’s not news when there are no problems!
Joey
@Tim F perhaps you saw that late at night the REM was down, and that the CDPQ did not bother to tweet it. Great first day! Good thing they didn’t bother to keep the buses running in parallel during the “periode de rodage”…
Bert
I wonder if this may have anything to do with the June 16th truck fire that was under the REM overpass on the 15 around the Samuel de Champlain bridge. I drove by there last week and the soot on the overpass is quite substantial.
Google Street View – https://goo.gl/maps/CdX34rXBXL7BWQ6e7
CTV article – https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/structural-concerns-for-rem-after-truck-fire-scorches-underside-of-railway-1.6443735
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Kate
You couldn’t make it up: Quebec is sending clowns to Ukraine.
Meezly
Cuz Life is Beautiful?
Max
Quite a clickbait synopsis to a noble initiative. This guy is doing more than 99% of the folks to help.
Kate
I’m sorry to have offended. It’s only that we have a recurring joke here about how the city and/or Quebec like to throw clowns at any problem.
Ian
Sounds like somebody needs to send in the clowns for certain grumpy posters. Seems to be a few more these days, is it because Xitter is dying?
In any case, Montreal is a city where, when faced with a problem, we always ask, “Is this a problem that can be solved with clowns?”
… and the answer is always “YES”.Mozai
The office of “Clowns Sans Frontières” is here in Plateau district.
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Kate
After a couple of ominously quiet weeks on the arson front, an Amir restaurant on Côte‑des‑Neiges was put to the torch early Monday.
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Kate
Some boroughs have a program to help people create sidewalk gardens and the results are nice.
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Kate
Five hundred luminous drones will take to the sky Sunday evening over the Old Port to mark the opening of the big tennis match August 4 at Jarry Park. It’s women’s tennis here this year.
Vazken
this was fine but I believe better communication would have been better, other than “the old port” there wasn’t much info to go on
Also while drones are nice to look at, they still don’t hold a cancel to FIREWORKS
Kate
There are concerns whether fireworks are sustainable at all.
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Kate
CTV looks at what half a million will buy in real estate in various boroughs.
Mozai
I’m living in a 3½ 600 sqft apartment now; it sounds weird the unit is Sud-Ouest is 3 bedrooms but only 750 sq ft. (two extra 8×8 bedrooms?)
MarcG
Seems to be a typo in the article, if you look at the listing it says 1 bedroom.
Blork
Yeah, that’s a mistake in the CTV article. The listing says “3 rooms” and then specifies “1 bedroom.” (Probably another “lost in translation” issue regarding the weird and inconsistent way that apartments are described in Quebec.)
Also: no audio in the CTV video.
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Kate
A Le Devoir writer went to visit a small tent encampment described discreetly as being in a wooded area near a bike path in Montreal. Janie Dussault seems impressed with the order and efficiency displayed by the three men living there. She does not ask what I always wonder about, which is where they go to the bathroom and, secondarily, how they manage to wash themselves or their clothes (the photo shows a pair of jeans hanging on a line).
Update: My eye skated over that. She does ask about bathrooms and it’s set out in a comment below.
Spi
It’s not a secret, before even clicking through I knew exactly which campement it is. It is indeed kept very clean, although that have been reports earlier in year about women being harassed by homeless people near that campement it was remains unclear whether the person doing the harassment is one of the camp residents or not.
As to where they shower themselves and wash their clothes; there are water features in a nearby children’s park. I’ve just assumed they use them in the dead of night, the homeless in the village do the same but are much more brazen about it.
J
I think I know where that is too, but I’m not 100% certain. I think there have been similar articles in the past in other newspapers where they have been more specific about locations.
Like Kate, I also wonder where they go to the bathroom….would nearby businesses allow them to use their washrooms on a regular basis?
Chris
Yeah, that’s along the CP tracks near the famous Mile End water tower thingie. The longtime ‘residents’ have indeed been keeping it clean, though the newer arrival(s) closer to the Canadian Tire less so. There’s a water fountain right near their tents, which they presumably at least drink from. I was impressed/distressed last autumn when they didn’t move to somewhere warmer, they appeared to be there for at least most of the winter.
EG
From the article:
En général, le plus compliqué pour les gens vivant dans un campement, c’est d’aller aux toilettes. « Il y a beaucoup de plaintes qui viennent du fait que ces gens-là n’ont pas le choix de se soulager quelque part. Et ce quelque part, c’est souvent dehors à ciel ouvert, lance M. Bonneau. Il y a des gens qui utilisent des sacs, des chaudières, ils se débrouillent. Si vous me demandez mon avis, si ce n’est pas un choix personnel, le ciel ouvert ne devrait pas avoir lieu pour une question de dignité humaine. »
Kate
Thank you, EG.
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Kate
Rooms with multiple bunk beds are for rent here at nearly $1000 a month.
Good Ricochet piece on why renovictions are rife and little is done to prevent them.
Another Ricochet piece looks into how long‑term rentals are being emptied out and turned into ghost hotels.
Blork
If you read the article about the bunk beds you’ll see that it’s not real. Those are fake ads intended to study the market.
Kate
Still, they’re trying it out to see if they get enough bites and, if so, they’ll put them up.
I’ve seen photos like that of real offers in London and other large cities.
mare
A long time ago I saw an Airbnb listing with three bunkbeds in one shared room, and the house had three of them. Cheap, $80 per room IIRC, with lots of reviews, not even all bad. It wasn’t even close to downtown, but most days on the calendar were booked. There’s definitely a market there. I can only imagine the lineup for the bathroom though.
Kate
It would be one thing to stay in an Airbnb like that for a few days, maybe when you’re young and travelling with friends, but to live like that?
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Kate
The boil-water advisory that followed last week’s water main break in St‑Michel has been ended.
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Kate
A lot of people decided to ride the REM on Saturday – more than were expected.
I went down to Central Station and got in line. The line snaked the full length of the station and then was directed into a maze. People arriving on regular trains were having trouble getting through the crowd with their baggage. It was marginally orderly but obvious that more people were piling in than they expected.
I’d been inching along with the line for close to an hour when an official came down calling out that we would be allowed to go to Brossard, but not to come back, because there were too many people lined up on the Brossard end.
Resisting panic at the horror of sudden exile to Brossard, I quickly pondered:
1. We’ve been told for months that the bus routes that used to cross the bridge from Brossard to Bonaventure would no longer exist, so I couldn’t get back that way.
2. There might be a bus from Panama to Longueuil metro, but it would be jam packed, if the vast horde pullulating through Central Station was any indication.
3. I would need an AB ticket for that trip and I only have A tickets on my Opus.So I thought to hell with it, and left. I can go back some ordinary day and try it.
…Also, I hadn’t been to the train station in awhile and had forgotten the godawful kludge of passageways that you have to take to get to the station from the metro. Some of the escalators were down, and the wayfinding is confusing because it’s not in a uniform style. We can do better than this.
Thomas
True to my reputation, I woke up early to ride the first train at 9:00 this morning and it was glorious. An incredibly smooth and quiet ride for passengers as compared to the metro. Faster speeds as well.
I’m glad so many regular, non-public-transport-enthusiast people came out to ride it for themselves and see what it’s all about.
Tim S.
I guess it’s good that there’s at least passing interest in new public transit!
For the record, it looks like the 45 bus line is operating until Monday, so you would have been able to make it back. I made a point of taking my kids on it last week, because riding that bus has the best views over the river and down to upstate NY, in the right seat. The REM is in the middle of the span so you won’t be able to look right down into the water.
Apart from the 45, the to-be cancelled bus lines that people are complaining about don’t run on Saturdays anyways. There are several lines running from Panama to Longueuil, but most of them only run once an hour on weekends. One of the promises of the REM is that frequency on those lines will be increased, but checking the schedule for next Saturday, nope, still one an hour.
All of which to say, you would have been OK I think, if you’d been willing to wait (on both ends).
Faiz Imam
I got to Brossard station at 5pm. It was pretty empty and I was able to do a loop with my family. Was at gare centrale at 6 to 630 and the line wasn’t terrible.
Obviously they opened things up at some point in the afternoon.
I did note that security was making sure that the trains that left gare centrale were not packed to capacity. They were barely more than half full. So actual capacity is quite a bit more than we saw today.
But also this was a pretty crazy amount of people, especially a lot of families with strollers and kids out for a good time. Free is very enticing.
I suspect things will be much more normal when people are paying full price on Monday.
Robert H
Seeing and reading all the coverage, I wish I were in Montreal today. Though, even if I were, I’d probably wait like Kate until some of the enthusiasm wanes. Besides, the portion of the route that interests me the most has not yet opened. I still remember riding the blue line in the late eighties and thinking, as the train stopped at Édouard-Montpetit how it would make so much sense to connect it to the Deux-Montagne line, and wondering whether anyone else had thought about that too. Now I like to pretend I willed it into existence. Nevertheless, I know that, like many others, I’ll enjoy the view from the Champlain where Montreal makes its glamorous Hollywood entrance as one crosses Le Fleuve. It’s a shame Montreal’s primary commercial airport developed at Dorval instead of Saint-Hubert. Entering the city from the former, even on the REM, will still seem like entering a grand building via the loading dock.
Faiz Imam
There are plans to expand st Hubert airport, with a new dedicated terminal.
From there it’s a 15 mins shuttle to both Rem as well as Longueuil metro.
I expect more flights to use it in the years ahead.
Forgetful
They are not enforcing fare validation the first weeks, so it’s functionally free.
@Robert H. The STM (called CTCUM at the time I think) wanted to build a line 3 metro by overtaking the Deux-Montagnes line. The REM is that metro now, but the operator is not the STM.
Anton
“…Also, I hadn’t been to the train station in awhile and had forgotten the godawful kludge of passageways that you have to take to get to the station from the metro.“
Thats also because they didnt invest to minimize transfers. In Berlin, with the last subway project, they moved a station 180m to make a better transfer. Back in 2016, I tried to map what an improved gare centrale connection could look like:
https://twitter.com/ant6n/status/794239633899061254?s=61&t=NO8EcUtTe9wj7QjUlTAuag
MarcG
I wanted to remember what that walk is like and found this CBC video on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10153967781726298
walkerp
I thought it was going to be a party. For those of you who got on the train, what was the atmosphere like?
Forgetful
@walkerp so I went to get a feel of the layout of the stations before using them this week for my actual commute, and people were really excited (which I don’t understand it’s literally just a new metro line). A lot of people exploring, doing some lives, taking pictures, kids running everywhere (the stations are surprisingly expansive, but I find the stairs widths to be lacking). What really got the people going was actually seeing the train pass cars in traffic and looking at the skyline and Saint Lawrence. I didn’t go to the celebration event at Place Ville Marie, but apparently it was pretty meh.
I’m guessing there’s so much enthusiasm because, comparatively to other metros, the STM lines are a bit dated and unusual in terms of features (100% underground, rubber tyres, low grade of automation, no platform screen doors) and that’s probably a big part of the novelty for most visitors this weekend. A lot of people who are obviously do not use the metro and don’t know to let people exit before entering the train and taking seats reserved for people with reduced mobility. Think there was a couple of police interventions, but didn’t witness anything myself. Hope that station attendants and security will remind those new metro users of good etiquette.
Also, the stations are clean and have a nice, albeit generic design, hoping the public art program can spruce it up (commissioned pieces haven’t been installed yet, I was really looking forward to see them).
Forgetful
@MarcG I think there’s some talks to facilitate transfers but it complicated because the STM and CDPQ don’t own those part of RESO. Some of it might even be owned by Parc Canada, and when it comes to federal agencies for that kind of request they’ll basically leave you on “read”.
walkerp
Thanks, Forgetful. I also think it’s just exciting that the city has actually completed a public-facing infrastructure project, for all its issues.
Anton
@walkerp
Not just public facing infrastructure, but a rapid mass transit project.
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Kate
The death of street artist Zïlon was announced Saturday morning. La Presse shows the abandoned dépanneur decorated by the artist at St‑Dominique and Marie‑Anne, but for many years before that, his minimalist portraits, executed with simple lines, were scattered all over the Plateau – here’s an example and another.
Meezly
Thanks for posting – I’d never heard of Zïlon before, though I’ve probably seen his work around my hood without realizing. I’ll keep an eye out now with this new found knowledge.
Ephraim
I’ve been lamenting the tagging of the building at St-Dom & M-A. It was so beautifully done. Some of us will miss this great artist
Ian
When I first came to Montreal in 86 his stuff was EVERYWHERE. Last piece of “uncommissioned” work of his I saw was in the alley west of St. Larry just south of Guilbault, back in 96 or so. Definitely one of the very first “art” graffiti people in Montreal. Very much an inspiration to generations of graffiti and strteet art people that followed in his footsteps.
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