We already have traffic warnings for Thanksgiving weekend.
Updates from October, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Having abandoned its “10 minutes max” bus routes, the STM is promising to make 30 of its busiest routes into a 12 minutes max system, some at rush hours and a select few all the time – but the union says it isn’t possible because there aren’t enough drivers.
I waited more than half an hour for a northbound 55 on Friday, around 4 pm. I’d happily take a “15 minutes max” route over a 12‑minute promise they can’t keep.
The newly ordained routes will have these special signs, the solid purple being the ones that run on this schedule all day:
Meezly
Looks promising, but only time will tell. I too have been screwed by the 55 (and 80) never showing up. I’m certainly not going to start commuting to work again during rush hour just to put them to the test!
Kate
I’ve also been burned by the 80 not showing up when expected. I hope the STM can keep its promise on this.
carswell
I really don’t understand why the 55 is high-frequency only during rush hours. It always seems to be running late and, since it’s so infrequent and doesn’t use the big articulated buses, filled to capacity. Is it because some stretch of the route has many fewer passengers? I’d like to think it’s not because the line is heavily used by immigrants and the less affluent.
Kate
St-Laurent may be perceived to be close enough to the orange line not to need more bus service.
Ian
Considering the Montmorency line mostly runs along St Denis downtown, that would be pretty unfair.
dhomas
Over the summer, I was going to meet some friends a Omnivore on St-Laurent. It’s far enough from Mont-Royal metro (about a 10-15 minutes walk), that I decided to take the 55 up from St-Laurent metro (it also helps that I’m directly on the Green line, so no switching). After waiting for 2 scheduled departures that never arrived, I took an electric Bixi instead. It was my first time on an electric bike, and I was blown away at how easy it made going up the hill. I arrived at my destination quite dry, instead of the sweaty mess I would have been had I needed to pedal unassisted up St-Laurent. Very impressive.
In any case, I hope it works out for the 55, but even if they promise 12 minute service, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Kate
Ian, if you’re on the Main and there’s no bus, it’s about a ten‑minute walk over to St‑Denis.
DeWolf
The 55 does seem to be a victim of its proximity to the orange line, but come on. Both it and the 80 should be running every 10 minutes at least, all day, from morning to midnight.
carswell
If a bus is regularly overcrowded and has been for years, the level of service needs to be increased.
With the 55 running on streets as far west as Clark and St-Urbain, the distance and time involved in jagging east to the orange line and back west to your destination can be significant. Pre-pandemic, I frequently took the 55 from Jarry Park down to Laurier O./St-Urbain. Once, having just missed the bus, I walked over to Jean-Talon station, took the metro to Laurier station and the 51 to the intersection. It would have been as fast to skip public transit and walk.
The because-it-parallels-the-metro argument doesn’t hold water when the 24, which parallels the nearby green line for most of its route and the orange line for the rest of it, and the 51, which not only parallels the blue line between Décarie and its east terminus but practically duplicates it between the four westernmost stations, have both been designated all-day high-frequency lines.
Ian
I live in Mile End so I regularly take the 129 instead of the 80. Faster, cleaner, and newer buses. The 51 is a sweet ride too, it’s actually faster for me to catch the 51west to the blue line then go around to LG to get out to the west island than to take the 51 east to the orange line straight to LG.
Chris
>I’d like to think it’s not because the line is heavily used by immigrants and the less affluent.
Of course that’s why. Everything is about race after all. It’s the only reason anyone does or decides anything.
Also: all bus lines skew to the less affluent (and thus also immigrants); the rich have cars.
Kate
I totally agree with everyone who wants more buses on the 55 route. I used to think it was neglected in favour of the 80, but service on the 80 isn’t what it used to be either.
Ian
The 435 express seems like a fairy tale now.
Joey
The term ‘gaslighting’ probably gets thrown around too much, but it comes to mind when I think about this fiction we are being fed that 12 minutes between buses is quick.
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Kate
CBC asked why city hall has handwaved public consultation on the Camillien‑Houde changes. The answer in this article is simple: they’re following the recommendations of the OCPM. Lots of kvetching reported here from Ensemble, who clearly see the Camillien‑Houde as a piece of strong leverage.
bumper carz
Hard to believe that Ensemble would run with a *highways through parks* platform in the next election.
Joey
But the OCPM recommended maintaining road traffic along Camillien-Houde:
La commission recommande de maintenir la circulation automobile sur l’ensemble de l’axe Camillien-Houde / Remembrance, tout en revoyant son aménagement pour le transformer en une voie qui s’intègre mieux à la vocation du parc du Mont-Royal et respecte son patrimoine naturel.
https://ocpm.qc.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/rapports/rapport_final_camillien-houde.pdf
Tim S.
I would support rebuilding the tramway, as shown in the picture. That would actually make the park more accessible and fun. I’m less excited about the racecourse for bikes. Does anyone know if there are any pedestrian bridges over the bike path planned?
Kate
bumper carz (i.e., qatzelok): don’t kid yourself. There’s real anger from car people. You would not believe the fury building in Park Ex over the removal of some parking spaces to make a bike path.
Joey: I wonder how you keep cars moving yet “respect nature” – if anything, that statement supports the status quo. There comes a point where either you have a road, or you don’t.
Em
Pretty sure the mayor is saying the city is following MOST of the recommendations of the OCPM, while ignoring the #1 recommendation: to keep Camillien-Houde open to cars.
The main argument appears to be that the party has the right to do what it thinks is right, regardless of public opinion, and that it isn’t bound by the recommendations of the consultation process (despite saying it would follow them).
thomas
“I wonder how you keep cars moving yet “respect nature”?” I would suggest that you enforce a 30 km/hr speed limit via red light monitoring as a compromise. Although I seldom drive on Camillien-Houde, I am concerned that this matter is becoming a wedge issue.
bumper carz
@Kate: “There’s real anger from car people.”
There was a real anger from cigarette people thirty years ago when bars and restaurants were forced to close their smoking areas.
I wonder how much of this current “anger” is car-company-ad-revenue generated.
Joey
Either you respect the consultation process or you don’t. PM has had two opportunities to campaign on its vision for Mount-Royal and both times has been vague-to-misleading. Sanger is pretty candid in this interview – the party knows what’s best for the people, regardless of what the people say, and can/should do whatever it wants. There’s an element of HL Mencken here – “democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
There’s a word for a $90 million plan that ignores the first recommendation of a major public consultation – chutzpah.
walkerp
That anger is highly amplified in social media. No way pragmatic Plante pushes this through if she wasn’t confident it won’t impact re-election results.
DeWolf
The OCPM recommended keeping existing vehicular traffic while also adding safe infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists.
How do you do that without cutting down trees?
There needs to be vehicular access to the mountain and this plan won’t change that. It won’t even limit the ability of emergency traffic to transit over the mountain if necessary. But it will eliminate the 85% of car traffic on Mount Royal that is just passing through. I’m not sure how anyone can justify a highway cutting through our most iconic park.
Note that the 711 and 11 buses will continue running, so anyone on the Plateau who wants to get up the mountain by public transit will still be able to do so.
Joey
DeWolf – what route will the 11/711 buses take? The artists rendering in the story suggests there’s no road to climb from the east. The city has a price tag all set but no details of how bus service will be maintained, from what I’ve seen. I asked Alex Norris on Facebook but he didn’t answer.
Tim S.
On the other end of Camillien-Houde is CDN-NDG, the mayoralty of which Projet won by a whopping 212 votes. If it’s true that 85% of traffic is through traffic, then a good chunk of it probably comes from CDN-NDG, and then that margin looks very precarious. I think this is a pretty major strategic error by Plante.
walkerp
I really don’t understand the reactions here, do most of you want to maintain a two-lane car road through the mountain?
Chris
walkerp, I really don’t understand your reaction here. Are you just now learning that humanity absolutely loves cars?
Paul
It is hard to argue for the continued existence of a roadway through the mountain. I don’t care that Project are ignoring the recommendations of the report, and I appreciate when a politician is willing to make potentially unpopular decisions when they believe it is for the best of the populace (as opposed to the current trend of populism). Don’t we know by now that humans will often make decisions based on their immediate need, ignoring the long term impact of their actions. Kudos to Plante for this!
DeWolf
@Joey Apparently they will function as express buses, they’ll take Côte-Ste-Catherine/Côte-des-Neiges/Remembrance instead of Camillien-Houde, but with no or limited stops west of the Plateau. But nothing is official yet as far as I can tell.
@Tim S That 85% represents 8,500 cars per day. CDN/NDG is home to 170,000 people. I think the people for whom transiting over the mountain represents the fastest and most efficient way to get across town is actually a very small and specific group. And it’s not even a time saver anymore. It was back when Remembrace was built like an expressway, but with all the traffic calming measures and stop signs, it often takes longer than Dr Penfield or Côte-Ste-Catherine, depending on which what you’re coming from.
Maybe the people who will be impacted most are Westmounters who spend a lot of time on the Plateau (is that even a thing?). But they can’t vote in Montreal.
Joey
I find a lot of the arguments for closing the road completely to be exaggerated or somewhat convoluted. The impression you get is that ordinary folks are just clamoring to climb Cammillien-Houde on their bikes, but can’t because of car traffic (and not because it’s extremely steep and long for amateur bike-riders). I don’t think the needs of the more advanced cyclists should be ignored – I would definitely support a major expansion of the cyclovia (bikes-only) hours beyond the occasional Sunday morning. For example, there’s really no reason why the road couldn’t be bikes-only every day from sunrise to end of the morning. The city seems to have approached the idea of road-sharing from the perspective of space and not time – have designated hours where cyclists can ride in total security, rather than try to make the road (quite narrow in parts) shared by all users.
There’s also an issue with prioritization here – the $90M price tag (so, what, $150M when all is said and done) could be used to make parts of the city that are *much more* dangerous *much more* safe. Candidly, I think the PM leadership really, really wants to be able to say they closed a road in the city’s biggest park. It’ll get ovations at conferences all over the world, but won’t make the areas around elementary schools any safer.
Ian
Exactly what Joey just said. It’s political low-hanging fruit for PM to push through a project like this, public consultations be damned. It’s exactly the kind of showy low-impact but ridiculously expensive performative “greening” they love. If they really cared about the environment so much they would go after enforcing existing laws, like no idling for delivery & construction vehicles – but that’s not very glam.
That said, knowing how paternalistic and stubborn PM are I assume this is basically a fait accompli. We shall see if this impacts the CDN vote – I imagine the spillover traffic alone will be aggravating for them, direct access across the mountain aside.
I’m a bit surprised nobody is commenting on the wasteulness of a four-year, $52-million project to demolish and rebuild the intersection of Remembrance Rd. at Côte-des-Neiges only to almost immediately close the road to through traffic as part of a new $90 million project. What was that $52 million even for, then? How much social housing might that have built, for instance? Why are we spending $142 million on what is basically a civic beautification project in the middle of a recession, with people living on the streets?
Regardless, as Tim S. says it would be nice to have pedestrian bridges over the inevitable MAMIL speedway. As a hiker crossing the road from the Outremont Woods, I have encountered way more road rage from aggro cyclists going downhill at top speed than from motorists. It’s no wonder they were banned from the Mt Royal Cemetery.
In other news, “Inevitable MAMIL Speedway” is the name of my new band.
walkerp
Paul nailed it.
This is a no-brainer. Was there all this whining and kvetching when the Pins-Parc interchange was modified? Was there even consultations? The Parc-Mont-Royal intersection is very dangerous and this will quite likely lead to calming traffic there as well. Not to mention that half our country was on fire for most of the summer.
We voted for PM to make the city more livable and pedestrian and bike-friendly and that’s what they are doing. If you are pro-car, then even though you are an idiot, I respect that you would find arguments and issues with closing down of Camilien-Houde. If you say you are actually worried about climate change and want safer streets, then I have to ask why you are constantly undermining and doubting a project that is a positive step in that direction.carswell
The Remembrance-CDN intersection had to be redone; it was outdated, in poor condition and had reached the end of its useful life. And even had the city known that Remembrance was to become a dead end, the new intersection would probably have ended up looking very similar to the new design, which not only makes the area calmer, safer, greener (literally, with many more trees and grass) and less car-dominated but also removes a physical and psychological barrier by visually opening up one of the park’s main entrances and making the natural geography much more obvious, much like taking down the old Park-Pines tangled spaghetti intersection did.
With work on the Cedar-CDN entrance recently completed (a huge improvement), only the mega Parc/Mont-Royal/Côte-Ste-Catherine/Camillien-Houde intersection remains to be rationalized.
All this work is long overdue and a big step toward reversing the decades-long trend of fencing in the city’s iconic natural treasure.
Ian
Okay, sure – but why a full redesign to improve traffic flow if the traffic flow will be basically cut in half, at the very least? I have no doubt whatsoever that the intersection of Remembrance being redone didn’t take the closure of Camilien-Houde into consideration.
@walkerp “Was there all this whining and kvetching when the Pins-Parc interchange was modified?” I think you just answered your own question – that project was seen as necessary and beneficial to everyone involved. Closing off the mountain from the east is a $90 million civic beautification project. Frankly, that you see this conversation as “pro-car vs anti-car” suggests that you’re the idiot here.
It reminds me of when I asked Richard Ryan what happened to PM’s promise to fight genttification in Mile End and all he could respond with was all the civic beautification in the form of bulb-out gadens, planted boulevards & pretty new street furniture.
Alex Norris
Please note that the $90 figure that has been repeated in media reports represents all planned investments over a 10-year period for the entire Remembrance-Camillien-Houde corridor, including a reconfigured intersection where Camililen-Houde meets Mont Royal Blvd. A significant chunk of that envelope has already been spent on the reconfiguration of Remembrance Road further west. The actual work to be done on Camillien-Houde itself has been estimated at $38 million – and that’s the same amount that would be needed regardless of the scenario chosen for that road. (There’s a pretty broad consensus that the road in its present form is unsafe and hostile to pedestrians, in particular, and that it is poorly integrated into the park, and needs to be changed so these are sums that would need to be spent regardless of the type of layout chosen for that corridor.) For purposes of comparison with the $38 million that has been estimated as the cost of redoing Camillien-Houde Road, the total capital works budget for the rebuild of Pine Avenue is $70 million, the sum set aside for Phase 2 of the rebuilding of Sainte Catherine West, between Mansfield and Atwater, is $309 million, the amount provided for the redevelopment of the Quartier des Gares in southern downtown is $91.5 million. Road and infrastructure work is expensive but it is among the core responsibilities of a municipal government. Keep in mind that the capital works budget for Camillien-Houde includes replacing infrastructure, changing the layout of the road, creating 18,000 square metres of new greenspace, managing water runoff, building a new north-facing lookout and rebuildin the existing Camillien-Houde lookout so as to better integrate it into the park.
As for the consultations, we did pay very close attention to all of the recommendations, which were of immense help in guiding us in the decision making process. In examining the options, however, it became apparent that there was a lack of physical space available to do all of the things that the OCPM had recommended we do. Particularly in the narrow space between the cliffs just above the Camillien-Houde lookout, there simply isn’t enough space to build separated traffic, pedestrian and bike lanes that would be safe and comfortable for all users. Likewise, some of the OCPM’s other suggestions, like building «mini-roundabouts» at the entrance and exit to the Camillien-Houde lookout would have required encroaching further on park space and indeed would have entailed dynamiting the cliffs next to the roadway in order to create the space required. Even then, the space would have likely been too limited. So in the end, tough choices had to be made. Yes, one of the OCPM report’s 16 recommendations is not being respected but the majority of the recommendations are being followed with this plan. A public consultation is not a referendum; it helps guide decision making on complex issues. The OCPM’s consultation and report definitely played that role on this issue.
carswell
Whatever was to be done to Remembrance, the CDN overpass/underpass had to go. That being the case, how would they have redesigned the intersection differently from its current iteration even if they’d known Remembrance was no longer going to be used by through traffic? The work is also calming traffic on CDN, that stretch formerly being something of an autoroute. And this is arguably and traditionally the grand entrance to the park and it deserves to be treated as such.
DeWolf
Thanks for breaking down the numbers Alex.
@Ian You remember what the old Remembrance intersection was like, right? It was a spaghetti junction with a crumbling concrete flyover. Definitely better for traffic flow but totally unsafe for pedestrians. The new intersection is more rational while also adding a ton of trees and green space. If it’s going to be the only vehicular entrance to the park, it makes a lot of sense to have redone it.
@Joey Camillien-Houde cuts off the Outremont woods from the rest of the park. It’s asphalt which is inherently bad for drainage and the environment (it literally radiates heat). It creates a lot of noise which is bad for animals and humans alike. And all that through traffic spilling into the Plateau is one of the reasons Park and Mont-Royal is such a deadly intersection.
I wouldn’t bank on 8,500 cars suddenly spilling into CDN. That’s not how traffic works. It’s not an immutable force. When you build a new road, you create induced demand that leads to more congestion. When you permanently reduce road capacity, the opposite occurs: reduced demand. It’s a documented phenomenon.
https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2021/03/19/reduced-demand-just-important-induced-demand
Ian
Numbers from Alex Norris, lol.
Reminds me of the refutations during
Bagelgate
Clark Street “measurements”
Fletcher’s Field South DiamondThrice burned, etc. – I wouldn’t trust any statement from Norris at face value.
I’m actuallysurprised to see him being allowed to make public statements given how many apologies from the mayor he’s made necessary.Kevin
It is extremely dishonest to throw out the leading recommendation, as voiced by the largest public consultation in the city’s history, and then to claim that you’re respecting the majority of recommendations.
That’s playing the public for idiots, but given some people are describing a two-lane road with speed bumps as a highway, I can understand the impulse.
On this matter I’m with RAPLIQ: cutting off the eastern access to the mountain to private vehicles is able-ist, and it turns the mountain from something for all Montrealers into something that is just for those who are physically fit, do not live with mobility limitations, and live nearby.
Orr
How much of the 90 million is for redoing the NE entrance to Parc Mont Royal into a modern nice (not semi-abandoned derelict foot path) a la redone Cedar-CDN entrance?
This NE corner of Parc Mont Royal is still a 1960s multi-lane high-speed autoroute at avenue Mont Royal/Avenue du Parc and chemin de la Cote-Ste-Catherine streets.(10 lanes of street traffic to cross to get to the park).
We would be extremely happy with half the beauty of the newly-redone Cedar-CDN entrance, at least it has safe stairs to get into the park!
$90 million well-spent, in my books. No to the pro-car lobbyists, their trolls, and everyone who was once slighted by a person riding a bike and has ever since wanted their revenge and some hurt put onto cyclists.
Go Mayor Plante!Ian
Well there’s the MAMIL lobby. Tell me, Orr, to what extent do you feel sport cyclists should be accommodated above all other people – pedestrians, mobility impaired, public transit users, et al?
Regardless, the problem with an administration that pushes through whatever it wants should be obvious. If their choices line up with yours it’s coincidental.
Chris
>Numbers from Alex Norris, lol. […] I wouldn’t trust any statement from Norris at face value.
Smells like ad hominem to me. How about you refute his actual points instead of just personally dissing him?
>cutting off the eastern access to the mountain to private vehicles is able-ist
Is there an -ist or -ism word for discrimination against people that don’t have superlungs, and are poisoned by car exhaust because they can’t process that pollution as well as some of you apparently can? They should be accommodated, maybe by providing them with places that they can breathe. I dunno, in a large mountaintop park maybe.
Kevin
Chris
If they don’t have superlungs and legs they won’t be able to get to the top of the park.Orr
At the risk of inflaming the blog’s anti-bike trolls further, e-bikes have no problem with hills, and many many people now ride e-bikes, and they will get to enjoy Parc Mont Royal on their e-bikes via this hill. Some people hate cyclists for no good reason except that one time some bad cyclist caused them some misery. Reactionaries gonna react, I guess.
It’s the cars, trucks, and buses that do the killing of innocent people, I find myself reminding people with increasing frequency.
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Kate
This item says the UN’s Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy is holding a major session here this week. Apparently Quebec is a world leader in social economy.
There’s also a big conference called Adaptation Futures which the mayor and both environment ministers are attending. I suppose that since we’re not willing to do what’s needed to stop climate change, we’re going to have to learn to adapt to it.
su
Adaptation projects are much more lucrative than reducing consumption. After all, the GDP growth is THE most important thing.
Tim S.
The climate is never static, so regardless of how much of our current situation is human-caused it’s never a bad idea to be prepared for different events.
CE
We’re pretty much at the point now. where if we completely stopped burning fossil fuels (which isn’t going to happen for a while) the planet is going to continue to warm and climate is going to continue changing.
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Kate
Ville-Marie borough is going to make it simpler for churches to diversify the use of their space. I hadn’t realized this was managed by the city, assuming it was decided by the church or the denomination.
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Kate
A man stabbed in a St-Laurent apartment Sunday afternoon has died in hospital.
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