Wednesday’s high of 29° has broken a record for October 4.
I stopped in at a neighbourhood bakery-hangout place to pick up one of their dwindling stock of lemon sorbets, and noticed a sign at the cash “soupe chaude enfin de retour”. “Nice timing,” I observed to the cashier, but by her wry response, I think everyone had said something like that, all day.
Despite what this piece says were efforts by Quebec and businesspeople to lure people back to the office, office buildings are still largely standing empty in the Montreal area.
I don’t know what more it will take to make management realize that most people hate office life and will do anything not to return to it.
It’s not necessarily just employees that are refusing to return. Several people in my circle have found themselves with no offices to go to after their companies decided to downsize during the pandemic.
I think a lot of the vacant offices are the big, old ones. Many companies now prefer a smaller, more flexible space now that hybrid work has become the norm.
I like being in the office part-time but hope to never have to go five days a week ever again. There are so many benefits to hybrid/work from home, both individually and societally.
Even before covid, property management companies were having a heck of a time trying to get capacity in all the 80s and 90s buildings. The “office district” was already becoming less localized. Business “hubs” and hot-desking services were on the rise, too.
Given all that was before WFH was a viable option, it’s no surprise downtown offices are hollowing out.
The pandemic made everyone realize that open-floor offices were terrible places to get work done.
And everyone who claims that productivity is down is using the RBC measurement which is essentially the value of commercial real estate holdings– the only real estate market correction happening in Canada.
I’d gladly go to my office a few days a week if I had a shorter commute. I went a few times this summer and it was always fun. Although WFH can be appealing to many, there are some down sides. For example:
1. If you actually like the company you work for and the people you work with (which is true for me currently) then it’s nice to have the opportunity to socialize with them even if it’s just brief water-cooler chats. But there’s also lunches, 5à7s, etc. which are far less likely to happen in a fully WFH situation.
2. Young people coming up in their careers can benefit from F2F interactions with their peers and mentors, which is much more effective than doing everything over Zoom or MS Teams.
3. Depending on where you live and where you work, it can be nice to get TF out of the house now and then.
4. Not everyone’s apartment/condo/house is set up for efficient workspace. Some people can just plunk their laptops down at the dining room table and work there all day but not everyone can do that. Some people need more elaborate setups (I have two external monitors and sometimes I wish I had three) and not everyone has a dedicated office space, so you’re competing with kids, spouses, surly teenagers, drunk uncles, etc.
5. Home offices are not always very soundproof, so when the building next door is being demolished or the street in front is being dug up for the third time this year, or your idiot neighbour is using a leaf blower to clean the dust off the sidewalk (etc.) it can be highly annoying and can make that critical presentation to your boss or clients go off the rails.
Just sayin’ WFH isn’t all gravy,
Sure. I work at home, and today for example: in addition to power tools here and there, a man across the street compulsively rakes the sidewalk with a metal rake, sometimes for hours – why doesn’t he get a broom, you may ask – and a little boy, also across the street, whose guardians push him outside in the afternoon, where he runs around going AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA for hours and banging something on a metal bike rack.
I still wouldn’t trade it for the office.
Offices aside, school is definitely better in person.
People in their early career also benefit from IRL contact and mentorship.
That said, offices are a scam perpetrated by property management companies making money hand over fist.
Screw those guys.
Desjardins is making everyone go in 2 times a week… they are starting to lose employees because of it
I’d go into the office more often if it wasn’t 100+ people in one single room sitting at high-school-cafeteria long tables. Even with a fraction of staff showing up, my teammate had to shout to ask me a question over the four simultaneous conversations near us.
Without permission I’m putting here a rant from a user called 5Aki1 on reddit’s /r/montreal as a comment on the Park Ex bike path squabble:
Today, parc ex residents against the new bike lanes gathered to protest the new protected bike lanes and the parking they lost because of them.
Let’s go over something.
Parc ex is tiny and very very very dense. It is also trapped within physical borders on each of its sides. It’s very tight and its very tiny with limited exit options. There are a lot of cars in parc ex. Most residents of parc ex do not use cars, but the borough is so dense that the ones that do create a space problem. The cars just don’t fit. I’m serious. Come to parc ex after 8 on a weekday and try to find parking on one of the smaller streets. It’s really hard and you have to get pretty lucky. If not, you might end up as on of the poor suckers parked on the southbound side of Acadie, having to move the car at 7 am the next day. I empathize. I used to do it all the time. Its rough.
I grew up in parc ex and this has been an issue literally forever. Alternate forms of transportation are just okay. There are a few pretty good buses, but your access to rail is pretty limited. As for alternate forms of transportation, parc ex was awful. Awful enough that if public transportation wasn’t good enough, you had to drive… Unless, of course, you were too poor to drive (which was quite a few people considering parc ex is historically one of the poorest boroughs in Canada… go figure) /s.
A while ago, they painted a few bike lanes on certain streets, but they were laughably bad. Seriously, I challenge you to bike down Querbes in the old bike lanes without having something bad happen to you. You might have a better chance finding parking after 8. Honestly, it wasn’t a serious attempt at being equitable, it was something they did to check a box.
Personally, I have been commuting by bike for years and have been saying that the worst part of my commute has been my route leaving park ex. Now, I (as well as others) finally have a safe commuting route, but the people who lost their parking are upset. I get it. I really do. But these people are being ridiculous. I was there and I heard their counter arguments. Here is what I have to say:
Ultimately, what this boils down to is that the people at these protests do not actually care about equity, making the streets safe, or anything of the sort. They are just being selfish because they lost what was convenient to them. Unfortunately, progress isn’t always convenient.
This isn’t rocket science. Get over yourselves. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk
Also, one person came on the mic and told us to “go to westmount” or “the plateau is that way”. That’s fucked up bro. It matched the energy you tried to convey when you tried to equate your struggle of losing a parking spot to ‘I have a dream’ 🤡
Edit: I’m not sure why people feel the need to mention that some cyclists do not obey traffic laws. I mean sure, some cyclists can do better, just like how some drivers and pedestrians can, but that’s not what this post is about…
Well said. Thank you for sharing that.
In the same thread somebody noted that the 80 was late because Bloomfield was blocked by “five shiny new SUVs” that were double-parked. But yeah, the real problem is bike paths and the awful elitist gentrifiers who use them.
It’s always good to remember that, according to the latest available data (which unfortunately is from 2016 – still waiting for someone to crunch the 2021 census numbers) only 42% of Park Ex residents commute to work by car. The rest get around by public transit, walking and cycling. And yet it’s the drivers who take up all the space and block the roads.
Actually, the 42% figure is for the whole VSP borough. I imagine the rate of car commuters is even lower in Park Ex than the borough average.
One important factor is that the city really needs to improve public transit to that neighbourhood. Better bus and train access would allow people to give up their cars more easily.
Like walkerp says. Getting to the light industrial part of vsl by bus is about 45 minutes. It’s also a tough bike ride as there’s tons of trucks and vans, and Acadie in the way. It’s faster to walk from Querbes and J-T to say, Andalos than to take the bus.
That said I find it comical how you’re all lauding this person’s rant instead of calling it “anecdotal” and “irrelevant”. Confirmation bias much?
Great rant! A man after my own heart.
>Adding parking doesn’t help.
So many people don’t get this. We’ve been adding roads and highways and parking for a century, and what does it do? It encourages people to use cars. If you build it, they will come. (This is of course intentional.)
>only 42% of Park Ex residents commute to work by car
So that’s a floor on car ownership. One might still own a car but not commute to work with it. And of course many more *aspire* to own a car, but are stuck with public transit. They too may prefer to keep more parking, because any day now they’ll be rich enough to have a car too.
And this aspiration aspect applies to immigrants especially: https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/uncomfortable-facts-about-biking-and-minorities/316886/
There is indeed a vaguely racist and paternalistic element at play, with immigrants “not fitting in”.
Of course the whole PM weltanschauung is essentially culturally elitist and largely based on communal “othering” of the non-elites, so that tracks.
And yet most of the people riding bikes around Park Ex are also racialized, working-class people. Just go there and see.
The problem is that the car owners get the entire cake and everybody else gets the crumb. Redistributing space is the very definition of equity.
I actually spend a lot of time in Parc Ex top to bottom and the thing is there’s actually not a lot of cyclists compared to Mile End Or even the new Outremont campus. It could be a chicken and egg thing but I’m not seeing many cyclists north of J-T in any capacity.
Plenty of cyclists on the REV on St-Denis up here, Ian, north of J‑T and south of the 40.
The Lajeunesse bike path is also popular.
Sure, but that’s not Parc Ex. I’m on Querbes often and the bike path north of J-T is usually empty but for some asshole in a car using it as a turning lane.
I don’t know the demographics but judging by the protestors, I suspect most of the car extremists who are freaking out right now in Parc Ex are the older generation, such as the Greek immigrants who came over in the 70s. A lot of the resistance is just fear of change. Look at how much better the other areas that have had traffic calming and bike paths put in both look and are performing economically.
While I agree with most of what’s in the rant, I wouldn’t say access to rail is pretty limited. The farthest anyone would have to walk to a metro station is about 2 km. (There’s also a train station with, admittedly, terrible frequencies, which is par for the course for Exo.) The fairly decent bus network works well itself, but also is good at getting people who have to walk far to a metro to the metro much quicker: not just down Acadie and Bloomfield/Champagneur, but also along Jarry and Jean Talon to the Orange Line. And the walk to the nearest bus is only a few blocks maximum. All that puts Park Ex at one of the better neighbourhoods in the city.
Also, biking to rail transit is a winning combination, reducing that 30 minute max walk to an 8-minute max bike ride. Which will be much better with the new bike lanes.
Sometimes I wonder if there’s something about the fans of Projet’s approach to politics that makes them love having this fight over and over and over again. Yes, there will always be resistance, but we need a large-scale city policy that says that all Montreal streets, eventually, should be re-arranged to safely and appropriately accommodate pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. Make it a matter of the city’s political and administrative culture that *every* road that gets civic attention will no longer be ‘just for cars.’
>I’m on Querbes often and the bike path north of J-T is usually empty but for some asshole in a car using it as a turning lane.
Perhaps there’s a causal relationship there? 🙂 Maybe they could make the bike path safer by widening it by removing a lane of parking? And/or maybe moving the bikes to between the sidewalk and the parked cars?
When everybody had the same type of sign (same type of lettering, same colors), you know there is some entity behind all of this. Pathetic.
Mr.Chinaski, that’s a very smart observation. I smell Ensemble.
@Mr. Chinaski isn’t it fairly common for relatively few people in a protest movement to do the rote work, i.e., making signs for others to carry? That’s been my experience…
@Joey, I don’t think most people are fans of their approach as much as that they share similar values and goals. I do agree with some of the critiques of the way they have handled comms and consultation around some projects. Almost everybody agrees the softball field elimination was a travesty.
But I want cars off the streets and a liveable planet and given that the vast majority of North America is dominated by car extremists, every little project that moves towards that goal, even if it doesn’t exactly match my priorities is worth supporting.
And though PM has a decent power base, no municipal government is ever truly in a position of strength, especially in Quebec, so I give them some leeway in their approach given how many powerful forces against which they are fighting. And this is also why supposed progressives who constantly attack PM are so damaging to the overall cause in the fight against climate change.
Nicholas
Two kilometres is an impossible distance to walk for many people.
People who hate seeing anyone experience freedom & joy on a bike and wants to stop cyclists enjoying freedom and joy on their bike should get a therapist, get a bike, learn what good things happen on two wheels. That is, of course when not having their lives put at risk almost every minute by dangerous car drivers.
Tell it to my 74 year old Dad who can’t even walk a kilometre wihtout needing to sit down for a while. You’re an elitist, and you want the city to build infrastructure to support your hobby, everyone else be damned.
That said, the situation on Querbes is very different in that this is not sport infrastructure – I do support the bike path, I just don’t like how PM is pushing it through. As I’ve said before, even if you support their goal in any instance it’s strictly coincidental as they feel that they are above even public consultations let alone reponsiveness to citizen concerns. Look at the cop funding, for example – despite the proimise (before the election of course) of a big, big conversation about defunding – and instead the fnding was dramatically increased. Getting elected doesn’t mean carte blanche to do whatever they want. Is there anyone here that is against bike paths in principle? I doubt that.
There’s a good chance PM will alienate the electorate in Parc Ex the same as they did in Outremont, by being paternalistic & holier-than-thou liars.
Orr
I prefer life on 2 wheels.
I also know that at a certain point I will need a wheelchair to get from my bed to the toilet.
Projet Montreal pretends that people with limited mobility don’t exist, as demonstrated by having a sketch where a man with a cane is walking down Camillien Houde.
Tuesday’s high temperature didn’t break a record, but tied one, reaching 26.7° in the afternoon. Wednesday and Thursday may yet hit record highs.
Boroughs are adjusting their property tax expectations upwards, so landlords should expect an increased tax bill next year. Did anyone expect otherwise?
Death and taxes, yo.
Ian 20:34 on 2023-10-04 Permalink
Clerks fan tutti. “Oh wow I’ve never heard that one” /hard_rolleye
😀
Meezly 09:20 on 2023-10-05 Permalink
It’s been nice having a relatively dry autumn so far, with the rainy summer we had. The leaves are gonna be gorgeous.
Ian 22:21 on 2023-10-05 Permalink
The ash trees are already putting on a heck of a show.