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http://www.icisource.ca/commercial_real_estate_news/ When NIMBYism is warranted, and when it isn’t Of course, the question is whether a proposed development, infill project or new infrastructure build really does pose a risk to these cherished things. Developers and urban planners must always be cognizant of the fact that there is a segment of the population, a fringe element, who will object to just about anything “new” as a matter of principle. I’ve been to many open houses and public consultations for one proposed project or another over the years. There is almost always that contingent of dogged objectors who invariably fixate on the same things: Parking – Will there be enough if the development increases the population density of the neighbourhood or draws more shoppers/workers from elsewhere? Traffic – Will streets become unsafe and congested due to more cars on the road? Transit – Will this mean more busses on the road, increasing the safety hazard on residential streets, or conversely will there be a need for more? Shadowing – is the new build going to leave parts of the neighbourhood stuck in the shade of a skyscraper? These are all legitimate concerns, depending on the nature of the project in question. They are also easy targets for the activist obstructionist. Full and honest disclosure is the best defence Why? Because I see, time and again, some developers and urban planners who should know better fail to be prepared for objections rooted on any of these points. With any new development or infrastructure project, there has to be, as a simple matter of sound public policy, studies that examine and seek to mitigate impacts and effects related to parking, traffic, shadowing, transit and other considerations. It therefore only makes sense, during a public consult or open house, to address the most likely opposition head on by presenting the findings and recommendations of these studies up front in a clear and obvious manner. But too often, this isn’t done. I’ve was at an open house a few years ago where, when asked about traffic impact, the developer said there wouldn’t be any. Excuse me? If your project adds even one car to the street, there’s an impact. I expect he meant there would be only minimal impact, but that’s not what he said. The obstructionists had a field day with that – another greedy developer, trying to pull the wool over the eyes of honest residents. This is a marketing exercise – treat it like one This is ultimately a marketing exercise – you have to sell residents on the value and need of the development. Take another example – a retirement residence. With an aging population, we are obviously going to need more assisted living facilities in the years to come. But in this case, the developer, speaking to an audience full of grey hairs, didn’t even make the point that the new residence would give people a quality assisted-living option, without having to leave their community, when they were no longer able to live on their own. I also hear people who object to infill projects because they think their tax dollars have paid for infrastructure that a developer is now going to take advantage of – they think the developer is somehow getting a free ride. And yet, that developer must pay development charges to the city to proceed with construction. The new build will also pay its full utility costs and property taxes like the rest of the street. City hall gets more revenue for infrastructure that has already been paid for, and these additional development charges fund municipal projects throughout the city. Another point, often overlooked – when you take an underperforming property and redevelop it, its assessed value goes up, and its tax bill goes up. The local assessment base has just grown. City hall isn’t in the business of making a profit, just collecting enough property tax to cover the bills. The more properties there are in your neighbourhood, the further that tax burden is spread. In other words, that infill project will give everyone else a marginal reduction on their tax bill. It likely isn’t much, but still, it’s something. Developers must use the facts to defuse criticism Bottom line, development is necessary and good most of the time. If we didn’t have good regulated development, we would be living in horrid medieval conditions. Over the last century and a bit, ever growing regulation have given us safer communities, with more reliable utilities and key services such as policing and fire. Yes, there are examples of bad development, but if we had none, as some people seem to want, no one would have a decent place to live. It just astonishes me that developers and urban planners don’t make better use of the facts available to them to defuse criticism. It’s so easy to do it in the right way. Proper preparation for new development public information sessions is the proponent’s one opportunity to tell their story, and should not be wasted by failing to get the facts out and explaining why a project is a good idea. To discuss this or any other valuation topic in the context of your property, please contact me at jclark@regionalgroup.com. I am also interested in your feedback and suggestions for future articles. The post Why do public planning projects go off the rails? appeared first on Real Estate News Exchange (RENX). sent via Tapatalk

Sydney is now using the world's first outdoor e-ink traffic signs to guide motorists during special events. The city's Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) agency was apparently fed up with the constant chore of changing signs, and developed the tech with a company called Visionect. Like your Kindle, the signs are easy to read in Sydney's bright sunshine, which also powers it via solar panels. There's a light for nighttime usage, and the messages can be updated remotely via a cell connection to an "internet of things" network. Sydney's tech is pretty basic, but e-ink holds enormous potential for signage. We'll no doubt see fancier outdoor displays one day, but for now the city's just hoping to save some money -- Los Angeles spends up to $9.5 million putting up temporary parking restriction signs, for instance. The group also developed anti-tampering and location detection tech, because you just know that someone's going to try to steal or hack them.VIA: The Register SOURCE: Visionect

http://spacingmontreal.ca/2010/05/25/parc-lahaie-transformation-underway/ Résultat du parc Lahaie: C'est très laid ! deux tables dans le milieu, c'est le seul truc qu'ils ont trouvé à installer ? Je crois qu'il serait mieux de détruire la rue si ont veut vraiment la transformer en place publique. Je laisse Étienne vous présenter ses rendus qui sont extra !

Y-t-ils des forumers qui ont remarqués un net amélioration de traffic sur décarie nord les soirs?? C'est incroyable! Depuis le mi-décembre, je remarque un 50% à 80% de réduction du traffic! Des jours je peut me rendre jusqu'à Jean-Talon avant un relantissement. On parle meme pas d'un bouchon! Juste un petit relantissment! Check l'image. On parle de 17h15 un vendredi après-midi. vert jusqu'à J-T. Ca fait deux mois de ça! Se pourrait-il que la A30 fait une telle différence?!? WTF

By Eric Moskowitz | GLOBE STAFF MAY 19, 2013 The city’s on-street bike lanes are marvels to US visitors. We had pedaled half a block from the vibrant Jeanne-Mance Park, past tennis matches, a youth league football game, and the filming of a music video, when it dawned on me: We were biking in one direction, and the cars were pointed in another. But this was no rogue move by our tour guide, leading us the wrong way down a one-way street. Pavement markings invited it. Stopping ahead, guide Martin Coutu pointed out a defining feature of the city’s residential neighborhoods: the cast-iron outdoor staircases leading to the upper floors of thousands of two- and three-story walkups, allowing the homes to achieve a gracious sidewalk setback without ceding interior space for shared entries and stairwells. Still, I couldn’t help marveling over that bike lane, beckoning two-way cycling down an otherwise one-way street. I could picture just a single block like it in Cambridge and none in Boston. But as we followed Coutu along Fitz & Follwell Co.’s ’Hoods and Hidden Gems tour, it became clear that, in Montreal, it was one of many. Coursing through the city, we followed all manner of on-street bike lanes — plain old painted lanes, two-way lanes, lanes protected from traffic by plastic rods or concrete curbs — and off-street bike paths. We even saw some bicycle-specific traffic lights. Painted markings guided us through intersections, and signs told drivers to give us the right of way. More remarkably, they obeyed. Related If you go biking in Montreal... On that four-hour tour, and again riding around the city on the bike-sharing network known as Bixi, no one honked at us, not even once. It was liberating, allowing us to follow Coutu — a cheerful character with the whippet build of a bike messenger, unafraid to give a playful squeeze to the bulbous retro horn affixed to his handlebars — without any white-knuckled worry about staying alive. “The majority of our customers are American,” Shea Mayer, Fitz & Follwell’s founder, told me later, “and they all say, ‘It’s unbelievable. I live in Boston, I live in New York’ — or California, or wherever it is — ‘and not only can I not believe the amount of lanes you have, but I can’t believe we haven’t been run off the road yet.’ ” And there was plenty to see following those bike lanes, on a tour inspired by Mayer’s idea of a perfect day off in Montreal, often ranked as the most bike-friendly city in North America. Riding a stylish set of Dutch-inspired upright bikes, we weaved through the colorful neighborhoods that fan out to the east and northeast of the verdant peak known as Mont Royal, including Mile-End, Outremont, and Petite Italie. We stopped to sample wood-fired, sesame seed-covered bagels on Rue Saint-Viateur; sip exquisitely prepared cappuccino at Café Olimpico; and explore the open-air stalls of the Jean-Talon Market, the larger, locally minded cousin to the tourist-choked Atwater Market on the waterfront. Mayer started Fitz & Follwell as a one-man outfit in 2009, soon growing it into an eight-guide business and a boutique in the hip neighborhood known as The Plateau, where he rents and sells bikes and offers locally made, bike-friendly products such as a leather crossbar holster for wine bottles. The outings now include a food tour by foot and winter toboggan and snowshoe expeditions in the city’s famed parks, but the bread and butter is still the April through October bike tour. It is designed not as a stop-and-go sightseeing tour that happens to be by bicycle, but a two-wheeled immersion in, and celebration of, a place with a deeply ingrained bike culture. Having written about Boston’s push under Mayor Thomas M. Menino to end its status as the scourge of the biking world, starting from zero to add 60 miles of bike lanes, and launching the Hubway bike-share network, I was aware of the basic facts about Montreal. It boasts hundreds of miles of bike lanes, and its Bixi system, with more than 400 stations and 5,100 bikes, is four times as extensive as Hubway. But the numbers tell only part of it. This is a rare city beyond Europe where bicycling is not just a form of daring recreation or reluctant transportation but an essential, accepted part of everyday life. It is the way urbanites get to the pub, the park, the office, the grocery store. I saw bikes as fashion statements and bikes outnumbering cars, three or four fastened to every parking-meter post on the bar-, cafe-, and boutique-laden Saint-Laurent and Saint-Denis avenues. Not that I had come to Montreal intent on geeking out on the bike infrastructure and scene. My girlfriend, Hannah, and I had been drawn by the city’s traditional allures: food, culture, architectural charm, and proximity to Boston. Before we went, Hannah made a Facebook appeal for suggestions, and a friend in New York quickly responded, declaring Fitz & Follwell “the best thing I’ve ever done as a tourist” — anywhere. A Google search yielded similar superlatives on TripAdvisor, where the company holds the top ranking among all manner of Montreal tour providers, so we booked. What distinguishes Fitz & Follwell was never clearer than at the end of the tour, after we had admired more outdoor staircases and followed Coutu through a world tourists rarely see: the intricate network of back alleys that were once the unremarkable setting for so many anonymous coal deliveries and trash collections, but that have been enlivened recently with lush gardens, ivy-draped terraces, and candy-colored murals. Winding down, we ducked into a boulangerie and pedaled behind Coutu to Parc La Fontaine, where he laid a blanket on a rare stretch of unoccupied grass and we sat down to a spread of ripe strawberries and cherry tomatoes from Jean-Talon Market, made-to-order sandwiches from the boulangerie, and ice-cold craft beers. As we sipped, ate, and laughed, another group biked into view on the far side of the lawn, gathering around a leader. Not only were they not enjoying a picnic, but they were clad in matching fluorescent vests, like members of a prison road crew. “That’s the other bike tour,” Coutu said, grinning impishly. “They’re people who get lost easily.” Watching them, it was easy to forget we weren’t locals ourselves — or, at least, visitors being shown around by a savvy friend. When we got back to the shop, we lingered, reluctant to let go of the leather grips on those Dutch-inspired bikes. So we did the next best thing, renting Bixis to explore places suggested by Coutu as we had buzzed by — only so many eating stops can be squeezed into one tour. Undaunted by intermittent rain, we rode in the evening along part of the Canal-de-Lachine, a 35-year-old bike path that traces a canal abandoned after the 1959 opening of a shipping channel in the mighty St. Lawrence River, and followed another bike path along part of the city’s active industrial port and over the low-slung Pont de la Concorde bridge, reaching Île Sainte-Hélène, the leafy epicenter of Expo ’67, still anchored by the Biosphere and an amusement park. Darkness settling in, we followed a path to the other side of the island and found a trail leading to the Jacques Cartier Bridge, an 11,000-foot steel truss span that rises 162 feet above the St. Lawrence, similar in size and design to Boston’s Tobin Bridge. However crazy the idea of biking the Tobin might sound, here we found an inviting bike lane — and an exhilarating one, high above the jet-black water — running along one side of the Cartier, protected from traffic. Pedaling back to downtown, I thought about something Coutu had said: Montreal wasn’t always so bike-friendly, it just had an earlier start. I considered Boston, where bicycle counts are rising, and new lanes, albeit unprotected ones, are striped every year. As the city lights came closer, I realized I wasn’t just pedaling toward the most bikeable city on the continent. I was seeing a vision of Boston’s future. http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2013/05/18/bike-tour-montreal/Q7r2F3g6TIuwiiITu0ypGL/story.html

http://www.mercer.com/qualityoflivingpr#city-rankings Montréal figure assez bien pour les infrastructures en 13e position, et devant Toronto. Les infrastructures sont definis comme tel: 'electricity supply, water availability, telephone and mail services, public transportation, traffic congestion and the range of international flights from local airports'.

Réaménagement de la sortie 15 Nord. Reconstruit à droite! Pour enfin corriger les erreurs du passé! <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/28rndC0RMYk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Selon la gazette, des travaux majeur au cour du week-end: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Construction+affect+interchange+Highways+this+weekend/6350156/story.html Construction to affect interchange at Highways 40 and 15 this weekend THE GAZETTE MARCH 23, 2012

Read more: http://www.westislandgazette.com/news/32005 Got to love election time Aren't these the same people that said we would get trains in the West Island?

http://spacingmontreal.ca/2011/05/01/saint-pierre-river-site-to-become-montreals-first-woonerf/ Definition of a woonerf: A woonerf (Dutch plural: woonerven) in the Netherlands and Flanders is a street where pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over motorists. The techniques of shared spaces, traffic calming, and low speed limits are intended to improve pedestrian, bicycle, and automobile safety.

Traffic management APPlied logic Sep 13th 2011, 16:10 by The Economist online TRAFFIC lights are crucial tools for regulating traffic flow. They are not, however, perfect. Drivers exchange the gridlock that would happen at unmanaged junctions for a pattern of stop-go movement that can still be frustrating, and which burns more fuel than a smooth passage would. Creating such a smooth passage means adjusting a vehicle’s speed so that it always arrives at the lights when they are green. That is theoretically possible, but practically hard. Roadside signs wired to traffic lights can help get the message across a couple hundred metres from a junction, but such signs are expensive, and have not been widely deployed. Margaret Martonosi and Emmanouil Koukoumidis at Princeton University, and Li-Shiuan Peh at the Massachussets Institute of Technology, however, have an idea that could make the process cheaper and more effective. Instead of a hardwired network of signs, they propose to use mobile-phone apps. For a driver to benefit, he must load the team’s software, dubbed SignalGuru, into his phone and then mount it on a special bracket attached to the inside of his car’s windscreen, with the camera lens pointing forwards. SignalGuru is designed to detect traffic lights and track their status as red, amber or green. It broadcasts this information to other phones in the area that are fitted with the same software, and—if there are enough of them—the phones thus each know the status of most of the lights around town. Using this information, SignalGuru is able to calculate the traffic-light schedule for the region and suggest the speed at which a driver should travel in order to avoid running into red lights. Tests in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where five drivers were asked to follow the same route for three hours, and in Singapore, where eight drivers were asked to follow one of two routes for 30 minutes, revealed that SignalGuru was capable of predicting traffic-light activity with an accuracy of 98.2% and 96.3% respectively, in the two cities. This was particularly impressive because in Cambridge the lights shifted, roughly half-way through the test, from their off-peak schedule to their afternoon-traffic schedule, while in Singapore lights are adaptive, using detectors embedded under the road to determine how much traffic is around and thus when a signal should change. In neither case was SignalGuru fooled. Fuel consumption fell, too—by about 20%. SignalGuru thus reduces both frustration and fuel use, and makes commuting a slightly less horrible experience.

Un ami à moi m'a refilé ce lien. Il nous lit parfois mais n'est pas membre. Il m'a dit que ça nous intéresserait. En effet!! Bien qu'il faille toujours demeurer prudent avec ce genre d'exercice, ça détonne tout de même dans le paysage médiatique actuel concernant la circulation à Montréal! Enjoy! http://gizmodo.com/5838333/the-most-horrific-traffic-in-the-entire-world

Source copenhagenize.com I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Or maybe a big one. In the race for reestablishing the bicycle as a feasible, accepted and respected form of transport, many cities are keen to bang their drums to show off their bicycle goodness. All of the noise is good noise - every bike lane, bike rack, lowered speed limit, et al are great news and important for the symbolism of cementing the bicycle on the urban landscape. The secret is this. There is a city in North America that is steadily working towards planting bicycle seeds. I often see internet lists about the most bicycle friendly cities in North America and just as often this city isn't on them. Which is wrong. The reason is a cultural one. English North America looks in the mirror when measuring itself. Europe is another planet and measuring yourself up against the bicycle boom in cities like Paris, Seville and Barcelona won't let you top any bicycle traffic lists. Fair enough. Compare yourself with other cities in your region and measure your progress. Nothing wrong with that. This secret city, despite being firmly placed on the North American continent, still gets ignored and overlooked. (No, it's not Portland) It's in a region that doesn't speak an English dialect. (No, it's not Wisconsin) A region that has its own unique cultural heritage and identity. (No, it's not Alberta) This city, and region, don't figure in the daily consciousness of most North Americans because they're just too damned "foreign". Ish. But I was there very recently and I was amazed with what I saw. And I've seen stuff. I saw the most impressive bicycle rush hour one afternoon. More impressive and with greater numbers than anywhere else in North America. By far. I saw more separated bicycle infrastructure in this city than anywhere else in North America. One of the cycle tracks dates from 1986! Beat that. You can't. Sure, many of the cycle tracks are on-street bi-directional ones, which we threw out of our Best Practice in Denmark a couple of decades ago, but they area there and they are used and they are a good start. I rode on a cycle track that features 9000 daily cyclists. And this is nothing new for them. I stayed in a borough in the city - one of the highest-density areas in North America - that has one of the lowest car-ownership rates in North America and that can boast a modal split for bicycles of over 9%. City-wide it's at about 2.3%, just so you know. This borough showed me that bicycle culture is alive and well and that focusing solely on bicycle commuting doesn't get you anywhere. The bicycle can get you to work and back, sure, but it about making the bicycle a part of your daily life. There are, after all, schools to drop off at, shops to shop at, cafés to sip at, cinemas to be entertained at, and so on. This city is a role model for a continent. It can teach lessons worth learning if there were people from other cities willing to learn. It has the country's largest cyclist organisation who have been representing Citizen Cyclists for 40 years. I ate at their café, too! How cool is that. I had lunch with the Mayor of the aforementioned borough and saw in his eyes the kind of visionary politician that every city should have. A man who dares to believe that his vision of his city's future can be achieved and who isn't afraid to suddenly change a busy street to one-way for cars and put in bicycle lanes in both directions on either side of said street. I felt his passion and was charged by it. This is a city that can put on two bike rides / events in three days, organised by the aforementioned cyclists organisation. The first one drew 17,000 people on bicycles for an evening ride. The next one drew 25,000 for a 50 km tour of the city. Read those numbers again. 17,000 on a Friday evening. Then 25,000 on the Sunday. This is a city that fascinates me. Not only for what it is doing for bicycle traffic and culture but for it's stunning liveable-ness. I live in what is regarded as one of the world's most liveable cities. I can go to other like-minded cities and feel at home. Then I land in this city and wonder how the hell they do it. How the hell it many neighbourhoods are lightyears ahead of Copenhagen, Amsterdam and anywhere else in the way the streets are used by people. For all the talk of Liveable Streets, this city lives the dream. Walking the walk and talking the talk. I am simply obsessed by this. I simply need to find out, in detail, how it can be. I want the recipe. I'm willing to bust my ass to find it, write it down, absorb it. I want to be taught. I'm still working on my love affair with their french fries served with gravy and cheese curds, but I have seen North America's promised land. I've been to the mountaintop (and rode up and down their mountain and hills on a three-speed upright bike... easy) and I've seen down the other side. Every waking moment... okay, that's an exaggeration... I'm thinking about returning. To experience, to learn, to soak up their the city's vibe.

I've always loved PJ O'Rourke It's worth the click, and there is even a Montreal reference http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050204576218600999993800.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Anyone who's sat at a red light for minutes on end in the middle of the night when there's no cross traffic can cheer on science for proving what we already knew: lights that adapt to the flow of traffic, instead of dictating the flow of traffic, can improve the flow of traffic. A team of researchers discovered that if you let lights locally decide how to time their signals based on how much traffic they're dealing with, and then communicate that with nearby lights, you get closer to the "green wave" of lights that keeps thing moving smoothly. The issue with the centralized, top-down system of control is that it is geared to address an average traffic situation that rarely occurs as planned. The variations in rush hour traffic mean that lights are trying to apply one solution to a vast number of situations. In their trial in Dresden, Germany the team found that traffic congestion was eased by nine percent, pedestrian congestion by 36 percent, and bus and tram traffic by 56 percent. With rush hours spreading in time and distance, the proof and implementation of this can't come soon enough. Blog: http://www.autoblog.com/2010/09/23/study-traffic-lights-should-respond-to-cars-not-other-way-arou/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+weblogsinc/autoblog+(Autoblog) To tame traffic, go with the flow Lights should respond to cars, a study concludes, not the other way around By Rachel Ehrenberg Web edition : Friday, September 17th, 2010 Traffic lights that act locally can improve traffic globally, new research suggests. By minimizing congestion, the approach could save money, reduce emissions and perhaps even quash the road rage of frustrated drivers. The new approach makes traffic lights go with the flow, rather than enslaving drivers to the tyranny of timed signals. By measuring vehicle inflow and outflow through each intersection as it occurs and coordinating lights with only their nearest neighbors, a systemwide smoothness emerges, scientists report in a September Santa Fe Institute working paper. “It’s very interesting — the approach is adaptive and the system can react,” says mechanical engineer Gábor Orosz of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “That’s how it should be — that’s how we can get the most out of our current system.” An ultimate goal in traffic regulation is “the green wave,” the bam, bam, bam of greens that allows platoons of vehicles to move smoothly through intersection after intersection. When that happens, no drivers have to wait very long and sections of road don’t become so filled with cars that there’s no room for entering vehicles when the light does go green. To achieve this rare bliss, traffic lights usually are controlled from the top down, operating on an “optimal” cycle that maximizes the flow of traffic expected for particular times of day, such as rush hour. But even for a typical time on a typical day, there’s so much variability in the number of cars at each light and the direction each car takes leaving an intersection that roads can fill up. Combine this condition with overzealous drivers, and intersections easily become gridlocked. Equally frustrating is the opposite extreme, where a driver sits at a red light for minutes even though there’s no car in sight to take advantage of the intersecting green. “It is actually not optimal control, because that average situation never occurs,” says complex-systems scientist Dirk Helbing of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, a coauthor of the new study. “Because of the large variability in the number of cars behind each red light, it means that although we have an optimal scheme, it’s optimal for a situation that does not occur.” Helbing and his colleague Stefan Lämmer from the Dresden University of Technology in Germany decided to scrap the top-down approach and start at the bottom. They noted that when crowds of people are trying to move through a narrow space, such as through a door connecting two hallways, there’s a natural oscillation: A mass of people from one side will move through the door while the other people wait, then suddenly the flow switches direction. “It looks like maybe there’s a traffic light, but there’s not. It’s actually the buildup of pressure on the side where people have to wait that eventually turns the flow direction,” says Helbing. “We thought we could maybe apply the same principle to intersections, that is, the traffic flow controls the traffic light rather than the other way around.” Their arrangement puts two sensors at each intersection: One measures incoming flow and one measures outgoing flow. Lights are coordinated with every neighboring light, such that one light alerts the next, “Hey, heavy load coming through.” That short-term anticipation gives lights at the next intersection enough time to prepare for the incoming platoon of vehicles, says Helbing. The whole point is to avoid stopping an incoming platoon. “It works surprisingly well,” he says. Gaps between platoons are opportunities to serve flows in other directions, and this local coordination naturally spreads throughout the system. “It’s a paradoxical effect that occurs in complex systems,” says Helbing. “Surprisingly, delay processes can improve the system altogether. It is a slower-is-faster effect. You can increase the throughput — speed up the whole system — if you delay single processes within the system at the right time, for the right amount of time.” The researchers ran a simulation of their approach in the city center of Dresden. The area has 13 traffic light–controlled intersections, 68 pedestrian crossings, a train station that serves more than 13,000 passengers on an average day and seven bus and tram lines that cross the network every 10 minutes in opposite directions. The flexible self-control approach reduced time stuck waiting in traffic by 56 percent for trams and buses, 9 percent for cars and trucks, and 36 percent for pedestrians crossing intersections. Dresden is now close to implementing the new system, says Helbing, and Zurich is also considering the approach. Traffic jams aren’t just infuriating, they cost time and money, says Orosz. Estimates suggest that in one year, the U.S. driving population spends a cumulative 500,000 years in traffic at a cost of about $100 billion. And the roads are just going to get more congested. The optimal way of dealing with such congestion is to take an approach like Helbing’s and combine it with technologies that deal with driver behavior, Orosz says. Car sensors that detect the distance between your bumper and the car in front of you can prevent a sweep of brake-slamming that can tie up traffic, for example. “In general these algorithms improve traffic, but maybe not as much as they do on paper because we are still human,” he says. “It is still humans driving the cars.” http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/63481/title/To_tame_traffic,_go_with_the_flow

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

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Transport+Quebec+launching+radio+station+with+traffic+updates+Montreal/3474054/story.html#ixzz0yPaOEln4

Houston study lauds red light cameras despite uptick in accidents We all know we shouldn't mess with Texas. And Houston, Texans shouldn't mess around with statistics, because the folks running the show are going to come to any conclusions they want no matter what the statistics say. This is the easy part: a study of red light cameras in the city shows that accidents have actually increased at intersections with the cameras. These are the parts that are open to interpretation: most intersections only have one camera looking at one (out of four) directions of traffic, but the accident rate went up for traffic in the other three unmonitored directions; and, in the one monitored direction, "accidents remained relatively flat or showed only a slight increase." What do you make of that? Mayor Bill White and the study authors say the city in general is experiencing a swell in the number of collisions, and claim that collisions at the monitored intersections haven't risen as much as the wider municipal rate. Yet they have no data to back up an increase in citywide collisions, and no year-on-year accident data at intersections (let alone an explanation for the uptick). White said that a 40-percent year-on-year drop in red light citations in the month of October shows the program is working and keeping drivers more safe. Critics say that the program is nothing but a cash register for city government. The study's authors plan to study insurance industry findings to come up with more substantive conclusions. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6185795.html

Just follow the light: Traffic lines stay brighter going in one direction A recent study by North Carolina State University has shown that the stripes dividing our nation's roadways are brighter when they are applied in the same direction that traffic is flowing. In many cases, the twin center lines dividing opposing lanes are painted at the same time, making them more visible in one direction than the other. The issue seems to center around the glass beads that are mixed in with the paint. These reflective beads are most effective when properly oriented. Using a device called – we're not making this up – a retroreflect-o-meter, the team discovered that the difference in the reflective values of painted lines put down in the proper direction was great enough that they could sometimes last an entire year longer than if they were painted in the opposite direction. These findings indicate that the transportation authorities could save quite a bit of money if they go the extra step of ensuring the lines are applied in the correct direction. Additionally, safety would be improved since the lines would be more clearly visible at night. Other more costly alternatives include adhesive tapes with glass beads already embedded in the proper direction. Who knew? http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/03/traffic-marking.html

(Courtesy of © Copyright © The Montreal Gazette)

About time. I really like those "test" street signs. They look great! I think I prefer the Green ones though. Green ones (from http://www.flickr.com/photos/montrealstreetsigns/460880559/)

New York set to ban cars from Times Square NEW YORK, May 24 (UPI) -- Many New York residents and tourists alike say the city's plan to ban cars from traveling through Times Square is a great idea. The New York Daily News said Saturday some people have applauded the plan to ban all traffic from Broadway between 42nd and 47th Street in Times Square starting Sunday night. "I think it's going to bring more people and they'll be more comfortable," local food vendor John Galanopolous said of the plan, which will also ban cars from 33rd and 35th Street in Herald Square. Pittsburgh resident Bill Buettin agreed the traffic ban in those areas would make pedestrian travel easier in New York. "Not having to worry about crosswalks and stop lights makes it that much easier," the tourist told the Daily News. But at least one New York resident was less than supportive of the plan, which he feels could hinder the city's numerous motorists. "There's going to be more traffic. It's not going to work," taxi driver Rafi Hassan told the Daily News. "Most of our customers are here."

Un article, qui, je le sent, fera plaisir à Malek Should Downtown Crossing be reopened to traffic? Would car traffic bring back the crowds? Boston Globe, by Michael Levenson, Globe Staff | March 1, 2009 Downtown Crossing's problems have been well-documented: Crime has spawned fear, heightened by a stabbing and shooting in the midst of a bustling afternoon. Shops that once thrived next to Jordan Marsh and Filene's have shuttered, leaving empty storefronts cheek-by-jowl with pushcarts, discount jewelry stalls, and gaping construction sites. Sidewalks that teem with rowdy teenagers and office workers by day lie empty and forbidding at night. For years, city planners have been promising to restore the area to its former grandeur and make it a major urban destination. But as they have attempted solution after solution without success, they have never tried one idea: reopening the streets to traffic. Indeed, Downtown Crossing remains one of the last vestiges of a largely discredited idea, the Ameri can pedestrian mall, which municipal planners once believed would help cities compete with proliferating suburban malls. In the 1970s, at least 220 cities closed downtown thoroughfares, paved them with bricks or cobbles and waited for them to take hold as urban destinations. Since then, all but about two dozen have reopened the malls to traffic, as planners, developers, and municipal officials came to believe that the lack of cars had an effect opposite of what they had intended, driving away shoppers, stifling businesses, and making streets at night seem barren and forlorn. "Pedestrian malls never delivered the type of foot traffic and vitality they had expected," said Doug Loescher, director of The Main Street Center at The National Trust for Historic Preservation. "The sense of movement that a combination of transit modes provides - whether on foot or in car - really does make a difference," he said. "People feel safer, because there's some kind of movement through the district, other than a lone pedestrian at night. It just creates a sense of energy that makes people feel more comfortable and makes the district more appealing." Boston planners are against opening up Downtown Crossing, but as the district suffers the exodus of anchor businesses and a deepening malaise has settled in, some shop owners long for the energy, ease, and excitement they remember before Downtown Crossing closed to most traffic in 1978. "There was a constant flow of cars, stopping and going; it was very active, very busy, like a typical city street," said Steve Centamore, co-owner since 1965 of Bromfield Camera Co., on Bromfield Street, part of which is open only to commercial traffic. "There were people coming and going. It didn't seem to impede any pedestrians. It was a lot busier. People could just pull up and get what they needed. Now, it takes an act of Congress to even get through here." Pellegrino Bondanza, 72, who has sold vegetables in Downtown Crossing since he was a boy, said the pedestrian mall "didn't work out well." He hopes the city will reopen it to traffic. "Maybe it would bring some of the action back in town," he said. "I remember as a kid, I tried to squeeze in with a pushcart and, if I could locate at a corner, I could sell what I had in an hour and make a good living there. You had to be a little careful crossing the streets and everything, but don't forget the cars went slow when they were going up them streets there. There was no fast driving." Boston officials say they considered reopening Downtown Crossing to traffic and, in 2006, hired a team of consultants from London, Toronto, Berkeley, Calif., and Boston to study the idea. The consultants concluded that the mall should stay because the estimated 230,000 people who walk through Downtown Crossing every day should be enough to keep the place lively and economically vital. "What we heard from them pretty loudly was, 'Not just yet. Make it work. Give it your best effort,' " said Andrew Grace, senior planner and urban designer at the Boston Redevelopment Authority. "Lots of cities throughout the world make these districts work. The historic centers in most European cities function, and they thrive." Kristen Keefe, retail sector manager of the BRA, warned that bringing back traffic could squeeze out pedestrians who, she said, already contend with crowded sidewalks. "We just think these two things are in conflict," she said. Boston built its pedestrian mall after a study showed that six times more pedestrians than cars traveled down Washington Street - in front of what was then Filene's and Jordan Marsh - "so the impetus was to reassert the balance for pedestrians a little bit and improve the safety and amenities for pedestrians," said Jane Howard, who helped design the mall for the BRA and is now a planner in a private firm. It was a time when malls were being built across the country. Some are still considered successful - in Burlington, Vt., and Charlottesville, Va., for example. And New York City is experimenting with blocking traffic on Broadway through Times and Herald squares to create pedestrian-only zones. But those are the exceptions. Chicago, which turned downtown State Street into a pedestrian mall in 1979, reopened it to traffic in 1996, convinced that the mall had worsened the area's economic slump and left the street deserted and dangerous. Eugene, Ore., scrapped its mall in 1997, frustrated that "people went around downtown instead of through it," said Mayor Kitty Piercy. Tampa got rid of its mall in 2001 because it "didn't bring back any retail," as the city had hoped, said Christine M. Burdick president of Tampa Downtown Partnership. Buffalo, which has trolley service on its mall on Main Street, is currently reintroducing cars after finding that shoppers avoided stores that were cut off from traffic. "It takes a leap of faith to go somewhere nearby, pay to park, and then walk to someplace you haven't been yet," said Deborah Chernoff, Buffalo's planning director. "All the cities are dealing with the reality of how people actually behave." Downtown Crossing is not even a full pedestrian mall. Because Washington Street, its main thoroughfare, is open to commercial traffic, pedestrians mostly stick to the sidewalks, avoiding the cabs and police cruisers that often ply the route. After dark on a recent weeknight, just after 8:30 p.m., Downtown Crossing resembled a film noir scene, its deserted rain-slick streets glistening with the reflections of neon signs from a shuttered liquor store and a discount jewelry shop. The few pedestrians who hurried by were mostly teenagers and office workers descending into the subway or headed to the bustle on Tremont Street. They walked purposefully, scurrying past darkened store after darkened store with metal gates pulled shut. The only cars were a police cruiser that rumbled past, an idling garbage truck, and the occassional taxi. Yet some say the mall should stay. The developer Ronald M. Druker, who owns buildings on Washington Street, said he has "vivid memories of the conflict between cars and pedestrians," before the mall was built. "If you insinuated cars and trucks on a normal basis into that area, it would not enliven it," he said. "It would create the same problems that it created 30 years ago when we got rid of them." But others, particularly the shop owners struggling to survive the recession say they are eager to try just about anything that would bring back business. "Downtown Crossing definitely needs something - that's for sure," said Harry Gigian owner since 1970 of Harry Gigian Co. jewelers on Washington Street, which has seen a sharp dropoff in sales. "Nobody comes downtown anymore." De mon côté, j'adore les rues piétonnières européennes. Par contre, dans la plupart des cas, plusieurs des éléments qui font leur succès là bas ne sont pas réunis de ce côté ci de l'Altantique: - Bien qu'animées à certains moments de la journée ou de l'année, nos rues principales sont plutôt tranquilles la majorité du temps (les matins, les journées froides d'hiver, etc) - la présence d'itinérants, plus nombreux ici - il n'y a pas de "point focal", de destinations, ou point d'attraction majeure à chaque bout de nos rues qui ont le potentiel de devenir piétonnières. Par contre, il est très agréable de se promener dans la foule, l'été, sur une rue sans traffic automobile. Un compromis: avoir des rues piétonnières temporaires? par exemple, fermer Ste-Catherine les vendredis, samedis et dimanches de l'été, de midi à minuit? Bon, on ouvre les lignes! Les amateurs d'urbanisme, bonjour!

Une autre idée de Sir Branson. Un taxi Moto qui évite le traffic de Londre d'une façon assez réussi. À Montréal? http://www.virginlimobike.com

August 7, 2008 VIA plans to invest $25 million to modernize Ottawa-Montreal railway infrastructure MONTREAL As part of the Government of Canada’s $692 million dollar investment to improve passenger rail service, VIA Rail Canada has announced it plans to invest more than $25 million on a multi-phase, multi-year program to modernize key parts of its rail infrastructure between Ottawa and Montréal. These improvements are part of VIA Rail’s overall capital investment plan. In this first phase, upgrades to the Ottawa-Montréal line will include the addition of a .76-km long passing track (siding) approximately 16 kilometres east of Ottawa, near Carlsbad Springs, a project which will be carried out by PNR RailWorks Inc. The siding will be constructed with remote-controlled power switches tied into the existing Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) system and Rail Traffic Control (RTC) dispatch system. The siding will also be equipped with a back track (additional track adjacent to the siding) for the storage of maintenance equipment, when required. VIA will also be installing new continuously-welded rail and performing other associated track work over some 40 track-miles between Coteau, Québec and Moose Creek, Ontario. This work, which is expected to be completed within the next few months, will be carried out by Total Track. Some trains on the Montréal-Ottawa route may experience minor delays while this work is being completed. Additionally, structural rehabilitation of the bridge over the South Nation River in Casselman, a project which has been awarded to SEMA Railway Structures, will also be completed. Improvements to VIA’s Ottawa station are also planned. VIA will be modernizing and improving the layout of the public washrooms, ticket office, baggage operations and Panorama (VIA 1) lounge. The lounge will also be enlarged to accommodate increased demand. As part of these renovations, VIA will be making both technological and environmental improvements to the station. The general contractor chosen for the project is Terlin Construction Ltd. of Ottawa. CSV Architects Inc. and Norr Ltd., also of Ottawa, will provide design and engineering support. Work on this project, worth some $500,000, will begin shortly and is expected to be completed by this fall. “These initiatives will improve comfort, speed, ride quality and reliability,” said VIA Rail president and chief executive officer Paul Côté. “They will also enhance overall safety, and increase scheduling flexibility and capacity for additional trains. Just as importantly”, he noted, “a more efficient operation will also contribute to reductions in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.” “The projects on VIA’s Montréal-Ottawa route are part of the $692 million in new funding this government announced in 2007 as part of its commitment to providing Canadians with safe, reliable and sustainable passenger rail service,” said federal Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon.

La Gazette se permet un méga liste d'infrastructure en réparation et à venir. Je copie l'article ici, mais je vous averti, elle est longue cette liste. Source: http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=1250a439-510a-4947-8b97-ee3995f04682 What construction holiday? After years of infrastructure neglect, a quiet revolution is under way to overhaul Quebec's roads and bridges DAVID JOHNSTON The Gazette Saturday, August 02, 2008 This summer's construction holiday has turned out to be a holiday in name only. Sort of like the summer of 2008 so far. One image dominates. It is of the eastbound Highway 20, at the Turcot interchange. Orange pylons are configured into one giant funnel, forcing motorists into a single lane up through the interchange to the Ville Marie Expressway downtown. Why one lane? Because construction work is going on. During the construction break. The 41-year-old Turcot, slated for demolition over six years beginning next July, has been getting some geriatric care. The ensuing traffic bottlenecks have been stretching back the full length of the Turcot yards. Cue in frequent bursts of intense rain, and you get a picture of the summer of 2008. But it isn't just Montreal. It's the same in all of Quebec, as far as the supposed construction holiday is concerned. Normally, the drills and the jackhammers are silent during the last two weeks of July, and traffic flows freely. But not this year. Because after years of infrastructure neglect, a not-so-quiet revolution is under way, thanks to the Charest government and the federal infrastructure-support program conceived by the former federal Liberal government. An unprecedented $2.7 billion in provincial money and $3.2 billion overall is being spent on road and bridge infrastructure renewal in 1,800 locations throughout Quebec this year. "This is a record year for Quebec," said Nicole Ste-Marie of the Quebec Transport Department. But this is only the beginning of something much bigger. A three-year overhaul of the Mercier Bridge began in May. A six-year reconstruction of the entire Turcot interchange is to begin July next year. This fall, the first actual work on the proposed new Dorval interchange is expected to begin. And then there's the proposed new downtown-airport shuttle waiting in the planning wings. And that's just the western suburbs of Montreal. The Mohawks of Kahnawake saw all this coming. Five Mohawk firms are currently doing repair work on the Mercier. The local band council looked at the Mercier and Turcot projects and put two and two together and came to the realization that commuter traffic is going to be very difficult between the south side of the Mercier and downtown Montreal over the next six years. As a result, the band council has been lobbying for a commuter-rail station for Kahnawake on the Delson-Candiac line. "We're afraid a lot of our kids going into CEGEP and university in Montreal are going to look at the traffic and say, 'Well, forget about it,' " said Joe Delaronde, a band-council official. Dorval Mayor Edgar Rouleau said he has received assurances that measures will be taken to minimize disruption for motorists when the Dorval project gets under way. But he said Montreal has no choice but to move ahead with improving the state of the rail and road infrastructure serving the airport. Things aren't just bad; they're embarrassingly bad, he says. "Can you imagine? You come from Europe. You're finally out of the airport. You're in this taxi or bus, and you're stopped in traffic under the railway bridge (beside Dorval Circle) and you look up and you see screens to catch any concrete that might fall down on you." The September 2005 collapse of the de la Concorde Blvd. overpass in Laval, which killed five people, showed that the consequences of infrastructure neglect can be deadly. Since the Concorde incident, the provincial government has done a thorough review of Quebec's infrastructure and established new priorities for repairs and new undertakings. The Gazette today publishes a map describing 10 of the most important projects in and around the Montreal region, either under way or on the near time horizon. - - - 1. TURCOT INTERCHANGE Background: In June 2007, the provincial government announced a plan to tear down the elevated interchange and replace it over six years, beginning next summer, at a cost of $1.5 billion. Most of the new Turcot network will be built at surface level, although there will be a few elevated ramps - notably linking the new Highway 20 with the higher ground of the Décarie and Ville Marie Expressways. Highway 20 through the Turcot yards will be rebuilt more to the north, closer to the Falaise St. Jacques escarpment. That, in turn, will make the Turcot yards contiguous with adjoining industrial properties along the Lachine Canal, and make it more attractive for redevelopment. What's new: Various interchange ramps have been undergoing reinforcement work this summer, creating traffic bottlenecks. Provincial environmental hearings are likely to begin in the fall. The government has begun negotiations to buy land required to carry out the interchange modernization. Work is to begin next July. About 180 housing units are to be demolished. Tenants who are dislodged will receive at least three months' rent as compensation. 2. NOTRE DAME ST. E. Background: In development limbo since the late 1960s, a nine-kilometre stretch of Notre Dame St. E. was finally given the green light for modernization last November. A new "urban boulevard" was approved over the other option, a sunken Décarie Expressway-like highway. Quebec will pay $625 million of the $750-million cost, the city of Montreal $125 million. What's new: Public hearings were held last winter to work out operational details. As a result, changes were announced in May. Among other things, traffic-light synchronization will be altered to let traffic move with fewer red-light stops; one lane will be reserved for carpoolers; the entire nine-kilometre stretch will be subject to photo radar. Construction is to begin in October. 3. HIGHWAY 25 Background: Construction of a toll bridge between the Rivière des Prairies district of Montreal and the Duvernay district of Laval will link Highway 40 in Montreal to Highway 440 in Laval. In June 2007, the Quebec government announced a consortium headed by an engineering subsidiary of Macquarie Bank Ltd. of Australia had won the bidding to build and operate the $400-million bridge as a public-private partnership. The span is slated to open in 2011. Government regulations have set a $2.40 cap in 2011 dollars for a one-way trip over the bridge for an ordinary car, over the 35-year term of the PPP deal. What's new: Dynamite work took place in the spring on the Laval side of the proposed bridge. In June, environmental groups lost a court bid to shut down the project. On July 15, dynamiting took place on the Montreal side. In recent weeks, a lot of bridge materials have been delivered to the job site. 4. DORVAL Background: There are two projects on the horizon for Dorval. One is the proposed airport shuttle between downtown Montreal and Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport. The other is the Dorval Circle modernization. Both have been on the drawing board for more than a decade. What's new: The airport-shuttle project is stalled. Different levels of government are still trying to work out a financing agreement. All parties, however, agree that the shuttle is desirable and should have its own dedicated rail lines. So the plan is to eventually add two new rail lines north of Highway 20, parallel to existing CP and CN lines. But there is still no consensus on whether to use Central Station or Lucien L'Allier Station as the downtown terminal. Cost estimates vary from $600 million to $800 million. As for the Dorval Circle project, the provincial government passed a decree in December setting aside $210 million for the new interchange, to be known as Carrefour Dorval. The overhaul will see Trudeau airport connected to Highway 20 via a new link that will be reserved for airport traffic. The new link will pass in front of the Hilton Hotel and run through where the Budget Rent-a-Car property is now situated. It will rise over the rail lines situated between Budget and Highway 20 and connect to the highway near the Novartis building. Budget is to relocate to a new site under the plan. Highways 20 and 520 (Côte de Liesse Rd.) will also get new interchange connections. As for Dorval Circle itself, it will end up serving only local traffic. Highway 20 traffic between Pointe Claire and Lachine will continue to run over the circle in overpass fashion. Engineers are putting final touches to the Carrefour Dorval project and an official announcement is likely for the fall. Work could also begin this fall, sources say. 5. HIGHWAY 15 Background: Work began in April to completely rebuild the northbound Laurentian Autoroute lanes between Mirabel and St. Jérôme. The new surface will be done in concrete. The southbound lanes between the two towns were redone last summer. What's new: Work is proceeding on schedule and is expected to end Nov. 21. 6. HIGHWAY 13 Background: Work began in April to completely rebuild the southbound lanes of Highway 13 on Montreal Island between Highway 40 and the Mille Îles River. Work is also being done on the Louis Bisson Bridge that spans the river. Work on the northbound lanes between the 40 and the river was done last summer. What's new: Work is proceeding as planned. It is scheduled to end Sept. 30. 7. MERCIER BRIDGE Background: On June 16, the federal and provincial governments announced a plan to renovate the Mercier Bridge through November 2011. Work began in April. Federal officials said the Mercier modernization represents the largest bridge-repair project in Canadian history. Work is to be carried out in two phases, with a consortium of Mohawk firms doing $66 million of work in the first phase. Bidding will open next year for the second phase. What's new: In recent weeks, Mohawk ironworkers have been concentrating on the reinforcement of existing gusset plates under the bridge deck. They have also been installing new gusset plates. These plates support the joints where horizontal, vertical and diagonal beams meet. Later, ironworkers will bring in hydraulic jacks and start replacing individual rusted beams where necessary. About half of all the main diagonal support beams are to be replaced on the upstream bridge, which carries southbound traffic. This bridge opened in 1934. The downstream bridge, which carries northbound traffic, opened in 1963; no reinforcement work is required on it. Similarly, only the upstream span will be getting a new deck. All ramps linking the South Shore to both the 1934 and 1963 bridges are to be reinforced and given new decks. 8. HIGHWAY 35 Background: Progress has been slow with the longstanding plan to extend Highway 35 from St. Jean sur Richelieu to the Vermont border. Converting the 39-kilometre stretch of secondary Highway 133 south of St. Jean into a primary autoroute would finally give Montreal an expressway link to Interstate 89. What's new: Last August, the Quebec government passed a decree allowing for the agricultural dezoning required to carry out the project. The federal government has promised $57 million in infrastructure money for the $300-million project. A federal environmental assessment is being done. If, as expected, the process results in the feds giving the project a green light, preliminary land-preparation work could begin in October. 9. GALIPEAULT BRIDGE Background: Work began in May to rebuild the deck of the eastbound lanes and add a third lane to accommodate growing volumes of off-island commuter traffic. The Galipeault, like the Mercier Bridge, consists of two separate spans, side by side. The southern of the two, built in 1924, handles eastbound traffic between Île Perrot and Ste. Anne de Bellevue. The northern bridge, built in 1964, handles westbound traffic. While work on the southern bridge takes place, eastbound traffic is being diverted onto the northern span. What's new: Work is proceeding smoothly. 10. HIGHWAY 30 Background: After many delays, a plan to complete construction of the South Shore ring road was announced in the fall of 2006. There are two unfinished stretches to complete: a section through dezoned farm land between Candiac and Ste. Catherine, and a section between Châteauguay and the town of Vaudrueuil-Dorion. What's new: Work on the 13-kilometre Candiac-Ste. Catherine link began in early June after a political agreement was reached between the provincial government and the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake over how to proceed with settling a land-claim issue. As for the section west of Châteauguay, the government in late June announced that a Spanish-led consortium had won the bidding to build it as a part of a public-private partnership. A Canadian arm of the Spanish engineering firm Acciona won the competition. The 42-kilometre western link will see toll bridges built over the Beauharnois Canal and St. Lawrence River. Final details on the financing and construction are to be announced in September. The completed Highway 30 is expected to open in 2012. djohnston@thegazette.canwest.com