CBC radio just told me that this is the hottest June 4 on record. And there’s a heat warning for tomorrow, Wednesday.
CultMTL has some notes on where to cool off.
Updates from June, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The massive Bellechasse bus garage, under construction for five years, and meant to go into service in a few months, can’t be used for fully electric buses. Only diesel and hybrid buses will use the facility. Electric buses are prone to burst into flames but this eventuality was not foreseen in the plans, even though the STM is in the process of electrifying its bus fleet.
La Presse says the new garage will eventually be refitted to handle the risk involved, but it’s discouraging that we’re already talking about expensive changes to a new, expensive facility that hasn’t even opened yet.
Do we know who was responsible for excluding consideration of the risk of storing battery‑powered buses inside an underground garage, when the plans were drawn up?
Spi
You can thank the NIMBY’s that got their way and had the garage buried when it wasn’t initially designed to be leading to the hundreds of millions in cost overrun.
Kate
The irony is that there was a bus garage there for decades previously.
Latour Roger
I wonder how many housings could have been built for that 600 millions that this half-baked place cost? Priorities…
Ian
We just had this conversation last week…
The average selling price of a home in Quebec increased by 3.7% year-over-year to $481,600 in April 2024.
linkSo, uh, 1245.84
Kevin
My dad was an engineer who specialized in catching other engineer’s mistakes.
There are a lot of incompetent designers out there making plans that are only realized to be full of errors once construction begins.
Jonathan
The fire service is one of the most risk averse and constraining services in a municipality. They often have arcane rules and power over city planning. I’m not surprised they’ve put a wrench in this.
The huge waste of public money is the electrification of transport, especially of buses and private vehicles. This money could be used to improve access to public transport and inter-urban links… it would have more considerable impact on GHG emissions AND reduce traffic and particulates. Electric vehicles don’t save the planet, they just save the automobile industry.
Ian
Well, fire is kind of a big deal. I’m glad they are risk averse, it’s pretty destructive especially in older poorly maintained residential areas – like most of the Plateau & the SW in the 90s.
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Kate
New and rejigged bus routes have been announced by the STM to better serve the southwestern part of the city – Lasalle, Lachine, Sud-Ouest and Verdun. Thirty routes are affected and they’ll come into effect August 26, just in time for the new school year.
EmilyG
This sounds promising. It’s always been a slog to get to parts of Lachine by bus, so this could be good news.
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Kate
The city is beginning to rev up for Grand Prix weekend. Ironically, people are being advised to leave their cars at home if they want to go downtown for festivities.
While advice is being handed out, I’d add that cyclists and pedestrians should always be alert on Grand Prix weekend for drivers channeling Gilles Villeneuve.
Ephraim
Every year, donkey-hole drivers with peacock plumage on wheels park in handicapped spaces without permits, just paying the fine, because it’s a pittance to them, so they can peacock around their plumage. This inconsiderate behaviour significantly impacts people who rely on these accessible parking spots. To address this issue, perhaps we should pull out Pritt Glue Sticks and put a LOVE note on their windshield, to remind them of the need for a handicapped placard.
Ian
Spray glue is harder to get rid of 😉
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Kate
Patrick Lagacé examines the tendency (which I admit to myself) of comparing Montreal’s crime numbers to other cities’, and other aspects of the recent police report for 2023.
jeather
There is something to “is Montreal less safe than in the past/comparable cities” but also to “are people responding to fake vibes”? (I definitely feel no less safe in public transit than I ever did, and my car is 12 years old and this would be a ransom of red chief situation.)
Ian
Montreal used to be way more sketchy, violent, and many ways, fun. It’s certainly safer now than it was on the 80s and 90s.
Kate
Apropos, I’ve found someone posting the archives of Allô Police to Substack, but you have to pay to get more than marginal access.
Joey
The finding he zeroes in on – that compared to 10 years ago, a significantly greater number of young people are comfortable with violence as a response to whatever – is worth mulling over.
Kate
I thought so too.
Ian
Oh wow I remember seeing Allô Police when I first hitchhiked to Montreal in ’87 and I was like “this is where I need to be, what a crazy, wonderful town”
Tim S.
A couple of thoughts around the original article:
1) I can’t remember where, it may have even been here, but it’s been pointed out that murder rates are as much a function of ER care as of policing/crime rates. So the fact the attempted murder rates are up while actual murder rates are down is a little worrisome.
2) On the point that young people are increasing accepting of the idea of violence: I wonder if, as actual violence goes down (without disputing Lagacé’s general point, but looking at my kids’ experience there seems to be less casual schoolyard violence than I remember), the perception of the dangers of violence decreases as well.
Blork
Tim S. you might have gotten that murder rate thing from a Malcolm Gladwell podcast. (That’s where I heard it; was quite interesting. It includes expert opinions that if RFK were shot in the same way today, at the same place, he almost certainly would survive.)
And yeah, murder is not the only crime. Basing sweeping opinions about crime just on just “murder” is silly and inaccurate.
Joey
The argument for using the murder rate as a proxy for the crime rate is that, unlike for pretty much all other crimes, it’s hard for the police to undercount (or otherwise ‘manage’) the number of murders. As we’ve discussed here in the past, very little present-day police work is what we naively consider ‘crime-fighting’ – ask anyone who’s been robbed recently whether the police will even both to send an officer to fill out a report. Forget, you know, investigations. Anyway, while a department can tinker with definitions and massage the numbers to make it look like certain kinds of crime are decreasing (or, if politically expedient, increasing), murders are generally murders.
Kate
Joey, Ted Rutland was quoted by the CBC on that topic:
Ted Rutland, an associate professor at Concordia University’s department of geography, planning and environment with a particular focus on urban security and policing, says the police force isn’t built to stop those killings from happening.“We’re talking about domestic disputes. We’re talking about fights between people who know each other or don’t know each other that get out of control,” said Rutland. “There’s no amount of policing that can prevent these things.”
Instead, he says underlying issues such as stress, mental illness and other deeper social problems must be addressed.
My impression is that the police force mostly works against organized crime, so they have little interest in petty crooks (even if the “petty” crook messes up your life by stealing your laptop or burgling your house).
jeather
I do not know the statistics in Canada, but assuming they’re not too dissimilar from the US, the police could do a lot to prevent domestic disputes by not being the ones assaulting their partners.
Blork
Following up a bit on the Gladwell reference I made above: Malcolm Gladwell did a series on gun crime in the US last year as part of his “Revisionist History” podcast. One of the segments was on the topic of how NRA types use the declining murder rate, and overall “death by gun” rate, as an example of why the US doesn’t need stricter gun controls. But he presents data that shows the actual SHOOTING rates are way up, but people die from gunshot wounds a lot less than they used to.
He talks to some experts who attribute this to much better medical treatment of gunshot wounds (hey, they’ve had a lot of practice and ample opportunity for research) as well as improved policies and practices for first responder. Also, and very importantly, there has been a strong emphasis on creating “centers of excellence” (or something like that) for emergency trauma treatment in urban areas.
The result is that while far more people are being shot in the US than previously, far more are surviving. They dig into the RFK assassination as an example. In 1968 they had no such centers of excellence for treatment of traumatic injuries, just good old fashioned ERs. As a result, RFK didn’t go into surgery for his bullet wound (to the head) for several hours, if I recall. Whereas if the exact same thing happened today, there is a trauma center about 10 minutes from that hotel, and they estimate he’d be in surgery less than 30 minutes after the shooting. Plus medical treatments for brain trauma have improved vastly, so in all likelihood he would survive that wound today.
The whole series is worth listening to. (Six parts I think?) Here is the one I’m referring to: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/guns-part-4-moral-hazard
jeather
Just for fun, the If Books Could Kill podcast episodes about Steven Pinker (one, two), where they take down a fair bit of his work on why violence is declining. (I have no memory of whether they discussed the better medical care details.)
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Kate
A passenger who uses a wheelchair is criticizing the REM for having no system in place to transport people with reduced mobility when there’s an outage. Lack of safety measures for disabled people are also a concern.
bob
Those will be available in a DLC coming out next year: $589 million*
Suggested retail price subject to change. Does not include applicable fees and local taxes.
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Kate
Police chief Fady Dagher is floating the idea of having the SPVM bill big events for providing security.
steph
Slow to the table, but it’s a great idea. The big events that make tons of money can pay their fair share.
Blork
Is it though? Sounds like the proverbial “slippery slope.” Whenever money enters into transactions that were previously moneyless, things shift.
Will we find ourselves in a few years in a situation where only the paying customers get good policing?
Will we find ourselves with fewer police on the streets and on the edge of town because so many are essentially providing private security for the big events?
Will we find ourselves mired in conflicts of interest when some people or organizations are under less police scrutiny because they’re the hands that feed the police?
Will the top brass at the cop shops be more susceptible to bribery and corruption if a free flow of money is introduced into the culture of civic policing?
Am I just an old goat who fears and resists anything different, or am I falling back on a lifetime of watching money systematically corrupt civil society?
bob
All those are valid concerns. Also, a point frequently raised by cranks during the printemps érable was the cost of policing the demos – should you have to pay to exercise a democratic right?
Is the city not charging for that extra expense as part of the cost of permits for large events?
Tee Owe
Blork +1 – money systematically corrupts civil society
Myles
This just seems like a convenient way for the police to decide who deserves protection and who doesn’t. Just raise the price beyond what an organization can pay and tell them you can no longer guarantee their safety.
Ian
It’s also a cash grab in that the police can determine when the police (as opposeed ot private security) need to be hired.
@Tee Owe Bakunin suggested UBI & in-trade vouchers that expired monthly instead of cash. I’m down if you are.
Joey
If big events require public expenditures that are beyond a certain threshold, they should be paid for via a tax collected from organizations that host big events. Perhaps this tax should only apply to non-profits (though, as Ephraim likes to point out, many non-profits, especially in the event-organizing world, act as for-profits, especially when it comes time to distribute the revenue before it’s considered ‘profit’). You kick in a little extra in the Big Event Tax, but you get all the public services you need (policing, water, transit, whatever). Crucially, though, it’s not Consumers Distributing, so you don’t get to consult the policing catalogue to pick and choose the number of cops you’d like – you make your tax-based contribution, you provide information to the City and the City decides what additional resources you need. Big profit-making event organizers pay for the services they need without entering into a quid-pro-quo dynamic.
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Kate
The Quebec City-based ComediHa! group has been given approval to acquire some of Juste pour rire’s assets but they won’t get the building on the Main where Juste pour rire’s headquarters used to be.
Will the new comedy fest be held only in French? Just For Laughs had a certain fame internationally mostly because it brought American and British comics here, but ComediHa! won’t have produced any comedy in English. It doesn’t matter much to me but it seems like something that should be discussed.
Blork 17:42 on 2024-06-04 Permalink
Just before I read that I was sitting on the deck, sipping an iced coffee and enjoying the beautiful day (warm but not humid, not windy, the only sounds are birds and some people splashing gently in a nearby pool) and thinking how it’s such a gorgeous August day and then I’m like… but it’s barely June.
Bob 06:52 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
STFU Blork your ideas and opinions are useless.
Janet 08:15 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Oh my, such vitriol.
I personally enjoy Blork’s comments. Welll informed (and opinionated) on a wide range of subjects plus very funny to boot.
Ian 09:04 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Looks like somebody needs to cool off
Kate 09:09 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Indeed.
This is, by the way, not the person who comments as “bob” (lower case) but a person who has, over time, also commented as Frank, Harry, Al, Sam, Phil and other male nicknames. I don’t know this person.
Blork 09:25 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tee Owe 12:23 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Don’t know anyone here personally but Blork is usually on the mark and inoffensive if not, and anyone who writes STFU is off my list – just me
JP 12:41 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Yeah I really don’t mind Blork’s anecdotes- usually find them interesting.
Ian 13:10 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Blork for mayor 😀
Blork 15:11 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
This is when I wish these comments had a “Like” button. 🙂
Blork 15:12 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
…as in, I’d “Like” these nice comments.
Bob 17:08 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Looks like someone is pretending to be me.