Cataclaw

Huh? Dirty? Where?

Campus doesn't seem dirty at all. I'm there every day and "dirty" is the last word I would qualify it as. Sometimes the trash cans are filled to the brim but overall the new open spaces and plazas are great.

Relative to other downtown locations in Montreal, the Concordia district doesn't seem more or less dirty. It seems fine to me!

Tout comme le congestion automobile

Wrong; see my posts about this above. I explain in detail why this isn't so. In a nutshell, it's not the same thing because one mode of transportation (private automobile) produces significant negative externalities and leads to sprawl whereas the other has positive externalities and decreases sprawl.

In my opinion and that of many experts automobile congestion is actually a good thing. It reduces automobile dependency, lowers sprawl, promotes alternatives and smarter cities/densification.

Of course, i'd rather have tolls-a-plenty with all the money going to transit and new urbanism, but congestion does the trick too.

The best thing we could do is rebuild the Champlain Bridge with acceptable automobile capacity but also new transit lines on it, and then toll the heck out of it and invest all the money in transit. Also, toll every Quebec Autoroute in the Montreal CMA and do the same with that.

Tout comme le congestion automobile

Wrong; see my posts about this above. I explain in detail why this isn't so.

Automobile congestion is actually a good thing. It reduces automobile dependency, lowers sprawl, promotes alternatives and smarter cities/densification.

Of course, i'd rather have tolls-a-plenty with all the money going to transit and new urbanism, but congestion does the trick too.

David: Oui! En effet, c'est déjà beaucoup mieux comme ça.

(L'édifice dans ton exemple est vraiment affreux par contre, wow..lol.)

C'est une belle rénovation, mais le problème ici n'est pas l'apparance de l'édifice.

Le problème c'est le fait que la façade (qui est entourée par un tampon de voitures...) se retrouve à 20 mètres du trottoire. Ce n'est pas une réussite en matière d'urbanisme.

Si on veut préserver à tout prix des espaces de stationnement, la solution c'est de créer un édifice en L ou en U avec des façades qui frôlent les trottoires et les espaces de stationnement en arrière de l'édifice.

Puisque le 116 rue Guilbault se retrouve au centre-ville de Longueuil, selon moi il n'y a pas d'excuse pour ce genre d'urbanisme. Je sais que l'édifice date de 30 ans (ou même plus) mais à mon avis il faudrait mettre ça à terre et construire de 4 à 5 étages avec le même volume d'activité commerciale au niveau de la rue et ramener le tout au niveau de la rue.

Sorry, I couldn't help it. I live in Longueuil and this kind of stuff pisses me off! We need GOOD urbanism!!!

Là où il y avait laideur, il y a maintenant beauté et inspiration. Artiste, le plus beau métier du monde.

Bien dit

There are 2 regular bus lines running right next door, one with service to Terminus Panama and straight to downtown mtl during rush hour, and one going to Metro Longueuil + 1 running only at rush hour going downtown

Those are pretty weak options..

The whole Dix30 area is a giant disaster in terms of good urban design and planning principles.

I lost all faith in Brossard when the whole Panama-Loblaws thing went down and we ended up with zero density around the Panama terminal. Such potential wasted... instead Brossard is sprawling outward with giant car-dependent mega malls like Dix30 that only induce further suburbanization.

Wow... stunning.

If all the graffiti arists in this city would do this sort of thing with their talent, we would have a much cleaner and much more artistically rich city.

Sure, but then you can have friends when you are one of those kids...

 

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There are many cities boosting road capacity... in Toronto they just rebuilt QEW-403, they are working now on the 401, etc. And they have done many enlargements on their road network since construction. In Montreal almost all of our highways are in their "as-built" 1960's configuration!

You can have even more friends in a medium-density heterogeneous neighborhood.

As for highway construction, that's what happens when municipal authorities ignore their planners and/or provincial transportation departments barrel ahead on the advice of transportation engineers alone (instead of a mix of transportation engineers and urban and regional planners)

The old method of "predict and provide" is outdated and now widely considered to be ineffective. The problem is transportation modeling used to ignore the effects of system performance on demand and land use. Now transportation modelers and planners have realized that these effects significantly alter the initial variables in a sort of feedback loop. The traditional 4-stage model works but it has to account for these discrepancies. Basically entities that are still building highways en-masse have ignored their experts and are continuing on with Business As Usual. They're shooting themselves in the foot in the long run when infrastructure costs go up, sprawl continues and it drives up maintenance costs and continues to reduce taxable revenue.

These cities that are still building highways think they're spurring their economies and saving money in the long term but they're actually significantly curtailing future growth and compromising future budgets by going down a path that will require huge sums for infrastructure maintenance alone (not just the highways, but the infrastructure costs of building and maintaining the low-density sewers that service 10 people on a street...)

Practices such as fiscal zoning (where a municipal or other governing entity zones according to favorable revenues-vs-costs ratios) will segment the urban fabric, further extending the cycle...

Suburbanization is a nasty, nasty beast that is incredibly inefficient in terms of costs and expenditures alone... not to mention the social, environmental and economic disadvantages. There's a reason with 99.9% of the experts are strongly against this unsustainable form of development: BECAUSE IT SUCKS!

Actually, it wasn't.

We looked at the A-19 case study in class last week. It's quite amazing how traffic DIDN'T go through the roof as you might expect. That crazy law of Induced Demand sure is counterintuitive sometimes, but it's how these things work. It's been well documented for decades now.

As for social capital and intermixing, these things are extremely important valuable for a lot of reasons. I don't have time to get into it right now, but I can point you to several books, journals and studies that show that social segregation leads to considerable problems.

I'll give you a quick example though since it's one I experienced myself as a youth. A couple moves into a new suburban residential subdivision. All of residents in the subdivision have similar incomes and are in a similar age group. They all have kids at roughly the same time give or take half a few a years. The "kid boom" causes the city to build a new school to meet the sudden surge in demand. The kids grow up and move out, the parents grow old and cease having kids. A lack of school enrollment causes the school to be closed and eventually torn down. I've seen this happen, I know people it's happened to, and this is just 1 out of a thousand similar problems that segregated homogeneous residential developments experience. It's pretty precise science, believe it or not. This stuff has been studied to death and is well documented. It's also the accepted norm academically. All the universities basically teach that sprawl is bad because it's become accepted science and proven fact. The vast majority of urban planners are working to fight sprawl and nobody really advocates for more highway construction like the old days, outside perhaps Houston.

As for social capital... look it up. There are many books, university courses, journals and studies that explain the concept and why it's become very important to urban planning. They'll explain it better than I can.

When the 19 was closed traffic was terrible!

Actually, it wasn't.

We looked at the A-19 case study in class last week. It's quite amazing how traffic DIDN'T go through the roof as you might expect. That crazy law of Induced Demand sure is counterintuitive sometimes, but it's how these things work. It's been well documented for decades now.

Oui le TEC frôle la capacité à bien des endroits, et c'est exactement pourquoi il faut investir plus!

Je dis de nouveau: on devrait mettre des péages sur toutes les autoroutes/ponts et doubler le réseau du métro.

Malek: the economy thrives on transportation, that's true, but not just car transportation. All transportation works, and we see this in Europe where you've got denser cities with smaller areas but larger populations, more transit and less automobile dependency. If it works in Europe, Asia, Africa and just about everywhere except Canada, the U.S. and Australia... then it can work here too.

The law of induced demand actually works in reverse, Malek. Believe it or not but reducing road capacity reduces demand as people migrate to other forms of transportation or live closer to the core.

When The A-19 collapsed in Laval, people were afraid of huge congestion problems but they never materialized.

When they tore down the Embarcadero freeway in San Francisco, they were worried about huge congestion problems but traffic actually went down.

Now, i'm not saying we need to tear down all our highways, but we do need to avoid further highway construction as much as possible and focus our investments on rapid transit as well as high-density walkable cities.

We won't "lose" jobs by doing this either. It just isn't true that automobile infrastructure is the only way to growth.

Shut up you dirty libertarian

Libertarians do not have a monopoly on liberty nor the promotion of it.

I'm a progressive and I believe this is merely sensible policy. If there were measurable social and economic consequences to having bars stay open until they want, then I might reconsider my position, but the fact is there aren't. If someone can point me to some evidence or perhaps a study or two, i'll be happy to analyze the date and reevaluate my position. Until then, I stand by my position: Bars should be open until they want to... same as restaurants.

I agree with most of your points, however, I think that having bus lanes AND an LRT is somewhat redundant. This bridge should have some kind of rapid transit line( a light train of somesorts) but the bus lanes should no longer be necessary. Just make sure that the LRT can handle more passengers than the bus lines handle today. (ie 50,000 passengers per day vs the 20,000 passengers today).

 

I hate to repeat myself, but if we're gonna spend 5 billion dollars, they have to increase the capacity of this bridge. 6 lanes for regular traffic is insufficient today...imagine what it'll be likie in 30-40 or 50 years years?! We need at least 8 lanes for regular traffic(if not 10)

I just don't agree, Habsfan. Induced demand, induced demand, induced demand. The more we increase the capacity of our roads and highways, the more people will use them. Recent studies in the U.S. show that the increased capacity of adding 1 lane to an average highway in America will be completely filled within 5 years. After the 5 years the road becomes even more congested than it was in the first place.

We need our highways and bridges to be somewhat congested so that it discourages people from driving and it encourages them to use more sustainable forms of transportation. Yes, congestion causes pollution, but the benefits of congestion (dissuading people from driving) far outweigh the disadvantage. One car emitting pollution while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic may be bad, but an entire household that now lives in a more sustainable neighborhood as a result of that very congestion makes up for it and then some. Congestion is a good thing.

Roads and highways are very important and we need them. An industry isn't going to ship its goods and services on a bicycle or a metro car... but for day to day travel for the average person, we need to encourage transit as much as possible to reduce automobile dependency and the hundreds of problems related to it.

The automobile-dependent suburban living arrangement:

-has much higher infrastructure building and maintenance costs

-wastes a larger percentage of land to non-taxable uses (i.e. lost tax revenue)

-environmental damage

-hugely inefficient uses of space (including transportation infrastructure. Cars take up tons of space, which means huge parking lots are needed to accommodate them.)

-loss of farmland

-creation of mono-culture single-income areas and other segregated communities

-loss of social capital and intermixing

-declining health and rising obesity

-separation of land use functions means you need an automobile to get around, disadvantaging people who can't afford one and/or gas

-creation of physical spaces that are far less valuable culturally and architecturally. Walmart Supercentre vs. traditional main street lined with cafés and terraces

-discourages (if not eliminates outright) the possibility for alternatives

-increased death rate, fatalities and accidents (a *lot* more people die from car accidents than from accidents in a metro)

-considerable air pollution

-speeding up the consumption and burning of fossil fuels, which contributes to climate change and elevates oil to super-commodity that dominates the geopolitical landscape, causes wars, etc.

Anyway... suburbs and automobile dependency are an unsustainable and poor method of arranging physical urban space.

The self-righteous guy who touts the fact he drives an energy-efficient Prius... has nothing to be self-righteous if he's still relying on an automobile for the vast majority of his transportation needs. He could drive a vehicle that runs on air and it would still have hugely negative consequences, for many of the reasons I outlined above.

So rebuild the Champlain Bridge because we need that bridge, but at the same time toll the heck out of it and put all that money into rapid transit and proper urban development.

Merci pour le scoop Yara.

Personnellement, je serais royalement étonné s'ils copient le design de la Phase 1... c'est tout simplement... impossible.

La nouvelle tour va être différente c'est 100% certain. Je suis prêt a miser un 20$ la dessus.

le Louis Boheme aurait été 100x mieux avec ce revetement la

En effet!

Ce qui m'impressione le plus avec ce projet c'est l'intégration harmonieuse avec les édifices Concordia tout en restant unique et distincte.

Il faut que ça "fit" avec les édifices JMSB / EV en matière d'architecture, mais il ne faut que ça soit identique non plus, sinon ça risque de devenir trop homogène.

They struck a good balance I think!

Malek, you got my support man.

Les bars devraient définitivement avoir le choix de fermer quand ils veulent. Si un bar veut fermer à 02h00, 03h00 ou 06h00, ça devrait être leur decision.

Personnellement je resterais jusqu'à 06h00 pour profiter du TEC qui commence le lendemain, versus manger une poutine l'autre bord de la rue et passer le temps jusqu'à ce que je sois en état de conduire (évidement, j'arrête de boire bien avant mon heure de départ.) Ca me semble une situation gagnante pour tout le monde. Ils attendent quoi?

C'est très sympa à date! Merci!

Nice pics Memphis, merci!

I've got a nice view of this project from my department HQ on the 12th floor of the Hall building, I'll bring a camera

Ahh suburban living.. human beings wanting to live close to each other and connected in order to reap the benefits of the collective, but not so close that they have to see those unsightly second class Saint-Laurent citizens. Gosh...

Would be even nicer if they finally covered the rest of the ville-marie tunnel and made a nicer entrance from the metro to champ de mars

You'll hear no argument from me! You're preaching to the choir! Covering the Ville-Marie expressway and fixing up that mess ought to be the #1 urban design priority for the city of Montreal, ahead of even Quartier des Spectacles.

What I like most about this project is the residential nature of the development. This will add a land use mix to an immediate area that is currently dominated by commercial activities.

Lovely. Absolutely lovely. I can't wait to see this one rise :D:D

Cataclaw's Champlain bridge plan:

-Similar individual vehicle capacity (6 lanes or so)

-Add an express bus lane or two

-Add a transit rail line (this is a MUST)

-Toll the bridge

-Toll all the bridges in the Montreal CMA. All of them.

-Toll all Quebec autoroutes in the Montreal CMA. All of them.

-Invest some of that money in maintaining good service on the roads

-Invest the rest of it (which will be most of it) in doubling the Montreal Metro.

Vote for me!

Beau petit projet et très bien pour le secteur, mais sérieusement.. l'intégration de la façade actuelle de l'immeuble me semble un peu inutile. Regardez le rendu, et regardez l'édifice comme il est aujourd'hui. Ils vont garder quelques briques et that's it. C'est quoi le but? Tant qu'à ça, ils auraient pu simplement démolir et construire de zéro.

C'est juste une question que je me pose, c'est rien d'important. J'aime quand même le projet et la densité qu'il va apporter au secteur!

What a nice sight it is to finally see real change in this area!

Merci pour la photo Memphis!