The STM testified Tuesday at an OCPM conference on the homelessness problem, all but pleading for the creation of more shelters near Berri-UQAM and Bonaventure stations, which tend to attract the unhoused population.
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Kate
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Kate
Geneviève Guilbault said Tuesday that she wants solutions to service disruptions on the REM, and better communications with users.
The replacement buses are being criticized as insufficient by unsatisfied passengers.
Uatu
Well they better come up with something because next winter the rest of the island will enjoy waiting outside for overcrowded buses
Ian
They’re already planning a permanent shuttle to Ste Anne, predicted to take 20 minutes. Hopefully the 211 and 405 aren’t cancelled.
Ephraim
@Ian – There is a 99 no compete clause, from my understanding, so the 211 and 405 are likely not going to survive as everything will have to head towards the REM.
Uatu
This morning we all waited outside in line for the shuttle for 30min just to have a guy tell us that it was only delayed so there’s no bus. Then we all walked into the station while some people were walking out and people were yelling at them to stay inside because there’s no shuttle. 30min outside in the freezing wind for no reason. West Island this is what you have to look forward to.
Ian
@Ephraim true but those lines serve the Lakeshore strip & the REM is north of the 40, so they might not be seen as competition? At least that’s what I’m hoping.
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Kate
Some big names in Quebec culture have signed a new petition against the plan to build a Hydro substation on the same block as the Grande bibliothèque.
Nicholas
I won’t rehash all I’ve said about park space and so on, but this point just gets at me (my apologies, Kate):
… “menacés par une décision à courte vue, opérée en dehors de toute véritable discussion publique”. Les signataires demandent donc à Hydro-Québec “de renoncer à ce projet” et “d’explorer d’autres avenues, d’autres lieux plus susceptibles de convenir à l’installation d’un poste électrique de cette envergure”.
The problem is not that this project operated outside of a real public discussion. We have been discussing it. For years. (Not as long as the bus station across the street, but a while.) We keep talking and talking. Big, important figures write op-eds, get stories in the media. Lack of discussion is not the issue.
The problem is also not that we didn’t have an environmental review or a public consultation. That happened.
The problem is many people don’t like the results of it. That’s inevitable, and ok. We won’t all agree. I didn’t like the REM: the process, the decision and the result we’re living with. I wish we had gone in a different direction. But I, and many others, lost.
But at least the REM opponents had an alternative plan (upgrade and expand the commuter rail lines). Various people, some even friends of the blog, worked very hard on developing plans that were viable, cost efficient, useful, realistic, etc. They got experts, and presented the results at the National Assembly.
What we have here is no plan. No alternative. What we have is a vague plea that the work be redone and somehow a completely new solution be found, from and by some unknown source.
Life is full of tradeoffs. Land downtown is valuable and scarce. But I, some guy online, can suggest lots of solutions: we tear down a bunch of the duplexes and triplexes on a residential street like Saint Christophe. We fill in Square Saint Louis. We blow up half of l’Institut des Sourdes-Muettes. We move the CEGEP du Vieux-Montréal into Dawson College’s building, shutting the latter (the Legault solution). The Quartier Latin movie theatre, Place Emilie-Gamelin, the old bus station, the new bus station, some dense apartment blocks, UQAM. Or we ban electric vehicle charging in the eastern half of downtown, as well as any new growth, forever. Or we spend many, many, many times more dollars on some underground structure somewhere to save a piece of grass on an unpleasant street, and don’t use that money for other priorities. I guarantee every single one of these ideas will get way more pushback, because they’re awful.
But none of these 600 people is brave enough to suggest an alternative, because they’re either awful or extraordinarily expensive, or just won’t work. If there was a viable potential alternative, some electrical and civil engineer could put together a one-pager extolling it, I guarantee these 600 people have many engineers in their rolodexes. The area is less than 1 square km, it’s not hard to look at literally every site. You want high speed rail, I could get you five different experts with five good ideas on paper by Friday. That they can’t get one, after years, speaks volumes.
Kate
You make a solid point, Nicholas. Don’t think because I’m posting about these petitions that I’m sold on that side. I see the need for the new substation and I think it’s possible to consider that while it’s not the most appealing spot for it, it’s a solution. As DeWolf said here recently, that part of the block has lain fallow for years.
I recall being told early in the days of the Grande bibliothèque (at a guided tour of the building) that they intended to gradually expand the art garden up to Ontario Street, but they haven’t added anything since the 2004 opening, and (also as DeWolf pointed out) the existing garden isn’t the most popular park space anyway, given the busy street that zips by.
I actually almost wish they would take down the CEGEP du Vieux‑Montréal building, one of the ugliest in the city. Almost anything would be an improvement to that thing.
Ian
It would be really cool if CEGEP de VM could move into the old Grand Séminaire by Dawson, there could be a whole CEGEP hub thing going on. It might even help revitalize the hood.
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Kate
A man was found dead Tuesday morning in a car buried in snow in Park Extension. Carbon monoxide is being blamed – there’s no mention of foul play.
TVA adds that two people have died from heart attacks while shovelling snow.
walkerp
Oh that’s brutal. I had heard a warning about this on the CBC the other day and hadn’t thought of it as a risk before when digging out of the snow, but it makes sense. Poor guy.
Nicholas
I don’t think they mention it specifically, but my first thought is you get trapped in there, it gets cold, so you turn on the car to stay warm. Electric cars have low battery life in the cold, but at least they don’t do this.
dhomas
That is so sad! The exhaust pipe looked clear from the video. Still, the warning is valid: make sure you clear your exhaust before starting your car to heat it up.
@Nicholas: one of the best unexpected perks of driving an EV is that I can schedule it to warm up so it’s nice and toasty when I’m ready to leave in the morning!
mare
I don’t know about this case but on my long-ish dog walks every day I’ve encountered several houseless people living in their car/truck, often with a dog as heating source. Running the engine for a while to get the interior heated up a bit before turning in for the night seems like a logical thing someone would do. Not thinking about the constricted flow of the exhaust gasses.
Kate
mare, you have a new dog?
mare
@kate temporarily. His owner is working in Latvia for 6 months. He’s sweet, was supposed to be a Mira helping hand dog, but can’t stand other dogs. Hence us discovering dogs in parked cars. So we can’t go into dog parks and we walk 6 to 15 km every day. (Currently a bit less, speed on ‘sidewalks’ is severely compromised.) Returning him will be hard.
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Kate
Transport minister Geneviève Guilbault has summoned an emergency meeting Tuesday of the major players about the recent failures of the REM.
Taylor
If they don’t have Tempos for the REM yet, they will soon.
Kate
You know what they say, Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo.
SMD
10/10 for the 90s French rap reference, Kate.
Nicholas
I took the Exo train today and despite the wind it was on time, but some were decently delayed (15 minutes), and due to that at least one was cancelled. They aren’t crossing such a wide expanse as the REM is, but all the trains do cross a river, and they’re mostly fine. Maybe we shouldn’t have picked such an untested, brittle technology, but I’m sure the finance experts at CDPQ know better than transportation experts who warned about this years ago.
MarcG
I had the pleasure of watching an Exo train blast through the snow on the tracks at Vendome, creating a huge white wave.
DeWolf
@Nicholas Can you explain exactly what is untested about the REM? It’s not novel technology, it’s a regular steel-wheeled train running on an overhead catenary, just like thousands of railways around the world. Even the computer controls aren’t unusual.
The recurring problem that keeps shutting the REM down is that switches keep malfunctioning. That’s pretty old school as far as problems go: a piece of mechanical equipment is defective and needs to be fixed.
Ian
DeWolf do work PR for the REM or is this just a bit?
DeWolf
Maybe echo chambers just trigger my contrarian impulse.
Not so different from you, if I think about it.
GC
That sounds like a lot of fun, MarcG!
Nicholas
DeWolf, I’m not saying there wasn’t testing, but that the light metro Metropolis trainset had never been deployed in an environment that gets the snow we get. The first deployments were Dominican Republic, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Singapore, Budapest, Chennai, Sydney and Athens. Instead of going for a standard EMU, of which there are many, many options, we went for this kind of light metro for which I think we got three groups interested in bidding, and two for the tracks. The issue is it was predetermined which technology we would use, because…it’s still unclear. So there were only a few companies or groups who could bid. Instead they could have asked for bids that were technology-agnostic, saying what capacity and service and speed they wanted rather than the tech, which may have allowed us to keep standard heavy rail EMUs, which would have been interoperable with high speed rail, which now can’t use the Mount Royal tunnel. All for a system that will have less capacity than the commuter rail line we destroyed. I could go on, but it was a process driven by financials, not transportation. Not that there is no use for it, but it could have been different.
James
To add to what Nicolas just wrote, the problems that are occurring are not the result of a single thing not working properly – but rather the combination of several things occurring. Single issue faults are already detected during factory or field testing before a single passenger rides on the train. A longer testing phase may not have detected these subtle issues. Saying that the metropolis has only previously deployed to cities with hot climates does not explain much in my opinion. There are always differences between trains and “metropolis” is just a brand name. Equipment can be added or deleted according to what the customer wants or what regulations require and accounting for snow/ice was definitely included in CDPQs requirements.
I would say that the most important factor that drove many decisions during the design phase was to have driverless trains. There is no EMU in the world that is driverless.Kate
Anything to avoid tangling with a drivers’ union, right, James?
James
Definitely easier to have driverless trains from the start. No “drivers union” to even talk to.
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Kate
In the second piece in a series on waste management, the Gazette’s René Bruemmer explains how Quebec’s approach to recycling has changed, and what it means in practice.
Meezly
Thanks for sharing that. I’m cautiously optimistic. Still always better to try to go low waste whenever possible.
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Kate
Some schools off-island are still closing for storm effects on Tuesday, but most Montreal schools have reopened. List here.The REM is still slowed down Tuesday morning according to TVA, but CBC radio just said it isn’t running.
Le Devoir has a piece on coping with what it calls l’après‑blizzard and CBC has five things you should know.
MétéoMédia says the snowfall has broken a very old record.
24Heures lists several memorable snowstorms since 1800, and La Presse also has a look back at notable storms, but neither includes the late December 2012 storm discussed here recently, which has fallen out of collective memory despite breaking records.
The city will be testing the new practice of not sounding snow removal horns in some areas.
Uatu
REM still busted. The most annoying thing is that the shuttle bus stops are on De la gauchetiere in front of Place Bonaventure instead of the old bus depot in 1000 de la gauchetiere where we could wait indoors. I felt like I time travelled back to 1984 when I waited for the strsm buses on the steps of Place Bonaventure. What progress in 40 years! Lol
CE
My street is in the area where they haven’t been using the horns to tell people to move their cars. My house is on the ground floor and very close to the street so I’ve been very much appreciating not having a horn blaring directly into my bedroom at 7am when I’m trying to sleep.
Nicholas
CE, is this for day shifts as well. The article said overnight, but I seem to remember last year them saying day and night. Being woken up at 7, or 6:30 to alert people to move it by 7, is not fun, especially in a neighbourhood where a third of households don’t own a car (and just outside of the pilot project area).
CE
I haven’t heard the horns at all this year. Last year, even with less snow, I heard it a few times. I remember one in particular because I worked late and didn’t get to bed until around 3am and was woken up at around 7am because one person on the street hadn’t moved their car. I wasn’t happy.
JP
I totally get why people dislike the horns and what a nuisance they can be, but selfishly, I have to admit I enjoy hearing them because it means they’re clearing the snow!!!
CE
They’re about to clear one side of my street and I saw a truck go by with its lights on but no horn.
CE
I feel like I should contact my city councillor to let her know that I’m in favour of the change because it’s likely that the two people who have left their cars on the street and will soon be towed are going to complain that they didn’t get notice to move their cars (despite the fact that there have been bright orange signs attached to poles and planted into the snowbanks for about 24 hours).
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