Cataclaw

Je crois qu'il y avait déjà un fil concernant ce projet. Je vais vérifier...

Fortier: s.v.p., les messages politiques peuvent rester dans la section politique. Merci

Ben non, aucunes valeurs historiques, c'était des imprimeries de la Gazette qui ont été bâtit il y a 100 ans !!! Ce sont juste des témoins du quartier Paper Hill !

Ce n'est pas parce qu'un édifice est vieux qu'il vaut automatiquement la peine d'être conservé.

D'ici 100 ans, alons-nous vouloir protéger tous les "Walmarts"? Pas certain.

C'est du sarcasme j'espère...? Ce qu'on a démoli n'avait aucune valeur historique...

Gros impact sur le skyline

Montreal's "big 5" will soon become the "big 6"

1250, 1000, PVM, CIBC, TDLB and Tour des Canadiens!

J'aime bien ce projet!

Seul point négatif: le mur aveugle en arrière de l'édifice... oui il y a de la couleur, mais ça reste un mur aveugle.

D'accord avec toi cedmeunier.

Cependant, mon argument n'est pas que les parcs n'ont pas de place dans la ville... au contraire, les parcs sont importants et ça nous prend des espaces verts!

Mon argument est que si on prévoit trop d'espace vert, on va fracturer la trame urbaine. Bref, il y a un juste milieu. Puisque l'énorme esplanade Clark est juste en face de la Maison de Développement Durable, je trouve qu'un autre parc à cet endroit c'est du "overkill". Il aurait été préférable de rejoindre la Maidon du Développement Durable au Théatre du Nouveau Monde. Anyway, je me répète. Chacun sont opinion!

Personnellement je trouve, en regardant la photo de jesseps, qu'il y a amplement de vert dans le coin.

À mon avis le but de la ville ne devrait pas être d'immiter la campagne. Oui c'est bien les parcs, oui c'est bien les arbres en bordure de la rue.. je suis en faveur de tout ça. Mais à quelque part il faut réaliser que la ville n'est pas la campagne et que ce sont les édifices qui font la ville. Grand espace vert sans édifices = la campagne.

On a besoin de vert, on a besoin de parcs, mais à mon avis il y a une limite. Quand le ratio vert-ville penche trop du côté du "vert", la ville cesse d'être urbaine.

Anyway, je dis ça parce que selon moi, il y a déjà beaucoup d'espace publique/ouvert/vert dans le secteur. L'esplanade Clark, la promenade, la place du QdS, la PdA et ses marches, etc. Ce qu'il manque dans le Quartier des Spectacles maintenant c'est du développement pour venir compléter le tout! Les espaces publiques il y en a en masse dans le QdS! On vient d'en construire 3-4 énormes!

Meme si le prix de l'essence entraine un mouvement pour la voiture hybride ou electrique, ca ne regle pas le probleme de la congestion dont les couts se chiffrent en milions pour l'economie montrealaises.

D'accord avec toi danick_o. C'est déjà grave, sans même parler des effets de l'étalement urbain!

La plus haute tour de Montréal depuis 20 ans! 1992 pour être plus précis avec le 1501 McGill College, la dernière des ''Grandes Tours''!

Something we can all agree on! High-fives all around for the Marriott Courtyard! :goodvibes:

PROs: design seems ok

CONs: low density, not urban at all (With so much empty space around the building, the total FAR can't be higher than 2.0...)

J'ai lu a quelque part sur mtlurb qu'il serait impossible de construire par dessus le stationnement d'Hydro-Québec. Est-ce que quelqu'un peut confirmer si c'est vrai?

Je pense que quelqu'un avait mentionné des installations électriques...?

Je trouve que la discussion est pertinente, quand même. On échange nos perspectives sur le but du projet en tant que tel!

Qu'en penses-tu, steve? Réduire la capacité routière, bonne chose?

Wow, fantastique cette photo!

Merci Gledger!

Il n'y aurait même pas du avoir de "parc" à cet endroit (pas au complet en tout cas)

There are enough open spaces in the area with all the Quartier des Spectacles installations. The Maison de Developpement Durable should have been built wall-to-wall with the Theatre du Nouveau Monde.

Good urban practice dictates that when you build a public space (such as the Esplanade Clark) you generally try to surround it with buildings to create a sense of enclosure. A public square is nothing without buildings around it. Likewise buildings need public space to make the breathe.

Instead of good enclosure on Sainte-Catherine street and the Esplanade Clark, we now have a huge gap in that enclosure (with a shitty view of Hydro's parking lot), a horrible blind wall and a wasted opportunity.

Désolé je ne veut pas être négatif, mais la Maison du Dev. Durable aurait du être collé sur le Théatre du Nouveau Monde. Point. Il y aurait eu moyen d'aménager un parc en avant mais quand même rejoindre les deux édifices en arrière. Grosse gaffe qu'ils ont fait.

The Montreal OD surveys, which I have studied at length for academic purposes, actually paint a different story.

Car trips are decelerating fast and in many cases are actually decreasing (even though trip length and travel time is increasing)

So it's false to claim that high gas prices have had no effect -- they have. People are driving less, and people are moving to the city. Yes suburbs are still growing fast, very very fast, but there's a deceleration going.

There's also empirical evidence to suggest this is happening in other North American metropolitan areas, not just Montreal.

People will switch to hybrids, sure, but that will only go so far. Hybrids have a 100%+ fuel economy compared to conventional vehicles. If gas prices go up 100%, then you're breaking even. If gas prices go up 200%, what then? Electric vehicles are plagued with problems.. technology is great but it takes time to develop. If gas hits 3$/L in the next 5-10 years, technology may not arrive fast enough to save us.

But anyway, regardless of the energy situation, we need to discourage single-driver private automobile use and promote transit. Period.

Toll all the highways and bridges and double the metro system.

How exactly? Gasoline was running $1.32/L today, $2 would imply a 52% increase in fuel costs. I spend a lot of money on gasoline but it isn't a very large chunk of my relatively small salary. I'd be annoyed but particularly considering the inflationary effects of fuel costs, $2 would be annoying for a while but wouldn't put me on the street.

2$/L gas wouldn't hurt you much, and i'm happy for you, but a suburban family living in Sainte-Julie, commuting to work in Dorval will be in serious trouble when it costs them 200$ to fill up their SUV.

200$ to fill up your vehicle! That's insane. Now i'm not saying everyone is going to flee the suburbs necessarily. Some people will leave the suburbs, true, but others will try to buy a smaller car, use transit if it is available, or drive less. The point here is that gas prices will be driving (no pun intended) a lot of change in the coming future -- in fact, it already has!

The long term trend though is ever high gas prices. We can adapt at 2$/L, what about 5$/L? 10$/L?

Hydrogen is not going to save us, it requires more energy to make than it puts out.

Electricity is great but we need the electricity first, and generating it from coal powered plants is a bad idea. I think hydro would be good, and even nuclear, but many people are opposed to these two sources.

No mais sérieusement cataclaw, l'essence à monté de 90 sous à 1.30$ en quelques années, sois presque 50% d'augmentation, et il y a toujours les mêmes congestions, les chars se vendent toujours aussi bien, bref rien à changé.

 

Tu réalises que ceux qui prennent leur auto le font surtout pour 2 raisons, soit ils sont obligés ou bien ils préfèrent le comfort de leur auto que celui du métro/bus, même si ça leur coute plus cher qu'une passe de bus.

That's simply not true man. A few years ago when gas really spiked up in the U.S., a lot of people left the suburbs for the city, leading to slower growth in the suburbs and faster growth in the city.

Some random articles from 2007-2009 proving this did in fact occur:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/942121/why_are_some_people_moving_from_the.html

http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/04/22/suburbs-are-hurting-from-birth-rates-and-gas-prices/

http://environment.about.com/b/2008/06/30/high-gas-prices-drive-commuters-back-to-the-city.htm

I'm not saying that things will change rapidly, but imagine if gas hits 2.60$/L, double what it is today. It would be a double-edged sword. It would encourage people to live closer to the city and use transit more, but it would also seriously hurt the economy.

I'm not saying I *want* gas to go up, but it is something that will occur and we need to prepare for it. They're predicting 1.45$-1.50$ in 2012...

C'étaient des enfants qui jouaient dehors. Il faut arrêter de voir le mal partout, surtout lorsque le "coupable" ne réalise tout simplement pas qu'il fait du mal, comme c'était le cas quand j'ai assisté au massacre.

Je ne m'en fais pas trop avec le "massacre", je suis certain que la Place des Arts va corriger le problème et installer quelque chose pour empecher que ça arrive.

En ce qui concerne les enfants -- ou étaient les parents pour superviser? Je suis d'accord que les enfants dans ce cas ci sont innocents, mais la responsabilité tombe sur les parents de superviser adéquatement. Si les enfants étaient là sans supervision.. (peut-être des habitants du secteur.. chez le Louis-Bohème peut-être?) c'est une autre histoire, mais bon.

Connaissant nos chers déneigeurs municipaux, et le soin qu'ils prennent du mobilier urbain lorsqu'ils sont au volant de leur déneigeuses à trottoir, ca sera pas beau les bollards rendu au printemps, tordu, égratignés (et la même chose de s'appliquer au QDS)

Les trottoirs, même aux endroits "bas" pour permettre les piétons de mieux traverser, sont 1 ou 2 centimètres au dessus du niveau de la chausée.

Lorsque les déneigeurs traversent une rue, il faudrait lever la pelle 1 ou 2 centimètres pour éviter de frapper (et briser) le trottoir, mais non... trop compliqué ça, fuck it, on fonce les gars!

Les trottoirs sur ma rue ont été refaits il y a 2 ans et déjà il y a des craques partout, surtout aux endroits mentionnés.

S'ils ont de la difficulté avec ce simple principe, j'ai pas hâte de voir comment les bollards vont s'en sortir...

I think you're being a little harsh.

Every city on this continent has graffiti somewhere.

Yes, Sainte-Catherine street has a lot of graffiti especially near the rooftops of certain buildings, but much of that graffiti is quite old and has been around for years (and in some cases decades). Yarabundi could say more about this, he knows the history of downtown like the back of his hand. He gives tours talking about this kind of thing.

Anyway, I don't think it's that bad at all. I think our downtown is vibrant and engaging. I guess it's a glass half-full/half-empty issue. To each his own!

Good post Né entre les rapides, thanks for the clarification. Now that I see what you're getting at, I can say that I agree. It's true, certain equilibrium points may not be optimal given the parameters of the living arrangement. However I believe there is a solution. I'll get to this more later. I think we're on the same page overall.

1) The problem with changing our transportation patterns is that our living arrangements have to change too, as I alluded earlier. This isn't always easy and I'll freely admit that. Even If we put tolls on all the highways tomorrow, reduced their capacity and built tons of transit to replace it, folks that live in car-dependent areas won't necessarily have the luxury of being able to move to denser walkable neighborhoods overnight. For starters, such housing may not even be available of affordable! (yet..) The solution of course is to redevelop, convert or build new settlements in a dense, walkable urban fashion. The parents with kids at day care won't need a car if they can walk 50 meters and drop them off because the daycare center is on their mixed-use street. Again though, we need to build those nice mixed-use high-density streets too.. they won't magically pop up over night.

2) I hold the belief that people, even those in upper middle-class neighborhoods, might still opt for transit if it proves to be faster. Transit becomes faster if service is improved, new lines are built, and if roads remain congested. The solution is therefore to NOT increase automobile capacity but instead increase transit capacity and boost its performance. I've read some interesting studies on NYC and transit in America. There is a three dimensional relationship between transit use, social class and urban density. Generally poor people use transit, rich people drive cars. But as density increases, this relationship gets muddled. In NYC for instance, everyone uses transit, even the businessmen and wealthy suburban commuters. It's faster and more convenient than the roads in many instances (although admittedly not all.) So I think if we invest big time in transit, even Senneville residents might be lured to transit.

In predicting transportation demand, we use logit mode-share models that generally assign alternative specific constants (ASCs) to car mode share. This is a bonus that reflects the predominant preference for automobile use (your own private space, your own music in the car, lots of breathing room, etc.) So to fight this tendency we REALLY have to make transit attractive to lure people away from the car. The best way to do this is to make cars less attractive (limit VPD capacity) while making transit more attractive. Basically, we need to subsidize transit and cut down on automobile incentives. We don't want to make driving impossible either, because some people will always choose to drive 100% of the time no matter what. Besides, you can't really ship goods and products on a metro train! We need some amount of road infrastructure.

Anyway, i'm kind of deviating from the point I was trying to make here. Basically it is possible to lure even rich suburbanites to transit. It's just much, much harder.

As for your point regarding the inner belts, I totally agree. In fact, I think that new metro lines should first and foremost be build in these areas. Yes Longueuil eventually needs metro service too, but the blue line extension ought to be priority #1. I also believe that the orange line is insufficient to handle current let alone future demand. I would build a new north-south line along Saint-Laurent itself (or 1 street away), or perhaps along the Parc axis. There are bunch of lines i'd like to see, but that's another issue for another thread.

3) Very well said Mr. Rapides. A strategy has to be comprehensive. We can't just build transit and hope it all gets better, nor can we just reduce (or let stagnate) road capacity. It's a big complex machine with many moving parts, and they all have to be tackled at once. I think of the Bell HQ moving to Nun's Island as one example... this HQ went from a transit-accessible area to a car-dependent area. (I know there are shuttle buses, but it's not the same as direct metro access.) The Bell HQ, as nice as the building is inside and out, is a step in the wrong direction. Housing is definitely a huge piece of the puzzle, and I wish governments would step in and develop more affordable housing.

Ironically, dense urban developments are actually cheaper overall to construct and maintain than suburban developments. Maintenance costs are much higher in the suburbs, taxable land is lost to public infrastructure such as public parking and massive clover-leaf interchanges. Unfortunately the savings aren't reflected in reality due to other economic pressures. If a shift towards dense, urban and sustainable housing were made, prices across the board would go down in the medium to long term. Cities in Europe (well, some of them are expensive.. I know..) don't all suffer from exorbitant land values just because they're dense.

Your last point is critical but often overlooked -- we have to do this right because we cannot afford to make mistakes.

Some cities in the U.S. that are hypermobile and utterly 100% car dependent will be in big trouble 'if' (or I should say 'when') gasoline prices really start to surge. Given past trends, the current geopolitical landscape and the reality that oil production rates have been in a plateau for half a decade now, gasoline may well hit 2$/L in short notice. (I and several others at the oil drum web site predict in 3 years or less) Hydrogen will not save us (takes more energy to make than it produces), hybrids will help but ultimately won't save us either, tar sands won't save us either (even if Alberta pumps out 5 million barrels per day by 2016, that's not enough to make up for losses in Mexico, Russia, the Gulf of Mexico and other places that are drying up.)

So yeah. We do have to get this right. We can't afford to make mistakes! The future depends on it.

I actually agree with your assessment 100% Malek!

Induced demand does depend on growth and a shift from transit to cars, yes. There is a theoretical maximum to this phenomenon, you're also right about that. We're not at that point though but it is a valid point.

We need Montreal to keep growing (in terms of population AND economy), and we need new metro stations!

Adieu trou!

Merci pour les pics Memphis

Alors le bloc apartement en face de chez nous, qui a 4.5 étages, est presque une tour! Attendez que j'informe Donald Trump...

There is indeed ample empirical evidence that an increase in road capacity (= supply) will lead to an increase in effective demand. That would be especially true in cases where current supply is much smaller than latent potential demand (ie. demand for road use from the mass of people needing to get to a particular location, eg. central business district, and who in their vast majority currently use public transit because of a combination of factors such as cost and time efficiency, but some of which would rather use their own car if the above mix of cost and time was modified (even somewhat) in favour of the car option, an occurence which ïs inevitably brought about by additional road capacity to the desired destination).

 

Clearly, such situations exist in places like London in the UK, and thus the obvious conclusion reached following a spur of "road improvements" in the recent past. On the other hand, in places where current road capacity exceeds (or even far exceeds) potential demand, perhaps for example Quebec City --admittedly a much smaller place than London--, effective demand may not succeed in "swallowing up" additional capacity. The point being made here is simply that the notion of "induced demand" as applied to transportation in urban areas is valid in broad, but not universal, circumstances. The same is true of certain "laws" of physics, likewise in economics...

 

Now let us go back to more normal situations, such as Montreal! It is correct to assert that an "equilibrium" is reached between supply and demand--in fact it just has to!! And indeed if supply is reduced (by way for example of reducing the number of lanes on certain roads), effective demand (for car driving in this part of town) will simply have to go down, and there will be a new equilibrium. Bingo! But this is not to say that such equilibrium is optimal. Searching for such optimality is thus a more complicated task, and requires introducing other important considerations, such as the impact on the environment and urbanity.

 

In this particular case of the transformation of the Bonaventure autoroute, I would clearly lean towards fewer cars and more quality public transit, with a view to improving environmental and aesthetic aspects WITHOUT imposing additional burdens on commuters, time-wise as well as in terms of comfort, inasmuch as possible. If not, some people will unjustly suffer--those who cannot afford to move to pricey downtown condos or more generally less affordable housing in proximity to efficient public transit. This latter point leads in my view to an issue which is inextricably linked to urban transportation ie. a comprehensive housing policy.

You're correct regarding the notion that in certain places where supply is so high and demand so low, demand may never get to "swallow up" additional capacity. However, those places tend to exist outside of urban areas so for all practical purposes I don't consider them. Even Quebec City, with its extensive highway network, is beginning to reach congestion points along many (if not most) of its segments. Have you been there lately? It's bumper to bumper at times. A city like Quebec has enough critical mass that induced demand will apply, even if the full effects are still a few years away.

I don't quite get your second premise though. Could you elaborate a bit more? You accept that an equilibrium naturally occurs between transportation supply and demand, and you say that you agree that reducing supply will reduce vehicle trips. Why is this equilibrium not optimal? This is precisely what we want. We want fewer automobile trips, which come at the expense of walking trips, cycling trips and transit trips. Naturally, it goes without saying that a shift towards sustainable transportation comes with a shift towards sustainable urban development as well.

I disagree with your last point. I strongly believe that the automobile is inherently inequitable as a means of transportation. Automobile operation and maintenance costs make up a significantly larger proportion of a poor person's budget than a middle-class or rich person. The costs are also significantly higher than a transit pass. There are a whole host of other reasons why automobile travel is more socially inequitable, but the point here is that you don't have to live in pricey downtown condos to use public transit. Transit is available in most places. Affordable housing is available in places where transit exists. In fact, areas where no transit service is available tend to be higher income areas to begin with, so the idea collapses under its own weight. Reducing automobile capacity on the Bonaventure will not disadvantage people who do not have the means to take transit otherwise. This would not be the case if transit options didn't exist, but they do, so we can and should decrease vehicle capacity. Critics gave the exact same arguments regarding demolished highways in Seoul, San Francisco and New York City. The negative effects never materialized. Transit use went up, apocalyptic congestion never materialized and a shift towards sustainable transportation and sustainable development was achieved.

You're right about housing policy though, it is definitely tied to transportation. In transportation modeling, housing policy is represented at the beginning of the 4-stage model (in that it reflects a portion of transportation demand). After the final stage of the model, integrated modeling approaches take into consideration system performance in determining land use and shaping housing policy. A feedback loop is created. We didn't use to think this way, but we're starting to realize that housing and transportation go hand in hand.

We need a paradigm shift towards denser, urban and sustainable living arrangements while simultaneously tying them to transit and reducing vehicle network supply. It has to occur all at once. You have to proceed on all fronts simultaneously or you'll end up with problems.

(We're not even talking about peak oil yet and the likelihood that gas will be 2$/L in 3 years or less... but that's a whole other matter but one equally important to consider in the future)