Outremont and Saint-Henri metro stations have just opened elevators, but – as this piece points out – after the next two stations are equipped, the project to make all the stations accessible will stop for lack of funding.
Updates from December, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Le Devoir interviews Mayor Plante as she embarks on the final year of her mayoralty.
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Kate
We’re under a weather advisory of 10 to 15 cm of snow starting slowly through Monday and picking up overnight.
Chris
With the snow here, Trudeau can return to his riding and take a walk in the snow, like his father before him.
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Kate
A promoter who thought he should have had the right to run the Formula E race for the city claimed he was dismissed unfairly in favour of Evenko, and was suing the city for $3 million – a case that was dismissed recently.
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Kate
Notes on what’s open and closed over Christmas week.
Tastet has short lists of restaurants open on December 24 and December 25.
The Museum of Fine Arts is free from December 24 to 31 but you have to get a ticket to reserve. It’s closed on Christmas day.
Access to the botanical garden is free till April 30. But the greenhouses are closed for repairs.
Ian
It’s a drag about the greenhouses but it really is very nice walking around the arboretum section in the norht end of the park in winter. It’s also a great spot for birdwatching, though mostly winter songbirds.
Kate
I can identify sparrows, pigeons, gulls and crows. And ducks, I can spot those. But all the little cute ones are sparrows, right?
I’ve been admin of the Flickr group Montreal faune/wildlife for years. Most of the nearly 14,000 photos are of birds. But my brain still only sees sparrows.
(Villeray is still free of wild turkeys and cobra chickens.)
MarcG
I used to call all colourful flowers roses.
Ian
I was raised believing male sparrows were chickadees, starlings were grackles, and all small birds were sparrows. I do not come from a line of birders. That said you’d be hard pressed not to recognize cardinals and bluejays of which there are many in the jardins botaniques. Up on the mountain I’ve seen all kinds of birds including several varieties of owls, a couple of kinds of hawks, blue herons, cormorants, a few kinds of ducks, pileated woodpeckers, hawks, sapsuckers, juncos, nutchatches etc … plus plenty of sparrows, pigeons, gulls & crows 🙂
Ian 23:06 on 2024-12-23 Permalink
I’m just amazed Outremont metro is finally finished. It’s been years.
Orr 13:22 on 2024-12-24 Permalink
Retrofitting an elevator to the Metro stations is not an easy, simple, or inexpensive job.
As we come up to the 60th anniversary of our very nice Mêtro system, I just watched the Les Chantiers documentary series of Montreal mega-projects episode on the building of the Metro system (dvds at Grande Bibliotheque). Building the Metro was a true mega-project.
Before the Metro was built some people argued that car tunnels would be better than a subway system.
At one point some other people proposed a combination metro + elevator to give access to the top of parc Mont Royal from downtown, it was to be called the Montmetro. If you ever look at Gazettes from 1923 you will learn that in 1923 the ville de Montreal decided aftert much debate that the city needed either an elevated railway or a subway. And then 40ish years later, we got the subway.
Kate 13:51 on 2024-12-24 Permalink
It’s a pity the original metro system was not architecturally conceived with the future possibility of elevators in mind, even if it had opened without them at first.
The next two stations will be Atwater and Édouard-Montpetit, the latter of which will link the metro to the REM. But it’s the elevator from metro level down to the chthonic depths of the REM that will be crucial. I bet there will be some people afraid of it, at least at first.
DeWolf 17:26 on 2024-12-24 Permalink
It’s understandable why elevators weren’t installed in the 1960s. Accessibility wasn’t really on the radar back then. But all of the stations built in the 1980s – that was a deliberate choice to save money. Most other rapid transit systems built from that time onwards, including the Vancouver SkyTrain, were fully accessible.
Kate 18:18 on 2024-12-24 Permalink
The London Underground has had some elevators since the 1880s, according to what I see online. But the Paris Metro has only had them relatively recently – and our system was built in emulation of Paris, although the designers must have been aware that elevators were an option.
Accessibility really wasn’t on the public mind. At the very least, you’d think they could’ve made, say, McGill, Berri‑de Montigny and Atwater accessible, as well as Île Sainte‑Hélène, given the importance of the initial metro system to Expo 67. But nope.
thomas 19:07 on 2024-12-25 Permalink
The London Underground was largely constructed using deep-level tunnelling resulting in stations far below the surface, thus necessitating the use of elevators. The Paris Metro was constructed using the trenches that were then covered (Paris has a tricky terrain making deep excavation a challenge) so the station are relatively shallow and stairs considered sufficient.
Kate 19:29 on 2024-12-25 Permalink
Right, and hence the use of some London stations as bomb shelters during WWII. You wouldn’t get much protection from shallowly cut stations like Angrignon or Champ‑de‑Mars.