The STM maintenance strike is suspended as of Wednesday at 6 am.
Updates from November, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Luc Tremblay, the STM’s DG from 2014 to 2022, contrasts dream and reality in transit planning, saying he watched the city spend on unrealistic ideals while neglecting basic maintenance work.
Nicholas gives a more detailed account of Tremblay’s column in this comment below.
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Kate
A quarter of the city’s snow removal workers were not ready to start when the storm came. Roughly half our snow removal is done by contracted firms, and the deal they sign puts them on standby as of November 15 only.
Ian
This isn’t early for snow, but it is for a storm
DeWolf
The temperature will be above zero for the rest of the week, at least during the day, so it should melt soon enough. But it’s pretty hairy out there right now with all of the icy sidewalks.
Ian
Some of the side streets didn’t get plowed and are now solid ice – I was watching the little Hassidic kids getting off the bus on Jeanne-Mance this evening, and about 1 of every three slipped and fell on their way to the sidewalk.
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Kate
Labour minister Jean Boulet is about to introduce a law to force transit workers back to work, based on the new Bill 89, which saps Quebec unions of their leverage. Not everyone in the National Assembly is in favour, although Paul St‑Pierre Plamondon is also pushing for action. Gone are the days when the PQ was on the side of labour.
Ian
Yeah it’s too bad, the PQ used to be solidly progressive, nationalism aside. I feel like that shifted around the time of Marois.
Su
I think that it shifted during the brief Pierre Karl Peladeau era, circa 2015.
Joey
Yeah it kind of went sideways for the PQ when Marois, who at the time owned a 12-thousand square foot mansion, started wearing a red square…
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Kate
The Metropolitan has to undergo serious work soon. The elevated 12.5 km stretch between Decarie and autoroute 25 is 60 years old and showing its age. Lemay architects has an idea to add a second level to the highway, including residences and parks. La Presse notes dryly “Deux expertes émettent des doutes quant à la faisabilité du projet.”
Nicholas
Second level for cars: sure, overbuilding but feasible. Second level for a park cap: fine, very light and though it’ll be loud and polluted, maybe ok. Putting buildings in? Haha. It’s incredibly expensive to put buildings on top of transportation infrastructure, largely because you can only put piles in certain places. If you want to build high density housing we have lots of space for that; above a highway is not the best place even if it was easy and cheap.
Ian
Whatever happens, we can learn from the VME – there will be cost overruns and anything perceived as “nice to have” will be scrapped.
Bonus: prepare for 3 years of people complaining about the bottlenecks on the 20 fixing the VME didn’t address, and buses to Dorval taking an extra hour each way.
DeWolf
This is a very Lemay idea in that it’s showy and seems to be doing something innovative, but ultimately just reinforces the status quo.
It’s not outlandish. You could definitely make it happen. In Asian cities there are all sorts of interesting things that have been done to mitigate the impact of urban expressways. In Hong Kong for instance, there are highways capped by arched sound barriers that cut noise down significantly — the highway becomes quieter than any surface street. The space underneath elevated highways is often used for recreational space, community recycling centres, even a concert venue that takes advantage of the acoustics (like the concerts under the Van Horne viaduct). It’s not especially noisy and actually pretty useful, given that it’s sheltered from rain. Though of course there’s still the air pollution to consider.
The thing is that these kind of interventions only work when the ground level is accessible. The problem with the Metropolitan isn’t the elevated portion, it’s Crémazie, which is extremely hostile and ruins everything adjacent to the highway. And the Lemay concept actually seems to add vehicular lanes to Crémazie which would only make it worse.
Blork
One thing is guaranteed: if they build something like this the entire expense and years of construction inconvenience will be blamed on the bike paths that they install.
Joey
Clever way to gussy up a plan that, from what the drawing shows, includes 12 lanes of vehicular traffic, plus two for light rail.
Poutine Pundit
Elevated parks like the High Line and the Promenade Plantée work because there are compelling visual perspectives to enjoy from above. Unfortunately, views along 98% of the Métropolitain are a soul-crushingly ugly mix of wasteland, sprawl, crap buildings, and relentless traffic. The other 2%, around Crémazie station, is marginally interesting at best. There’s no point polishing a turd.
DeWolf
If Quebec insists on keeping the elevated structure, the only way to make it better is to improve Crémazie.
Nicholas
Vaguely related is this op-ed about big (public) transportation dreams that don’t fit reality. The author blames Projet, but most of the things he complains about are due to the province: extra Azur cars to give jobs to La Pocatière, giving up money for the Pink Line to Quebec City for their tramway and electrifying buses. Plante did go all in on battery-electric buses, which I thought at the time was a huge mistake, and arguably I’m right (they are just not great in winter climates and are very new technology so not well tested; better to go with trolleybuses, or more diesel hybrids), and the mess with the new garage is the city’s fault, but there was a lot of pressure from the province to go electric.
The author also mentions the platform screen doors that got cancelled for lack of money, which I agree is a shame, and also the Blue Line extension, which is one of the most expensive metro projects in the world. (As is the BRT on Pie-IX, a travesty, which he didn’t mention.) And he complains about the Pink Line, but that is a good project. The issue with all these is the costs are out of control, and there’s not enough money for them all, and part of that is the city’s fault, but part of it is the province, which doesn’t invest enough money and doesn’t incentivize or sometimes even allow better contracting methods to reduce prices. (Some of the blame is also due to Ottawa.)
We do need to work on maintenance, and we do need to get costs down, but we also do need to expand transit, including buses, whose frequency has been cut drastically over the years. It’s not the dreaming that’s the problem, it’s the implementation, and no government or political party, at any level, is proposing fixing that. Nor is, at least in this op-ed, this guy. (If you want to see what should be done, for a North American example look at DC: they’re pushing full automation of their metro, all-door boarding on buses, maintenance to speed up slow spots and bus lanes that actually work. Lots of good ideas elsewhere in the world, we just have to adopt them, and many are not expensive.)
Kevin
The design firm name was familiar so I looked it up: these are the people who came up with Montreal’s greatest tripping hazard, aka Place des Montrealaises.
patatrio
Not that I am a fan of the Lemay proposal, but I think their fundamental point is worth considering – Single-use infrastructure is a wasted opportunity, and a short-sighted approach to urban development. I cannot think of an alternative solution to the A40 passing along its current path, but to invest capital without any attempt for improvement strikes me as financially irresponsible, as if we are painted into a corner where only minimal investment into a depreciating asset is politically desirable. In fact an infrastructure project of this scale should present an opportunity to multiple agencies, and studying infrastructure under the lens of social, economic and environmental development will likely create value beyond addressing maintaining the status quo.
Lemay also points out that the city around the A40 has moved on, so why build it back the same? A transit-oriented development approach in collaboration with the city and borough would yield much better results. We are living through a housing crisis, this is an opportunity to re-zone large swaths of industrial land and structure residential development around a renewed mixed transportation axis. you could even do this by expanding roadway capacity if that was needed (though my experience of the A40 it fails mostly due to rush hour congestion, poor drainage and junction planning).
Joey
@patatrio if you did indeed do all that serious reflection, wouldn’t you likely conclude that there’s nor reason to have the 40 run through the city like that? Wouldn’t you conclude that we would all be better with a ring road for trucks travelling around – instead of through – the heart of the city? Then we wouldn’t have to come up with convoluted schemes to “fix” Cremazie/the Met that still insist on multiple lanes of traffic in either direction.
DeWolf
There are two problems with the bypass idea. One is that a bunch of the truck traffic on the 40 isn’t just passing through, it’s coming and going from industrial parks located right along the 40. The other is, where would you put the bypass? You can’t tunnel it because the 40 is a dangerous goods route. And you wouldn’t want to destroy large parts of Ahuntsic to ram a highway through there. Which leaves the bypass that already exists, the 440.
Ian
Exactly, the Decarie interchange is always busy for a reason and it’s not because of the pretty view.
Blork
With respect, the 40 essentially IS a ring road (when combined with the 25). It doesn’t cut through the “heart” of Montreal; the density drops significantly on the other side (north, which is really west) of the 40. Most of those areas are basically suburbs. And yes, I’m including Ahuntsic, St-Michel, etc. in that category. (Not all “suburbs” are bedroom communities.) Look at European cities that have ring roads; most of them have built-up “suburbs” outside of the ring, typically places that started out as villages apart from the main city. That describes Ahuntsic (etc.) perfectly.
We tend to have a geographical bias about Montreal based on the shoreline perimeter. But that’s not how the makeup of the city is built. If you had to draw an east-west line through the “heart” of Montreal you’d be better off looking at Rosemont or St. Joseph, not the 40.
Blork
Also, one of the main reasons the 40 is always busy is simply this: between the 15 South and the 15 North (a stretch of just over two kilometres) the road functions as BOTH the 40 and the 15, bearing the traffic from both highways without really any extra lanes to accommodate the double load. The congestion on that one stretch backs up traffic in all four directions.
jeather
At one point that was part of my commute and I absolutely dreamed of the person who designed the overlap like that suffering eternal torments. (Despite all that, public transit was still significantly slower.)
Joey
@Blork if the 40 didn’t cut through the city, maybe the neighbourhoods on the ‘northern’ side would be more connected to the rest of Montreal and less suburban in nature. The Met, the train tracks, Acadie, etc. – lots of mass transportation routes create significant cleavages between otherwise contiguous neighbourhoods.
I wonder what a city with the size and population of Montreal would look like with no highways running through it…
Ian
While we’re at it, let’s get rid of rail lines. They break up the city even more than the highways.
Oh wait that’s infrastructure
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Kate
The city has accumulated about 20 cm of snow, some households are in the dark and some schools are closed.I don’t recall any Remembrance Day ceremony with everyone up to their knees in snow in the middle of the park. I imagine there’s a quick snow clearance going on around the cenotaph this morning.
Nor have I used the Storm Watch graphic this early in the season either.
Ian
Lots of accidents and most streets are iced up. There’s a base coat of wet that’s turning into packed ice. Be careful out there!
dhomas
Lots of people also don’t yet have their snow tires on since the mandatory date is December 1st (my appointment is for Thursday!).
I’ve been without power going on 12 hours now, out east. Working out of my car with my laptop and a WiFi hotspot (luckily the car was close to fully charged when the power went out).Kate
There’s a rush on tire‑changing garages too.
MarcG
dhomas: Pics or it didn’t happen 🙂 Got one of those coffee mug warmers in there too?
jeather
I don’t have my tires changed yet and because of the strike, public transit wasn’t feasible. Luckily it wasn’t that terrible a drive, people were pretty careful.
Uatu
Of course the REM was down this morning. Not surprised and the bus ride into town just reminded me of how convenient commuting use to be….
dhomas
@MarcG: https://imgur.com/a/X6GiTqK
No coffee mug warmers, but I could plug on in. 😀 Right now, thanks to my EV’s V2L (Vehicle 2 Load), I’ve got my freezer plugged in, so the food doesn’t spoil.
Joey
Winter tires (mine are on) don’t do a heck of a lot when you’re driving on a layer of snow on top of a layer of ice on top of a layer of dead leaves. If you’re wondering why a many-thousand-pound car can’t seem to make it up the gentlest of inclines, that’s your reason.
Kate
I feel lucky that I have power on and can cook lunch. And that I swept most of the leaves off the frontage earlier this week – Joey’s right, a mixture of ice and dead leaves, hidden by snow, can treacherous.
Any luck by 2 pm, dhomas?
dhomas
@Kate: Power was back by just after 11h. Total outage was over 13 hours. I was tempted to start my fireplace, since my house was absolutely frigid. The rules on wood burning say you’re allowed if you have a power outage lasting more than 3 hours. However, since my fireplace has been unused in 10 years, I stopped having it “ramoner” (is there an English word for this? Swept? Sounds a little generic). I was worried I would started a fire in my house, so I decided against it.
I saved the contents of the freezer, though! In the past, I’d put stuff outside to keep it from spoiling, but that was mostly fridge stuff since it wasn’t cold enough to keep things fully frozen. So the battery backup was really useful! I’m now considering getting my car charger to work bidirectionally, so my car can power my house in case of extended power outages. I have some research in my future. 🙂
Kate
dhomas, there’s no more specific verb in English than to sweep the chimney. The people doing this are chimney sweeps.
Ian
A ‘chimney sweep’ in French is a ‘ramoneur’, and a chimney swift (the bird) is a ‘martinet ramoneur’.
Mozai 18:25 on 2025-11-12 Permalink
Won’t stop the provincial government from making it illegal to go on strike, but I get it.