Gisella Gesuale, head of the city’s engineering union, says Projet’s plan for the Camillien‑Houde was doomed even before its delay was announced, and she goes on to point out that the city has more pressing infrastructure problems to fix. Maybe the city should talk to its own engineers more often.
Updates from August, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Soraya Martinez Ferrada has chosen as her potential chairman of the executive committee – generally regarded as the mayor’s main henchman – Claude Pinard, who directs Centraide and had been rumoured to be considering a mayoral run himself.
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Kate
A man has been arrested after the Israeli flag outside Hampstead’s city hall has been burned twice. CBC says they don’t know what charges the man will face.
He could be prosecuted for damaging someone else’s property, but this is being investigated as a possible hate crime. But is it a hate crime to burn the flag of a country whose actions you deplore? If burning the flag of Israel in particular is a hate crime, that only serves to underline the fact that Israel is not merely one country among the 192 others at the UN, with rights and responsibilities like any other, but a monoculture and a symbol of that monoculture. And isn’t that part of the problem?
You better believe I have commenting turned off.
Later it’s reported that the man will be charged with a hate crime.
What if someone burned an American flag? Hate crime? A flag of Turkey or India or France? Hate crime?
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Kate
Radio-Canada hosted a mayoral debate Tuesday – video, with four commercials up front, no surprises, just Luc Rabouin and Soraya Martinez Ferrada. Both say “we need to fix the roads, the housing crisis, homelessness” but it all sounds like the same good intentions we’ve been hearing about for years. Without a fundamental change in our culture, finding a way to tax the wealthy and put more cash into the common good, there’s always going to be a strict limit on what any politician can do. Talk is cheap.
Joey
Say what you will about Projet, but it’s been very refreshing to have had many years of seemingly scandal-free municipal politics in Montreal. I’m sure there’s still lots of corruption in contracting, etc., but it doesn’t seem to have extended to the political side.
Mark Côté
…with the giant exception of the Sue Montgomery affair.
Nicholas
I wouldn’t say there were no scandals.
I honestly don’t have much hope for fixing the streets. Someone I know repeatedly mentions how our methods basically haven’t been updated since WWII. Among other complaints, we’re still using cast-in-place concrete, which breaks down so much faster than pre-fab. There’s tons of graft. No one is exploring more advanced techniques abroad (we’re too special, we have lots of snow, so there’s nothing that could be done). And we don’t have anywhere near enough money nor workers to keep what we have paved recently in decent shape, let alone fix everything that’s broken. I think I saw things have gotten moderately better, but it’ll take a lifetime at this rate.
Maybe the best thing is we’re slowly reducing impermeable surface. The less we have, the less we have to repair.
walkerp
Not defending Projet’s inability to change the way work gets done, but much of that is structural corruption at the provincial level. it’s not like the roads and infrastructure projects outside of Montreal are all in perfect shape.
Ian
Bagelgate , the Clark double Réfection and the Fletcher’s Field “hot-dog blokes” softball diamond removal were genuine scandals. Personally, I won’t ever vote for PM again as long as Alex Norris is a representatitve.They’re lucky to be rid of Ferrandez. The lies, gaslighting and open abuse from those two has been epic. That’s ni]ot even considering what they did to Piper. Huggins, or Bergeropn’s flipping for Coderre.
Tim S.
Mark Côte, I really don’t get how Sue Montgomery is a scandal, unless you mean the inadequate vetting they did before approaching her. There aren’t many people know in NDG who met her and came away with positive impressions. I don’t know why it’s so hard to accept she simply wasn’t suited for the job.
Joey
Yeah, none of those are scandals. The point is that if the Plante administration were really crooked, Ensemble we would be all over it. “You lied about a softball field,” while true, isn’t scandalous, even if you’re not comparing to the preceding city administrations.
Orr
I enjoyed watching the softball games very much, but the park is better, and safer, without it.
As a general rule, when a crank is against something, it’s probably something I should consider being for.
Go Projet Montréal! You fixed the shitshow that were Montreal mayors for decades, my entire life.Joey
Orr, as a weekly softball player in JMP for 15 years, I think you’re wrong about the park being “safer” with the field gone.
Ian
Frankly I think people that unquestioningly support PM are probably cranks. I’m of the opinion that, as Joey once put it, all politicians are assholes – evene the ones you like.
Ian
… I’m also of the opinion that if you don’t see how an elected official is on the take, it’s because they have the decency to hide it. Of course elected officials benefit form their roles. Of course they favour interest groups. Cash in hand is simple, but déclassée and obviously dangerous. There are many invisible ways elected officials treat their perceived in-groups well without violating any law – like landlords and property developers getting the benefit of the doubt while the homeless are simply “vacated”.
If, Orr, you really don’t think PM is engaged in this simple transactional realtionship as old as cities themselves, then you are in fact an idiot.
walkerp
I know your shtick is being angry but you might want to tone it down a tad. It’s tiresome in general but now you are making personal attacks.
Ian
Only against those who make personal attacks against me. For the record, though, I’m not angry, I’m indignant. Put that in your scoldy pipe and smoke it.
Orr
@walkerp He’s always attacked and smeared me, and of people who use bicycles in general. Like a few people I know he smears “anyone who thinks urban cycling is a quality of life improvement” as middle age racer men [smear word] because I suppose at one time one of them caused him to harrumph.
Anyway I got a browser add-on that changed his name into something hilarious, and now every one of his posts is made by (funny rude name I’m not revealing).
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Kate
Following the auditor-general’s report that many of the city’s roads are in poor shape, city hall admits it has neglected local streets in favour of keeping major arteries in better repair. But there’s pressure for that, not least that most bus routes run on major arteries, so that if you want to keep public transit running fluidly, the big roads can’t be full of holes.
Nicholas
Just saw this after my comment above, seems it’s gotten even better, at least on arterials. I’m confused by the story though. It says the VG is happy we don’t keep digging and redigging up roads, but then says that Monday the VG was frustrated we keep doing that. I get the former is utilities and the latter is city-borough and potholes, but seems six of one.
Kate, I agree that it’s better to fix the main roads. Potholes on side streets are, in a way, nature’s speed bumps. If you can only drive 20 km down side streets, that’s a win win.
Kate
Ever taken the 80 up through Park Ex? The roadbed on Bloomfield and Champagneur is devastated. Thank goodness most of the roads our buses use are not quite so bad.
Ian
Ah yes but Park Ex is full of poors so fuck them – and of course in the more wealthy neighbourhoods nobody wants to pay taxes, so they don’t fix the roads there either.
When they stencilled flowers over the roads in Mile End a few years back, literally painting flowers over potholes, I decided to just accept this as another amusing aspecit o living in clown town. I do love it here, I really do. If you don’t take it seriously it’s les aggravating… and at some point, how can we?
Unless things change pretty drastically at several political levels of course but holding your breath in aticipation is ill-advised.
Joey
After what seemed like years of on-again/off-again work, the repaving of Acadie, one of the worst collections of potholes in the city centre, is finally done.
Anyway, I feel like when I was a kid in Snowdon, our street was repaved once or maybe even twice (I lived there 13 years). It’s hard to imagine a secondary/tertiary residential street ever getting any attention again, unless it’s to replace the infrastructure underneath.
Ian
The weird thing about Acadie is that they had to do it in stages because the heavy machinery used to repave the road busted up the adjacent road surface badly enough that it had to be repaved in turn. The stretch from the turnoff to the 40 to Jarry was the worst for that. I think that the initial roadwork might have started because the turnoff to the highway was so bad – it was littered with hubcaps for some years. Residential streets that are less travelled and have 30 speed limits are pronbably going to take longer. Esplanade between Van Horne and Bernard, for instance, is a cartoonish lunar surface.
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Kate
Daniel Renaud tells about the extortion and violence faced by a company called A5 Hospitality, which owns various local clubs, bars and cafés. A timeline lists the incidents that have plagued the company (and in one case, an unrelated coffee bar) over the last year.
walkerp
I’m curious why they targeted A5 Hospitality particularly, Or is it that they target other club and bar owners as well and this is just the only one we have heard about? It’s right out of a movie, replacing all their security staff. I presume that is so they can also control the sale of drugs in the club as well. Scary.
P
This kind of story reminds me to check the Coolopolis blog to see what stories Kristian has on his mind lately …
Joey
@P I saw a couple of his tik-toks recently – one was like a walkthrough of Royalmount with kind of breathless promotion. Could’ve been an ad by the developer. Anyway, it was a far cry from the kinds of stories he used to blog about.
Ian
I enjoy the od timey lurid sex and violence stories as much as anyone but since covid tin particular his opinions seems to have taken a turn to the right, and his pro-landlord, pro-property dev tendencies are being put more openly on display. Seems that for some, being a landlord isn’t just a job but also a worldview, lol.
Annette
KG lost me when he went on an expenses-paid junket for a weird, foreign despotic regime (that still recruits recruits bloggers/C-list influencers to help counteract its miserable human rights reputation). Talk about ‘breathless promotion’… Witty, but for sale or lease.
walkerp 17:23 on 2025-08-27 Permalink
I’m skeptical of some of the positioning of both her quotes and the article. She is clearly already in opposition to the administration and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some pro-car ideology there as well. Likewise, the framing of the article is very Gazette/West Island we hate bikes.
That being said, it does sound like there was some political pressure and poor planning to push this through.
I think the readers of this blog do not represent the general will of the people of the Plateau/Mile End and I suspect there is broadly a lot more support for getting rid of the road on Parc Mont-Royal then is expressed here and it’s not just yuppies.
Ian 18:15 on 2025-08-27 Permalink
The other day when I said there aren’t engineering studies doen and a bunch of people got up in my grill this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about.
Blaming pro car ideology for Projet’s tendency to just wing it on gut feeling is prety weaksauce IMO.
I’m not opposed to closing off the road over the mountain, but there does need to be bus access and pedestrian safety. A real park experience, with real mixity. If it just turns into a piste for spandex clad road warriorsbicyclicsts I will not be surprised – bu tit is something we can design against, like simple traffic slowing techniques such as are used to make car drivers behave. The switchback path up the mountain form teh east side is already a terrible experience for pedestrians because of aggressive bicyclists. I started coming up the back way through the cemetery as soon as i had kids – and yes, I was very happy when Mt Royal Cemetery banned bicycles becasue for a while they were crusing around the paths in packs, aat speed, oblivious.
I think readers of this blog do represent the general will of the neighbourhood in its diversity and mixity. Oh yeah, and fuck yuppies.
Nicholas 19:20 on 2025-08-27 Permalink
One way to vastly reduce through driving on that road is to do what the DFW airport did on its toll road. It goes through the airport and exits on both sides, and you can use it to commute through or to go to the airport. There are toll gates on each edge of the airport lands. If you take fewer than 8 minutes to drive from one gate to another, they assume you are commuting and charge you $9. If you take 8-30 minutes, a quick drop off, it’s $2, and 30-120 minutes, a drop off with traffic or going in the terminal, is $3. After that it’s $10, and goes up to $32 a day. No need for parking metres at the parking lots, it’s included in the road. (Don’t want to pay a toll to go to the airport? You have multiple transit options. I think there are employee lots off site too.)
So put gates at each end of the mountain, and charge $30, or $100, whatever, if you drive through in under 30 minutes. If you take longer, it’s, say, $4 an hour or whatever. If you come out the same way you entered it’s the hourly rate, even if quick, to allow drop offs. Toll gate is smart enough to know which is which, tracking by plate is easy. Buses and emergency vehicles are exempt. Commuting through will drop to ~0, access is maintained for all.
DeWolf 13:36 on 2025-08-28 Permalink
I agree with Ian that whatever future arrangement Camillien-Houde takes, it needs to include public transit and it can’t be a playground for the peloton crowd. I think the long-term goal of removing cars is correct though. As it exists now, the road is a blight on the mountain that literally divides one public park from another, with no safe way to get between. People who live east of the mountain who absolutely need to drive there can take the extra 10 minutes to access it from the west. It’s not like anyone *urgently* needs to drive up Mount Royal.
On the broader question of engineers… they’re just one part of the equation when it comes to urban planning and mobility. Engineers aren’t planners or designers. They are often notoriously bad at seeing the big picture and taking actual human behaviour into account, because their perfect systems may work in theory but not in practice. It’s not the same as structural engineering – we’re not talking about bridges and skyscrapers that will collapse without proper engineering. We’re talking about public spaces shaped by messy human beings.
The question of ideology or political interference is also a red herring. All disciplines are inherently ideological. There’s no real science behind traffic engineering, especially as it has developed in North America. The fact that our roads are significantly different (and less safe) than Dutch roads is a restatement to how engineering approaches can differ radically depending on priorities. Traffic engineers here have been brought up to think of cities like machines and motor vehicles as their lifeblood. Pedestrian safety is an afterthought and pedestrian comfort isn’t even a consideration. That’s why you need designers and, yes, politicians to set the parameters.
Joey 14:42 on 2025-08-28 Permalink
The thing that bugs me the most about Projet’s plans for Camillien-Houde is how fundamentally anti-democratic it is. We are fortunate to have a strong, professional, independent public consultation office in Montreal. It did a major study of this specific issue at the request of the City’s Executive Council. It conducted info sessions, issued questionnaires, ran an online consultation, and conducted workshops. Thousands of Montrealers participated. It issued 16 recommendations, but its first one was to keep the road open throughout its entirety while better integrating it into the park. The other 15 recommendations were much smaller in scope, IMO, and basically amount to cars should have a smaller footprint and everything should be made safer. What was the Projet Mtl reaction? Adopt the recommendations it was already planning on doing and ignore recommendation. When pressed, Projet offer a smarmy response – we can’t adopt *all* the recommendations, but we’re adopting *some* so quit bugging us.
I am not a big fan of citizens making direct policy decisions – the risk of interest groups hijacking the process is too great – but if you’ve got an independent consultation office that says “don’t do this,” you can’t decide to “do it” and pretend that you’re acting democratically.
So good for Luc Rabouin to publicly distance himself, sort of, from Projet’s convoluted plans; it would be more reassuring, however, if he addressed the anti-democratic impulse that has taken over some of the Projet braintrust.
Ian 00:39 on 2025-08-29 Permalink
I’d love if htat were true but in the Gazette there was an article saying that Rabouin came back with a desire for a shuttle bus to support accessibility needs for those that need it and the engineers consider this starting over from the beginning as that was never part of the plan.
Without an accesibility plan any closure is efectively turning the mountain from a public park into an enclave.
Joey 13:14 on 2025-08-29 Permalink
@Ian I think that’s just excuse-making; the important part of Rabouin’s interview was that there are so many other pressing priorities. Unlike, say, Norris, I don’t think he’s interested in spending tens of millions of dollars on the road over the mountain. He’s clearly using the end of the pre-campaign period to distance himself from some of the less appealing aspects of the Plante admin… I would imagine if PM wins we won’t hear much about C-H for years, especially given the closure of that stretch of Penfield.