La Presse’s Vincent Brousseau‑Pouliot debunks the common notion that the city is giving over too much road space to bike paths and bus lanes with the true numbers.
Updates from November, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
City executive committee chair Dominique Ollivier tendered her resignation Monday, following revelations about excessive spending under her leadership at the OCPM.
CBC radio news says Mayor Plante has announced that the new city budget, which Ollivier should have presented, will go ahead on schedule.
Update: Ollivier says she received many violent, misogynistic and racist messages over the last week.
Luc Rabouin will now be acting as executive committee chairman.
Ian
On the subject of optics, replacing a black woman with a white man is not a good look.
Kate
In a sense, but nor would it look good to go easy on Ollivier because of the optics of having a Black woman in that role. If Ollivier made that error of judgment at the OCPM, it does pretty much disqualify her.
I don’t know whether Rabouin’s got the chairman job permanently, or if he’s just subbing in till a more optical choice can be made.
Joey
It doesn’t help her cause (or Projet’s cause, I suppose) that after years of living large on the OCPM’s dime, Dominique Olliver’s tenure as second-in-command at City Hall included allocating $90M to redo Camillien-Houde all the while abandoning the OCPM’s first recommendation. It seems more and more like the OCPM is a comfy spot for patronage appointments and for connected operators to dine out on public funds. Indeed the violent, misogynistic and racist messages are inexcusable. Ollivier’s half-hearted apology, though, suggests that there hasn’t been much in the way of lessons learned.
Ian
Oh, didn’t you hear? Alex Norris explained teh impending Camilien-Houde debacle away. /s
Joey
@Ian Alex’s position on this is great. If you’re supportive of it, it’s a monumental investment in beautifying the city’s crown jewel. If you’re skeptical/opposed, it amounts to no new money, a drop in the bucket, already announced spending, etc.
Orr
Happy that the avenue Mont Royal & Outremont entrance to parc Mont Royal is going to cease to be 11-lane roadway wasteland and bus parking lot at cote-ste-catherine with no easy/safe access for less-mobile people to even enter the park, along with de-autoroute-ing the Camelien Houde road, and with a little luck a beautiful new pavilion at this entrance.
Win-win-win-win.Ian
Lol, a 2 lane 40 kmph autoroute.
It’s nice that you’re suddenly concerned about accessibility for people with mobility issues. I’m sure the MAMILs will totally give them right-of-way so they can walk all the way up to beaver lake from where the buses used to “park”.
Orr
I have lived with a family member with a mobility issue all my life.
We are used to being treated poorly by inconsiderate people.Ian
Ah, so you DO understand why I took offense when you said everyone should shut up and ride bikes, then?
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Kate
Quebec is ponying up $100 million to decontaminate east-end Montreal industrial sites.
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Kate
Teachers from the FAE union demonstrated at the premier’s office Monday morning “to remind him he promised to make education a priority.”
Ian
10 days until an unlimited general strike, including the entire Front Commun.
Kate
It’s a long time since we’ve seen a real general strike. Too bad that it should be needed.
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Kate
Unspecified vehicles were set on fire in TMR late Sunday, and on adding this to the incident map, I notice that vehicles were also set on fire at that intersection back in June.
Ian 09:08 on 2023-11-14 Permalink
It looks like bus lanes are really the most underserved …
But again, I wonder about how representative these numbers are of the situation on the ground – it looks like there are WAY more sidewalks than are needed for pedesstrians, but we know that in walkable parts of the city there are, by default, sidewalks everywhere – it’s what makes it walkable.
I’m remindd of the joke:
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optimist sees the glass as half full.
An engineer sees the glass as the wrong size.
DeWolf 09:32 on 2023-11-14 Permalink
@Ian, from the article:
“Et les piétons ? Les trottoirs occupent 18,8 % de l’espace public, pour seulement 11 % des déplacements pour la marche. Les piétons seraient donc avantagés ? Pas vraiment. Premièrement, les répondants au sondage sur les déplacements ont tendance à sous-estimer leurs déplacements à la marche. Deuxièmement, les trottoirs ont d’autres fonctions que le transport (aménagement urbain, plantation d’arbres). Ils sont absolument nécessaires pour l’aménagement urbain. Imaginez une ville sans trottoirs…”
The biggest takeaway is that we need 24/7 reserved bus lanes on major routes. That would improve reliability and make it easier to increase frequencies.
For bike infrastructure, as the article explains despite there being bike paths “everywhere” in the minds of disgruntled motorists, they still don’t account for the share of people getting around by bike. And most crucially these are numbers for the entire island. The Plateau has the most bike infrastructure of any borough, and yet it still only accounts for a few percent of road space, but the modal share for cycling there is 20% or more. (It was 15% during the last transport survey but that was nearly 10 years ago…)
Ian 12:30 on 2023-11-14 Permalink
Well yeah, that’s kind of my point too.
FWIW I do think that bike infrastructure needs to be analyzed by neighbourhood, putting new bike trails on Gouin doesn’t help MIle End, where there are more bicyclists per capita than most of the rest of the island …
But at the same time it’s important to note that for real infrastructure support you should have universal access as much as possible.
The point isn’t what percentage of roads are used by buses but that real public transit infra requires a fully accessible network, just like we actually need sidewalks all over town, roads, and bike paths.
Arguing about percentages is an accountant’s game. That distracts from the real issue at hand. There is more to public transit infrastructure policy than how many people took the bus to work downtown from other parts of central Montreal last Monday.
Joey 12:38 on 2023-11-14 Permalink
Of all the political parties in the world, Projet Montreal should have a standard, well-thought out vision for ideal roadways that should apply to each street that winds up being redone. Enough of this nonsense where we have to litigate each re-arrangement ad nauseum – adopt a rule that says each street will eventually have contribute to creating adequate pedestrian, cycling, driving and parking infrastructure and then go implement your vision.
Ian 12:55 on 2023-11-14 Permalink
Agreed, but then there’s the argument in favour of creating intensive use corridors like the REM or REV which takes us back to the beginning of the infra debate loop.
bumper carz 13:24 on 2023-11-14 Permalink
@Ian: ” …putting new bike trails on Gouin doesn’t help MIle End, where there are more bicyclists per capita than most of the rest of the island …”
And putting a new beach in Point-aux-Trembles doesn’t help the bathers of Oka, which has more swimmers than… any other area of the region of MTL that doesn’t have a beach or pool.
You have to build the infra BEFORE people can use it.
Ian 14:41 on 2023-11-14 Permalink
Yeah I don’t think bike paths on Gouin will increase population density but ok.