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Transport Quebec blames Montreal for L'Acadie Circle flood Rain caused service road to fill up Sunday night By Max Harrold The Gazette July 27, 2009 Flooding at L'Acadie Circle in Montreal lifted sewer covers, causing serious damage to vehicles. Photograph by: Minas Panagiotakis, Special to The Gazette MONTREAL - Dumping all responsibility for flooding Sunday night in l’Acadie Circle squarely into the city of Montreal’s lap, Transport Quebec said Monday it has taken precautions while the city has not. “That’s why we didn’t have any flooding on the section of Highway 40 that dips (in l’Acadie Circle),” Transport Quebec spokesperson Réal Grégoire said. But a section of the 40’s eastbound service road – on city of Montreal territory – in the circle did fill up like a canal late Sunday, forcing the closing of the road from 11 p.m. until 3 a.m. At least three cars were stranded in what has become a regular occurrence when there are heavy rains. Grégoire said Transport Quebec learned its lesson after flooding closed a section of the 40 in 2005, a year after the completion of $110 million in repairs to the traffic circle. Since then, Transport Quebec has sealed the holes in manhole covers and installed trap doors on sewers on that section of highway to prevent flooding, he said. While the highway is raised slightly higher than the service road, water did not spill down and contribute to the flooding, he said. In no way did the 2004 repairs contribute to the floods, he added. “We take care of our network. What the city does with their network is up to them.” Grégoire said the flooding was most likely because of a lack of capacity in the Meilleur-Atlantique collector – an oversize drain pipe built by the city in the l’Acadie Blvd./Metropolitan Blvd. area in 1950. But Saeed Mirza, a McGill University professor of structural engineering, said the province and the city must share the blame since the highway’s drainage feeds into the city’s underground water system. “Anyone designing this exchange should have planned for this,” Mirza said. “When this happens, it’s proof that they did not do it properly.” Sammy Forcillo, vice-chairman of the city of Montreal’s executive committee and responsible for the city’s water and road infrastructure, blamed Sunday’s flooding only on “an exceptional amount of rainfall.” One-third of the normal amount of rain for the month of July fell in that part of the city that night, he said. “I can’t control the heavens.” The city is spending a lot this year – $350 million – on the water network. However, Forcillo could not say what improvements, if any, have been made at l’Acadie Circle. The city is waiting for a response to a request for federal funding to do more, he said. mharrold@thegazette.canwest.com © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Montreal+blame+Acadie+Circle+flood+Transport+Quebec/1834498/story.html

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http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2013/dec/30/ten-new-years-resolutions-for-architects-2014 Ten new year's resolutions for architects in 2014 Remember that buildings shouldn't burn things, windows should let in light and copying others is fine – but just try not to annoy the skateboarders <figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-101b839c-7d6d-4e7a-b448-a5fd5be930f4" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"><figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">I shall not burn … the Walkie-Scorchie 'fryscraper' melted car parts and singed shop windows. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images</figcaption></figure> Don't melt things It might sound obvious, but it's usually good if your buildings don't actively attack their neighbours or melt passing vehicles with laser death rays. It is a lesson that has evaded Rafael Viñoly, purveyor of “fryscrapers” to London and Las Vegas, who seemingly can't resist channelling the powers of the sun into beams capable of singeing sun-loungers and scorching Jaguars. This year, if you find yourself designing a south-facing concave facade in a highly reflective material, maybe best think again. Or at least don't let “value engineers” remove the sunshades. Be nice to old buildings <figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-21cdf4b3-61b7-4565-b340-7c733eae853a" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"><figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">Parametric hat … Zaha Hadid's Serpentine Sackler Gallery. Photograph: Martin Godwin</figcaption></figure>They were there before you, and the chances are they're better made and more beautiful than anything you will be able to replace them with, so treat listed buildings nicely. Try to resist the urge to use them as ahatstand for your latest undulating parametric headpiece. Nor is it probably a good idea to rip off the back and use the front as a picturesque mask to distract people from your monstrous shed looming behind. If in doubt, the Stirling Prize-winning Astley Castle has some pointers. Don't stand for modern-day slavery <figure class="element element-video" data-canonical-url="http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/dec/22/abu-dhabi-migrant-workers-video" data-show-ads="true" data-video-id="2011826" data-video-name="The dark side of Abu Dhabi's cultural revolution – video" data-video-provider="guardian.co.uk" data-video-poster="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/audio/video/2013/12/11/1386776622909/Saadiyat-island-off-the-c-001.jpg" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"> <figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">'Happiness Island' … Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi, home to iconic buildings by Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and Norman Foster.</figcaption></figure>OK, it might be hard to turn it down when the Louvre asks you to build agigantic upturned colander on Abu Dhabi's pleasure island, or when Sheikh Zayed phones up asking for a museum in the shape of his prize falcon's wings. We all want our icons in the desert, but let's face it, your construction workers will probably do a better job if they're not living in squalor, 10 men to a room, trapped in labour camps with their passports confiscated, working for a year just to pay back their recruitment fees. Be nice to skateboarders <figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-761d4c25-c7fd-4114-b65a-e9ecf0a991e9" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"><figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">South Bank skaters … as precious as bats and great crested newts when it comes to planning applications. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images</figcaption></figure>They might seem like an unsightly addition to your prize-winning public space, with their low-slung jeans and strangely oversized trainers, but, just like bats and great crested newts, skateboarders hold a lot of sway when it comes to planning applications. So treat them with respect. It's probably not a good idea to turn their hallowed Mecca into a themed retail experience, nor to rub salt in the wound by commissioning ageing has-beens to design an “as-found skate space” down the road. You'll be in for a long, tough ride if you do. Don't be ashamed of copying <figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-f8a5308f-2b7c-4aad-ab10-498e7e572fc9" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"><figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">Look familiar? … A copy of Zaha Hadid's Wangjing Soho building, under construction in Chongqing. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images</figcaption></figure>It's nice to imagine that every one of your designs is a genius idea channelled from the heavens, forged by a single hand in the white heat of the workshop, but that's not really how the design process works. The history of architecture and design is a history of copying, sampling and remixing, so why not celebrate the fact? After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as the Chinese continue to demonstrate, so go ahead and build an homage to your favourite architect – and make it a bit bigger than the original while you're at it. Design windows that let in light and views <figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-d62c73a6-5ef4-4692-93f5-b4a18604dc5c" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"><figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">Shadow gap … UCL's New Hall housing, 465 Caledonian Road, was declared the worst building of 2013. Photograph: Ellis Woodman/BD</figcaption></figure>A window, according to the OED, is a device used “to admit light or air and allow people to see out”. It is a definition best remembered when designing openings in buildings, but one that little concerned the architects of UCL's latest student accommodation block. The Carbuncle Cup-winning hulk on Pentonville Road houses cramped cell-like rooms that look directly out on to the blank brick wall of a retained Victorian facade, only one metre away. No matter – the planning inspector ruled the conditions were “unlikely to be perceived as overly oppressive by the occupiers”. They're only students after all. Bring fleeting joy <figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-fb2bf44f-2f01-4e4c-a55e-aea58288bb3a" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"><figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">Half packing crate, half temple … The Shed at the National Theatre. Photograph: Helene Binet</figcaption></figure>You might want your every creation to last forever, but some of the best things are good precisely because they disappear. The Shed at the National Theatre proved to be one such joyful fleeting visitor to the South Bank last summer, looking as if Lasdun's concrete fly-tower had leapt down and daubed itself with red face-paint to join the riverside fun. A simple timber box, it showed how the rambling concrete terraces of the Southbank Centre can be enlivened with nimble intervention – proving they don't really need to be smothered with giant glass containers of shops and restaurants. Don't ruin views <figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-d41d6d76-28ee-4a9f-b72e-a9fd3e90479d" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"><figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">'Like building a skyscraper next to Stonehenge … Port Meadow before and after. Photograph: Save Port Meadow</figcaption></figure>This year, when presented with an idyllic pastoral site on the edge of a rolling expanse of millennium-old common land, fringed by the prospect of dreaming spires poking above the treetops, you might want to think twice before plonking an army of inflated toy-town houses down in the middle of it all. Such has been the effect of Oxford's new Castle Mill student housing development on the edge of Port Meadow, a group of bulky blocks that despoil the landscape and block the long-cherished view, in a move slammed by critics as like “building a skyscraper next to Stonehenge”. Kill-off your practice before it kills you <figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-b17cb976-9f90-4f4a-bf3b-e3ef9db79ebb" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"><figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">Die young … the Heerlijkheid Hoogvliet in Rotterdam, by FAT. Photograph: Maarten Laupman/FAT</figcaption></figure>Running out of work, on the brink of financial collapse and always coming runner-up in competitions? Why risk fading into obscurity and beckoning forth the debt-collectors, when you can go out with a stylish bang and break up your practice instead, boy-band style? A premature death guarantees teary-eyed obituaries, friendly missives from long-standing rivals and nostalgic reviews of your final projects. So bite the bullet before it bites you and go out early with a kamikaze boom. Design more yonic buildings <figure class="element element-image" data-media-id="gu-fc-a1fbdae8-1bf1-4086-8e2e-39e9d3ff72f3" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;"><figcaption style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 0.858em; line-height: 1.25; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">Yonic wonder … the Al Wakrah Stadium in Qatar, by Zaha Hadid and AECOM. Image: AECOM</figcaption></figure>Architecture has always been a male-dominated profession, inevitably leading to a propensity for priapic forms. Our city skylines are brimming with teetering towers of phallic ambition, endlessly choked with competing monuments to the male member. But now Zaha Hadid has shown there can be another way. Her proposal for the Al-Wakrah World Cup stadium erupts from the Qatari desert in a great vulvic bulge, its roof framed by dynamic labial sweeps, in a magnificent demonstration that the vagina can be an equally noble form for a building – and ushering in 2014 as the year of the yonic.

Why doesn't this city have more multi-level community parking? At least people can stop parking on the streets and needing to move their cars on different days or shovelling or even having their cars towed. Are we such a lazy bunch of morons, that can't walk 5-15 mins to get to our car? I know in some parts of the city, it be hard to do something like that, but it would be nice if they did it. Would be less cars on the road (parked) you can have more traffic flowing. It would be nice to have Sainte Catherine St either 4-lanes or two lanes in each direction. There is even some streets that are so small, people park on both sides and it is impossible to drive down. I really hope the city does something about this in the next 20-50 years.

C'est peut-être le temps de déclarer la rue Sainte-Catherine piétonne sur toute sa longueur... http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/story/2013/08/05/montreal-sink-hole-ste-catherine.html Emergency crews are on the scene after a sinkhole opened up in downtown Montreal and swallowed a backhoe. It happened at about 9 a.m. ET at the intersection of Guy and St-Catherine streets. The hole is about eight metres long and five meters across. A section of St-Catherine Street has been closed to traffic. A city official said they received a call about a water leak at the scene on the weekend. Crews arrived this morning to do repairs and that's when the road gave way. "We think that the water leak was because of the sewer pipe. . .it's broken sewer pipe," said Emilie Miskdjian a spokeswoman for the Ville Marie borough. "That's what we think, but we will have to do an inspection to determine the cause." The driver was taken to hospital as a precaution. Engineers and representatives from the CSST, Quebec's workplace health and safety board, are now at the scene to determine the best way to remove the vehicle from the hole.

Aperçu ce matin à Laval. Plaqué Ohio. Ça dit "road survey" et ça traine plein d'équipements particuliers en arrière comme en avant. Quelqu'un à une hypothèse sur ce que ça pourrait être? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

having recently walked through griffintown from downtown towards verdun i found that while the area is filled with many condo projects most of them look they have been there for quite a while and they all seem to be waiting after one another to 'pop' from the ground ... in the meantime the place still looks awfully desolate and abandoned and you have to think that this has an effect on the health of those projects - it's not like the city lacks any plans for griffintown but don't you think they should be more proactive about it and inject some fund in the neighborhood to help spur the growth of all these residential towers instead of waiting for them to actually get built before they do anything ? chicken and the egg kinda situation now it seems but imo the city should be the first to do actually do something and not the private developers .. after all all these years down the road its the city that will still be collecting tax funds if anything gets built - not the initial investors

A bridge in Mumbai Halfway to paradise A half-built bridge symbolises the urgency and the frustrations of improving India’s infrastructure Dec 22nd 2012 |From the print edition N 1988, when V.S. Naipaul arrived in Bombay, now known as Mumbai, and drove south from its airport, he could tell something unusual was happening because the traffic was so bad. It turned out that a festival of Dalits, the former untouchables, had led to crowds that blocked the roads. The Nobel-prizewinning writer complained of “fumes and heat and din” in his taxi to the Taj Hotel. The chaos was novel enough to form the opening passage of his book, “A Million Mutinies Now”. Today greater Mumbai’s population has almost doubled to 18m, and transport bedlam has become as integral to its psyche as the stockmarket, films and slums. Millions endure commutes that would qualify them for post-traumatic-stress counselling in rich countries. Rush-hour trains get so crushed that a phone or pair of glasses carried in a breast pocket will smash under the pressure of bodies. Every year perhaps 500 people perish after falling off trains in the city and 6,000 die on the tracks. If, like Mr Naipaul, you can afford a taxi, it will reek of sweat and honk and buck for inches of advantage against bigger cars, which under a Darwinian highway code have bullying rights. After monsoon storms the sewers overflow and the roads flood. On nights like this endless lines of vehicles crawl in the dark and you can hear the slop lapping on your car’s underbelly, like waves on a dinghy’s hull. But if you divert from Mr Naipaul’s route, by a creek at a place called Mahim, and turn west, you can take a different trip. Time leaps forward. India becomes China, or even Singapore. The swarm of autorickshaws fades and, after pausing at a toll booth, you find yourself on an eight-lane motorway running parallel with the coast, floating high over the sea on 120 piers, and suspended on wires from two 128-metre towers. The bridge is called the Sea Link and opened in 2009. If you open the window the air is fresh; if you put your foot down you can hit racing speed. From the bridge Mumbai’s berserk skyline seems hazy; the 23 sets of traffic lights and 40 minutes of furious traffic you are bypassing are like a bad dream. The Portuguese fort and aboriginal fishing village that you zip past feel about as real as the scenery of a Disneyland ride. For that matter, can it truly be possible that after just 4.7km, or about five minutes, all eight lanes of this glorious bridge stop in mid-air—as if King Kong had bitten them off? But alas, it is. If you keep going you will plunge into the Arabian Sea. Instead a narrow slip road delivers you back to the city. The shift is disorienting. As your car battles for space again and you pass a Dalit slum, perhaps housing the children of the folk Mr Naipaul saw, it is tempting to look back. What just happened? Viewed from the Sea Link, Mumbai seems like a mirage. But seen from the chaos of the city, it is the Sea Link that is improbable, like a giant hologram. Decent infrastructure and this megacity, maybe this country, do not belong together. Do they? Dream on If any country needs better infrastructure, it is fast-urbanising India. The government hopes a trillion dollars will be spent between 2012 and 2017, although with a creaking banking sector and jumpy investors that is optimistic. If any megacity needs better transport, it is Mumbai. Formed from seven islands, the city was given by Portugal to Charles II of England in 1661 as dowry for his marriage to Catherine of Braganza. It is a long spit whose hub is at its southern tip. Manhattan has 16 bridges, four underwater tunnels and a ferry system linking it to the mainland. Mumbai has just six bridges, all but one at its northern extremity. Two main roads, three railway lines and an airport besieged by shanty towns are its fragile links to the outside world. The city centre is like a head on a long, strangled neck. The difficulty of commuting is partly why Mumbai is so densely populated, with property prices driven high and migrants forced into slums, which now house over half the population. There are only a handful of successful state-sponsored developments: a satellite city on the mainland called Navi (New) Mumbai, some flyovers and a new office park built on marshland near the airport. What Mumbai has been unable to do in practice, it has done in theory. The first master plan to relieve the city’s woes emerged in 1948, the most recent in 2011. In the six decades in between some fine minds, from J.R.D. Tata, a revered industrialist, in 1981, to McKinsey, a consulting firm, in 2003, have had their say. There is widespread agreement on what is required. First, a road round the city’s perimeter—probably a series of Sea Link-style bridges along its entire west coast, and on its east coast a highway partly to be built on land occupied by the city’s dying old port. Second, to link this ring to the mainland, a 22km road over the sea, an idea known as the “trans-harbour link”. Third, near the end of this putative bridge, on the mainland, a new airport. And fourth, at least nine metro lines in the city itself. You can get a flavour of this Utopia in the offices of one of the many government agencies responsible for projects in Maharashtra, the state Mumbai belongs to. A huge, Lego-for-adults model built by a Singaporean firm shows the city centre bisected by an elevated bridge that sweeps in from the ocean. Vast new skyscrapers tower over the Art Deco and colonial buildings. Today’s shabby military cantonment is a nature park. Metro stations are everywhere. Jetties for ferries are abundant. A slum has become a “heritage village” with yachts moored beside it. The sea is blue, the grass is green and the buildings are spotless white. All of it is made up. Indeed of all the transport mega-projects planned for Mumbai, after decades of reports and committees, only one is in use: that surreal 4.7km stretch of the Sea Link. Kafka in Bombay What has gone wrong? One view can be heard on the wasteland at the north abutment of the Sea Link. A ragged family are smashing reinforced concrete rubble. They say they get about a dollar for every two kilos of steel inside—roughly the cost of a one-way Sea Link ticket. Nearby, dogs and feral pigs sniff around abandoned machinery as Girish, aged 52, hits the bottle with his colleagues. The pals work nights in a call centre selling Americans an erectile-dysfunction drug. “You get a quick recharge,” is the sales pitch; the most common response, they all agree, is “Fuck you”. They also agree that this derelict land is a fine spot to unwind. Yet the rumour, which seems to have originated in the nearby slum, is that it has been grabbed secretly by a tycoon to build a mall, or luxury flats; the details vary. A local priest (a church was built nearby in 1575) talks suspiciously of the “fantasy” that any such project could ever benefit the common man. In fact, the land is still owned by the government. But the conspiracy theory that Mumbai is essentially a stitch-up by the rich is not propounded only by drunk cold-callers and men of the cloth. It may be the most widely held belief in the city. Its grandest iteration is that the city’s elite has deliberately sabotaged its transport infrastructure to enrich themselves. The argument goes like this: better transport would lower the scarcity premium on land and property in downtown Mumbai, hurting builders’ profits, and in turn curbing the flow of bribes to India’s political parties. The idea that the rich control the city’s fate was fuelled by a battle in 2005-08 between Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, and his estranged brother, Anil, over a tender to build the trans-harbour link. After a legal tussle Anil undercut his brother by bidding for a concession of nine years and 11 months. The tender process was eventually abandoned. Mumbai is certainly corrupt in other ways. The chief minister of Maharashtra, Prithviraj Chavan, who wants to clean things up, speaks of a nexus of builders and politicians. One official reckons illegal gains of $5 billion a year have been made by builders bribing their way around planning rules. “Those bastards have ruined everything” by scaring off legitimate firms, says one boss. But the grand conspiracy theory is silly. Mukesh Ambani owns a chunk of land near the proposed new airport, the value of which would soar if the trans-harbour link were built. Builders are buying space near proposed metro stations. And without good transport links the population of south Mumbai has begun to decline, which should be bad for property prices. Most businesspeople say the city’s decay is an embarrassment. The truth is fiddlier—as the half-built Sea Link demonstrates. The bridge was commissioned in 1999 but took ten years to finish, instead of the planned two and a half. Ajit Gulabchand, the boss of HCC, the construction firm that won the contract to build it, says the project was “a Kafkaesque struggle”. He describes himself as a “south Bombay boy” and drives a Bentley through the city to his office in the north-east (he does not use the Sea Link because there are no good connections between the west and the east). He is also subject, like all tycoons, to a secondary conspiracy theory, which is that he gained by being close to Sharad Pawar, who heads a Maharashtrian political clan. Mr Gulabchand says this is rubbish. “I’m not going to deny my friendship,” he says. But, “If I’m so powerful, how come I lost money?” One recent fiasco involved a military convoy doing a U-turn, a naval ambulance, a man in flip-flops with a red flag, and thousands of angry drivers The bridge’s original budget was $74m at current exchange rates, which rose to double that (officials verify these figures). Mr Gulabchand says he is still owed around $100m. The rising cost reflects a deep problem: delays. After construction began the cash-starved road agency in charge, MSRDC, changed the plan from eight lanes to four and back to eight again. The council took an age to release the land needed to house machinery (near where the call-centre employees relax). Maritime rules banned work during the monsoon. Customs held up the import of a 5,400-tonne floating crane. Subsea telecoms cables were found in the wrong place. Old folk living nearby griped about noise pollution. Those are the kind of problems big projects face everywhere. But other hurdles were peculiarly Indian. In a 107-year-old house in the fishing village the bridge passes over at its southern end sits Vijay Worlikar, one of the “nine Patils”, or clan chiefs, who in effect run the area. He is a Koli, an aboriginal people who have been there for centuries; he has childhood memories of Iranian boats sailing to the village to trade pistachios for dried fish. “This land is our land,” he says. Mr Worlikar successfully campaigned to shift the bridge farther from the village, and for a second suspended section to be built to create a channel for the fishing fleet to sail underneath. His legal objections, along with other environmental complaints, caused years of delays. Yet he is a modern man: his daughter is a doctor and his son an executive at the airport. He blames sloppy planning. He says he is now helping the state build relations with other fishing villages in the city to try to avoid further fiascos. Cutting red tape and winning public support would be easier with political leadership. The Sea Link was opened, with a firework display, by Sonia Gandhi, the dynast of India’s ruling Congress Party, and was officially named after her assassinated husband, Rajiv. However, consistent with the rule that the more politicians celebrate a finished project, the less they did to make it happen, the Sea Link had earlier been left out to dry. Mr Gulabchand says that after the state government changed in 1999 and an energetic minister left, the plan had no sponsor to bulldoze through bureaucracy. Maharashtra’s ruling coalition since 1999, of the Congress Party and the NCP, often squabbles over who runs big projects. The politicians have rural vote banks and are afraid, as one official puts it, “to be seen to neglect the rural man”. Mr Gulabchand thinks Mumbai needs more political accountability: “The Sea Link would not have been delayed if there was a mayor responsible for doing it. His re-election would have depended on it.” For the time being, such a change in the city’s governance seems unlikely. Mumbai’s biggest secret To grow fast India needs lots more infrastructure. But lately spending has been falling. The central bank thinks that the value of envisioned projects dropped by 52% in 2011-12. The slump reflects worries about red tape, corruption and doubts about the profitability of public-private partnerships (PPPs). In Mumbai it is easy to despair. “The whole spirit of doing things has gone,” says Mr Gulabchand. Five kilometres south of Mr Worlikar’s village is a fenced plot by the sea where men sit on plastic seats, apparently anticipating, like actors in a production of “Waiting for Godot”, the next section of the Sea Link to arrive. It could be a while. The winner of a PPP project to build and run it, Anil Ambani, has got cold feet. A political tussle has erupted, with the NCP keen to build a bridge using public funds and Congress preferring a road on reclaimed land. Nothing may happen for years. Yet, just as the Sea Link manages those 4.7km of elevated bliss, some projects are moving. Beneath a hill owned by an atomic research agency in north Mumbai, roaring diggers have almost finished excavating two half-kilometre-long tunnels. Outside, in both directions, the ghastly task of clearing slums has been accomplished and their residents moved to blocks of flats nearby. This is part of Mumbai’s best-kept secret—the Eastern Freeway, a new road stretching all the way down the city’s east coast, on the opposite side from the Sea Link, using tunnels and stilts. It should open in 2013, about five years after work began. J.R. Dhane, an engineer on the project, says it has been like painstakingly weaving a thread through the city’s dense fabric. Elsewhere the first metro line is almost finished, its platforms inches away from living-room windows, an experimental monorail is coming up, and a new round of bids is set to begin on a contract to build and operate a $2 billion trans-harbour link. These projects are all being run by the MMRDA, a state development body that has stepped into the vacuum. It owns land worth $12 billion, which it sells to help finance projects, and is viewed as clean and technocratic. Its boss, Rahul Asthana, says that progress is being made, but seems cautious about the city making a Shanghai-style great leap forward. In all probability Mumbai will do enough to prevent a crisis, but not enough to fulfil its vast potential or quickly transform the quality of most of its people’s lives. The same is true of infrastructure across India. And what of that 4.7km stretch of the Sea Link, stranded out there, all alone? The bridge is in good nick but seems to be run poorly by the road agency, MSRDC (its chief declined interview requests). Vehicle numbers are thought to be half those expected. The financial impact is hard to assess: the most recent annual report on the agency’s website is from 2008. Waiting for Utopia Meanwhile the toll-booth system has become a slapstick affair, with a maze of concrete chicanes prone to collapse, complex cash fares and overstaffed booths. Usually receipts are printed, but occasionally they are hand-stamped on the kind of paper used for bingo tickets. Accusations of graft swirl. An electronic swipe system has apparently been introduced but seems to be available only to VIPs. After a suicide jump in August it emerged that the CCTV system to help stop terrorist attacks was not working properly. One recent fiasco involved a military convoy doing a U-turn on the bridge, a naval ambulance, a man in flip-flops with a red flag like a Formula One race official, and thousands of angry drivers. This created a traffic jam along most of the Sea Link, which seemed at last to have become part of the city. Often couples on motorbikes park by the bridge. They are not there to ride on it—two-wheelers are prohibited. They are not seeking intimacy, for the choice spot for that is the rocks around the headland at low tide. Nor are they there for the ambience, for the ground nearby features broken promenades, weeds and rats. They are there for the view. When you see its sweeping cords silhouetted against a dusky sky, the Sea Link is as close to a wonder as Mumbai can offer. And whether this ritual demonstrates low expectations or hope is in the minds of the beholders alone. http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21568582-half-built-bridge-symbolises-urgency-and-frustrations-improving-indias

Most automotive safety advancements these days are being made either through the automakers or government standards, but one group in the Netherlands is coming up with innovative ways of making the roads safer... literally. Design firm Studio Roosegaarde and Heijmans Infrastructure have teamed up to introduce ideas for a so-called "Smart Highway" which was recently named the Best Future Concept at the Dutch Design Awards. Incorporating ideas such as color-changing road paint, glow-in-the-dark lane markers and interactive street lights, the Smart Highway could help drivers on multiple levels. Using glow-in-the-dark lines road seems like a relatively low-cost idea for improving visibility (especially in rural areas) while the interactive lights use motion sensors to illuminate the roadways only when cars are detected, a feature that sounds like it will reduce costs by reducing electricity usage, with the side benefit of curbing light pollution. The dynamic, color-changing road paint can adjust based on the weather to warn drivers of potentially dangerous road conditions, including displaying large snowflake graphics on the road's surface to warn of ice. Other elements of the Smart Highway include wind lights and dedicated electric vehicle lanes that use a wireless induction charging system. The press release says that some elements of the Smart Highway could become a reality within the next five years, but Designboom says Dutch drivers could see the technology on the roads as soon as next year. http://www.autoblog.com/2012/11/09/netherlands-getting-glow-in-the-dark-color-changing-smart-highw/#continued

Read more: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/09/tesla-supercharger/ Tesla going to have their Supercharger stations in Canada by 2015/16. I have a feeling, when there will be more electric vehicles on the road, we might be seeing Hydro-Quebec stations.

Y'a juste au Québec que ces choses la arrive? Source OTTAWA, Ont. - The eastbound 174 between Montreal Road and Jeanne D'Arc Blvd. will likely be closed for days, as city crews work at fixing a massive sinkhole. The huge pit on the off-ramp at Jeanne D'Arc swallowed a car Tuesday afternoon, the vehicle coming to rest on a corroded sewer line. Orleans councillor Bob Monette told 1310News crews first need to figure out how to get the car out of the hole. Then city officials need to find the right sized pipe to replace the damaged sewer line. "If they can get the 3.6 metre pipe, then it will be a matter of days before it's replaced and the road reopened," Monette said, adding that as a driver who uses the 174 on a daily basis, he understands the frustration of Orleans residents. "That's the highest traveled roadway in our community. Everyone travels the 174 to get to and from Orleans." This section of pipeline was inspected and cleared in 2011, and Monette told 1310News he's looking into what caused the pipe to burst now. In the meantime, he recommended that Orleans residents take the bus or try carpooling on alternate routes like Innes Road or St Joseph Blvd.

"The 2010 Shanghai fire was a 15 November 2010 fire that destroyed a 28-story high-rise apartment building in the Chinese city of Shanghai. The fire began at 2:15 p.m. local time (06:15 UTC),[5][6] and at least 53 people were killed with over 100 others injured. China's Xinhua News Agency reported that the building, at the intersection of Jiaozhou Road and Yuyao Road in Shanghai's Jing'an District [7], was being renovated at the time of the fire.[8] Shanghai residents were able to see smoke from the fire several kilometres away.[9] The ages of those injured in the fire range from 3–85, with the majority (64.5%) over the age of 50. [...end of excerpt from article.]" > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Shanghai_fire

(Courtesy of Mercury News)

For whatever reason I ended up in Brasil via Google Earth Check out the ring road of Feira de Santana: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=feira+de+santana+BR&sll=-12.255805,-38.943357&sspn=0.064416,0.132093&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Feira+de+Santana+-+Bahia,+Brazil&ll=-12.260251,-38.958721&spn=0.064415,0.132093&t=h&z=14 It carries part of BR-116 a major Brazilian highway... it is literally a perfect circle Also note the extremely weird half-cloverleaf + U-turn interchange where BR-116 leaves the ring.

[video=youtube;jkVBg_-OviI] (Courtesy of The Inhabitat)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/nyregion/06broadway.html?_r=2&ref=michael_m_grynbaum&pagewanted=all Ceux qui n'aiment pas les "piétonisations" à Mtl devront s'y faire. C'est un mouvement de fond, et généralisé.....

China's nine-day traffic jam stretches 100km (AFP) – 16 hours ago BEIJING — Thousands of vehicles were bogged down Monday in a more than 100-kilometre (62-mile) traffic jam leading to Beijing that has lasted nine days and highlights China's growing road congestion woes. The Beijing-Tibet expressway slowed to a crawl on August 14 due to a spike in traffic by cargo-bearing heavy trucks heading to the capital, and compounded by road maintenance work that began five days later, the Global Times said. The state-run newspaper said the jam between Beijing and Jining city had given birth to a mini-economy with local merchants capitalising on the stranded drivers' predicament by selling them water and food at inflated prices. That stretch of highway linking Beijing with the northern province of Hebei and the Inner Mongolia region has become increasingly prone to massive jams as the capital of more than 20 million people sucks in huge shipments of goods. Traffic slowed to a snail's pace in June and July for nearly a month, according to earlier press reports. The latest clog has been worsened by the road improvement project, made necessary by highway damage caused by a steady increase in cargo traffic, the Global Times said. China has embarked in recent years on a huge expansion of its national road system but soaring traffic periodically overwhelms the grid. The congestion was expected to last into mid-September as the road project will not be finished until then, the newspaper said. The roadway is a major artery for the supply of produce, coal and other goods to Beijing. Video: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/A-100km-Long-Traffic-Jam-In-Beijing-Enters-Its-Ninth-Day-And-Could-Continue-For-A-Month/Article/201008415702670?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_4&lid=ARTICLE_15702670_A_100km-Long_Traffic_Jam_In_Beijing_Enters_Its_Ninth_Day_And_Could_Continue_For_A_Month

Who else is tired of the non-stop traffic around town ? And few or no measures to redirect traffic proprely! All roads lead to headache as repairs, more cars pile up Published: 21 hours ago JASON MAGDER, The Gazette Published: 21 hours ago Joseph Simon has been driving a taxi in Montreal for 19 years, and he says traffic in the last few months is the worst he's ever seen. "My clients have left my car to walk the rest of the way; it's happened three times already," he said yesterday while sitting in his black Buick Century, waiting at a taxi stand on Metcalfe St. in front of the Sun Life Building. "Traffic has been terrible this summer." Several of his fellow taxi drivers agreed. "It's blocked everywhere this year," said Hayssam Hamad, a 12-year veteran who works for Diamond Taxi. "Every year, there is more and more traffic." Montrealers are used to road construction in the summer and fall, but it seems this year has been particularly difficult. In addition to construction on several major highways, many arteries in the city core also are under repair. Add to that the 135 inspections of road structures ordered by the Johnson commission investigating the causes of last year's overpass collapse in Laval, and you have a recipe for traffic mayhem. Mario St-Pierre, a spokesperson for Quebec's Transport Department, said there isn't more construction than usual. "But the construction maybe affects more people," he said. "Especially with the Ville Marie Expressway (which since June has had several lanes closed for repairs). It's very difficult to divert the traffic there." He added there are more cars travelling to and from Montreal than ever before. According to figures from the Auto Insurance Board, car ownership in the areas around Montreal shot up between seven and 11 per cent between the years 2000 and 2005. In Montreal, there were 3.1 per cent more cars in the same period. Yesterday, motorists had a double dose of gridlock to contend with during the morning rush hour. An accident forced the closure of the Montreal-bound lanes of the Mercier Bridge. To make matters worse, the Transport Department closed Côte de Liesse Expressway to and from the Dorval Circle for emergency repairs to the underpass that gives eastbound cars access to Trudeau airport, causing backlogs on Highway 20 westbound, an area usually free of traffic problems in the morning. Yesterday at 7:30 a.m., cars backed up for a kilometre on Highway 20, causing about a half-hour delay, said André Marcotte, the Transport Department's director of planning for the Montreal region. The traffic caused some people to miss their flights yesterday morning, said Christiane Beaulieu, the vice-president of public affairs for Aéroports de Montréal. Some airport employees also were late for work because the parking lot for employees is located where the worst gridlock occurred, she said. The situation eased slightly in the afternoon when westbound Côte de Liesse was reopened. Things should improve even more this morning as the eastbound part from Marshall Ave. to the Dorval Circle is expected to be reopened. The underpass will remain closed until tomorrow and eastbound traffic to the airport will be diverted onto Michel Jasmin Ave. (the expressway's service road) and the Marshall Ave. overpass. The underpass was one of 135 structures flagged for inspection by the Johnson commission. It was found to be structurally deficient. With just 20 inspections carried out so far, Montrealers can expect many more temporary road closures in the coming months. Back at the taxi stand, Hamad said he doesn't mind the highway repairs so much, it's the work being done in the downtown core that is really hurting him. "On the highway, there's just a bit of a delay where the construction is, and then it clears up afterward," he said. He added it has been particularly difficult navigating on de Maisonneuve Blvd., where a bicycle path is being constructed, and on Sherbrooke St. near Amherst St., which has been closed since June for repairs after a section of the road collapsed. There were several other problems downtown recently: part of Bleury St. was closed for a weekend this month. It's still off-limits for heavy trucks. A section of the downtown core was closed last month when cracks were found in a concrete slab in the underground city near the McGill métro station. One block will remain closed for the next few months while crews work to remove the slab and replace it. jmagder@thegazette.canwest.com - - - And looking down the road, there's trouble circling More traffic headaches are in store for Highway 20 next year, as the Quebec Transport Department starts work on the much-anticipated reconfiguration of the Dorval circle. André Marcotte, the Transport Department's director of planning for the Montreal area said an announcement of the $150 million project will be made in the coming months. Preliminary work will be done this year with the demolition of a derelict building near the Via Rail train station. The major work will start next year, for completion in 2010. The project will reduce congestion to and from the airport by eliminating the traffic lights in the Dorval circle, Marcotte said. Christiane Beaulieu, Aéroports de Montréal's vice president of public relations, said this is welcome news. "The No. 1 complaint we get about the airport is that it is difficult to access," she said. "This is very good news." The project has been delayed many times in the past. It was originally planned for completion by 2001.

(Courtesy of © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette)

Ce fil est destiné à démolir les mythes que les grandes villes dans le monde ne construisent pas d'autoroute, ou pire les démolissent... on commence avec Honk Kong Reconstruction of Causeway Bay Flyover and Associated Widening of Victoria Park Road January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 Lai Chi Kok Viaduct is a high rise elevated road connecting between Ngong Shuen Chau Viaduct and Eagle's Nest Tunnel of Route 8. It is a 1.4km dual 3-lane carriageway with 4 slip roads. 2 of which connect with Ching Chueng Road near Mei Foo and join with Castle Peak Road at Butterfly Valley Interchange. The other 2 slip roads provide access for traffic on and off Route 8 at Lai Wan Interchange. 2007/04 Construction of embankment near Hoi Lai Estate Construction of sign gantry foundation in Lai Wan Overpass Butterfly Valley Interchange Laying of bituminous layer in Mainline Viaduct at Butterfly Valley 2007/03 TCSS Access Provision at Lai Po Road TCSS Access Provision between Ching Cheung Road to east of Lai Wan Road Overpass TTA Implemented at Lai Po Road TCSS Access Provision at Lai Po Road TTA Implemented at Lai Wan Overpass Widening eastbound Eagle's Nest Tunnel is an integral part of Route 8 between Cheung Sha Wan and Sha Tin. The contract consists of the construction of the Eagle's Nest Tunnel, associated portal buildings and administration building, associated roadworks and drainage works, and E&M works for Eagle's Nest Tunnel, Shatin Heights Tunnel and Road T3. 2007/04

(Courtesy of The Globe and Mail)

je part dans un mini road trip la semaine prochaine, et j'ai penser vous poster quelques photos. si vous avez des suggestions sur certains spots a visiter dans ces villes, faites moi en part. je serai a: knoxville, atlanta, miami, raleigh, washington, baltimore, philadelphie, new york. stay tuned ...

Here's a map I created based on what I think the CSL area should look like years down the road, looking at various projects that have been discussed and a few of my own 'wants' for the area. I'm no expert at urban planning or urbanity so feel free to comment and critique. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=108856777922929088479.00046d1191982597c7992

Honestly the reflective paint they use/do not use for the road, to divide the lanes suck especially at night and when its raining. I ended up driving on lakeshore all the way downtown, crap it looked like one huge lane LOL. I have no clue how LKA (lane keep assist) going to work in these shitty conditions. :stirthepot: Reason I took the scenic route, seeing I haven't driven on the highway in a good 5-6 years. Plus I only drive every 6 months. I dislike driving, seeing there is so many damn maniacs on the road. Thats my rant for this beautiful saturday morning.