STM has real estate plan for blue line
The STM has plans for an ambitious residential development around the Lacordaire station on the blue line extension, but it would need a change in the bill meant to create the CAQ’s pet Mobilité Infra Québec.
Mobilité Infra Québec is the brainchild of Geneviève Guilbault, a CAQ idea similar to the Santé Québec plan cooked up by Christian Dubé – an extra layer of well‑paid fonctionnaires that can push along politically based decisions without consulting anyone who’s actually studied a situation apolitically. The opposition doesn’t like it.
La Presse also reports how the ARTM fears that Mobilité Infra Québec is going to dream up expensive, pointless projects. It’s likely that the ARTM also fears for its existence once this dog and pony show gets going.
Nicholas 13:33 on 2024-09-11 Permalink
Expensive, pointless transit projects dreamed up in Quebec City for political reasons? Perish the thought! Now to read up on the Mascouche Line, a decade-old nine-figure project built in a swing riding with very low ridership that was immediately cut off from its slightly more direct route to downtown, in your post from later this morning….
Ephraim 14:43 on 2024-09-11 Permalink
I don’t suppose that we could build social housing on an Emphyteutic lease. They build 400 housing units and the edicule and 2 shops. It’s not like it hasn’t been done before.
Joey 15:03 on 2024-09-11 Permalink
My understanding is that the model is supposed to be that the ministry (either health/social services or transport) does the high-level policy development and the new agencies (Sante Quebec, Mobilité Infra Quebec) do the operations; this all seems to have emerged from a sense among the CAQ leadership that the recurring problem is one of execution and not planning. I would imagine the *actual* reason has more to do with a desire to build around structural issues rather than solve them – presumably because of perceived challenges rooted in the union/management dynamic.
dhomas 11:35 on 2024-09-12 Permalink
I don’t understand your point, Nicholas. I’m not being sarcastic at all. What point are you trying to make?
About the Mascouche line closure, the route was not bad initially. My brother-in-law lives in an area served by this line (RDP station) and bought his house BECAUSE of the train. It was a major selling point for the new development there. He used to work downtown at Place Bonaventure and he and his wife would take it regularly. It was a straight shot from his house to downtown in something like 45 minutes (maybe less). The reason ridership was low was, as far as I can tell, due to the low frequency. If you missed a train after work, you’d have to wait about an hour for the next one. I think it also did not run on weekends (I know it doesn’t now). Increase the frequency and make the line more reliable, and the line would likely have been more successful and seen more ridership.
Now, with the line basically ending at Sauve metro, the whole raison d’être of the line has been destroyed. It was created explicitly to decongest the metro system by allowing users to go directly downtown without switching to the metro.
We have the same ridership problem with buses in the city. If a bus runs every half hour, people just won’t take it because if they miss it, they’ll need to wait another 30 minutes. If less people take it, then they decrease the frequency “because nobody uses it”. This creates a kind of death spiral for transit.