Elv13

Count yourself lucky. Where I am, in Seattle, everywhere is needle park. You just have to deal with living surrounded by tent cities. The Berrie/UQAM area is cleaner than the average greater Seattle. But given the new development, I guess it will slowly gentrify the area and the problems will move back to the more downtown areas. When I was living in Griffintown (I was a student at ETS) before all the new development, it was a pretty rough neighborhood. There is still some homeless people under the de la Commune bridge, but that used to be the entire Griffintown. That being said, I would not be super surprised if they came back to the area in the coming years. The Seattle equivalent of Griffintown, Belltown, is among the worst hit area. The mix of large sidewalks, quiet condos, lots of parks and close proximity to services are all "plus" for people without roofs. Hopefully MTL will never reach the critical mass of homeless people where it kickstarts the "homeless economy" (dealers, tent cities, hoovertowns, resell hubs for stolen goods, outdoor pawn shops, etc). It's rather obvious how it ended up there, but still a sad and cautionary tale of mismanagement. It's not even because it is the right-wing politicians not investing in the social services (there's plenty of that). It is a failure of left leaning ones to prevent enough housing (social or otherwise) to be built to keep the cost of living low combined with a system where there is no real second chance for those people. Say what you want of Plante 20/20/20 policy, but I can tell you the result of *not* building social housing and it's much worst than the ugly COOPs popping up in MTL.

This mostly happens because: 1) Contractors picking cheaper material to save cost and not telling anyone. 2) China has "ghost cities", where they build massive complexes 2-5 years before the resident arrives. The second one is the most common cause. They often abandon the building for years, then the basement gets flooded after the pump fail and nobody notices. A few months later, it goes full Miami style collapse. That concrete isn't design to be submerged, it just rust, crack, let more water in, explode and fail. The ghost cities are not totally wrong. It is massively more cost efficient to do it this way because the government can build subways and infrastructure on virgin ground. So by the time people arrive, they already have an extensive subway system, highways and high speed rails. 3 thing which are very costly to retrofit. The downside is obviously aggressive and unsupervised development of soviet style towers to kickstart the new urban center. In this case, the podium is very large. It looks pretty future proof. The Dorchester is the current project which I am the least convinced by. The Enticy project next door dug their foundation deeper than the friction piles they used. The whole concept of friction pile is that they are held by... friction. Dig a hole next to it and kiss the friction bye-bye.

Looking at the picture. Doesn't look like they added anything to prevent the Pigeon from going back. Not saying the old grids were a big success, but this isn't going to last. I hope they add a lot of spikes before it starts "snowing" when the train pass overhead again.

2:55h c'est avec un arrets a Laval/Trois-Reviere/Jean-lessage ou c'est "l'express" entre la gare centrale et la gare du palais? Parce que comparee au bus, c'est assez etrange de mettre en place un service plut lent*. Aussi, peak 200km/h c'est assez lent comparee aux ICE en Europe (qui ne sont pas des TGV). Plusieurs routes son't ~175km/h de moyenne avec ~275km/h dans les droites. J'imagine que c'est possible de lentement ammiliorer la route pour etre plus rapide, mais les politicient utiliserait ces chiffres, pas le "day 1 speed" du service. * le Du_Palais -> Ste-Foy -> Dummondville -> Longeuil -> Berrie est >=3h, mais le Ste-Foy -> Berrie est beaucoup plus rapide (2:20h dans les bon jours, 2:40h-ish avec le traffic sur le Pont J-C et a St-Hyacinte). Ste-Foy -> Du_Palais "compte pas" parce que c'est 15km dans la ville avec 3 traffic jams differents (les ponts, Henrie IV, et Charest/St-Sacrement) ce qui rend la comparaison avec les railles pas super.

(I live in Seattle right now, thanks COVID... Waiting for the border to re-open to get the **ck out of here. Any day now....) To be fair, Seattle highways don't cut into the city center. Beside the enormous inter-exchange in the industrial district, the downtown highways are on the "side" of small cliffs. Think like Ville Marie between Guy and Turcot. The shoreline is still a mess now that the waterfront HW is gone. The whole downtown is a mess. They could add 10 highways and it would not make it much worst. It is dead after dark and very dangerous place to be. There are thousands (yes, that bad) of tents on every sidewalks, so you have to walk in the streets. I think the lack of affordable and student housing is the main difference. Not having space for people like Quartier des Spectacles also doesn't help. It's a mix of office space and luxury condos/apartment towers for single people or young couples. As soon as anyone has a family, they leave. Anyone outside of the corporate middle class cannot afford to live there. Those people don't go out because it is dangerous. So the little "downtown energy" is spread around some neighborhoods around downtown like Capital Hill, Fremont and Ballard. All of them are segregated by highways, boat canals or total lack of public transit access. They are also spaced by quiet neighborhood full of WW2 era single family houses (to match the order above: First Hill, Queen Anne and Magnolia). So I don't think it is comparable to Montreal HW. Midwest and western cities are built for cars. The downtown highways is the result of this, not the cause. They don't have the density to support a Montreal/Paris/London/Vienna/Berlin/Barcelona "downtown energy". Removing the HW, such as in the picture above, did nothing to revitalize downtown. Yes, they will add a linear park and stuff (there is no other park downtown beside maybe Denny ways), but people wont go and it will turn into another shanty town. (as for MTL, the waterfront is a tourist trap, it doesn't qualify as "part of downtown")

from the website and google maps Pretty. Too bad I am not in MTL right now. That might have been an interesting option. But it's a bit too far from downtown. Render from the website

(pas mon image, j'ai trouve` sur Google) Cette intersection est deja refaite selong le plan ci dessus:

I live in Seattle right now (lets see what happens once Covid is gone, but stuck here for now) and Seattle mass transit makes no sense. It is fully oriented toward park and ride. There is no Subway and the current LRT services nowhere useful unless you work at the airport. Compared to the REM, they made every single bad decisions one could make. Most stations are either in industrial parks, under homeless people tent cities or near bungalows. It services nothing useful and is always empty. The line lines under construction service Microsoft/Nintendo headquarter and follow 2 highways. That's actually kind of better since it has actually somewhere to go. The other line will eventually (2036, lol) follow another highway and reach Boeing Everett factory. All this time, downtown will still be deadlocked (if people ever get back to work, downtown is a very unsafe homeless tent city right now, nothing people in MTL can imagine exist in North America). Point is, LRT are sometime not "by design" and are just the result of under investment. The LRT exists to serve a business need (bypass the traffic jams between airport and downtown) rather than be a useful public transport. Seattle citizens ballot-vetoed to /block/ a subway being built in the 70's. The federal government would have paid most of the bills, so it was just Nimbysm.

Rocco's memory! [/img[

Umm... Il y a des fenetres cote peel sur la tour A... Ca veux dire qu'ils ont les droits areriens sur les duplex et qu'il vont etre la pour toujours?

Ici, a Seattle (USA), c'est "normale". Chaque gros employeur (Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, Nintendo, etc) ont leurs propre service de navette gratuite avec les different ToDs, "park n' rides" et "heavy rails" (il n'y a pas de metro). Tu as une place garantie assise si tu as une heure en particulier. Comme c'est une ville de char (west coast mentality...) , le système de "park n' ride" est le noyau du transport en commun. C'est des vrais terminus intérieurs en dessous de stationnement a étage.

Il y a aussi le fait que le reseau lui meme a la meme capacitee qu'avant (Decarie, Ville-Marie/Route_whatever/S-D-Champlain). Si tu augmente la capacitee du viaduc, ca a un nom: parking. Des qu'il y a de la congestion dans une branche, les autres branches qui y connectent vont etre infectees. Tout va aller plus lentement. Pense aux entrees d'autoroutes sur les 2 rives. Meme si elles ajoutent une voie de circulation, ca cause un jam anyway. Sur un autre sujet. Je viens d'ecouter cet video et ca montre la logique du nouveau viaduc assez bien

Rocco inner NIMBY <--

Je re-confirme. C'est pas juste en Pologue, dans les baltiques aussi. Quand j'ai fait le total-grand-tour (Gibaltar vers Lapland/Finlande vers Istanbul/Bosphore, De l'Afrique a l'Asie), je suis tombe par hasard dans ce mall en Lituanie. Assez impressionant pour le millieu de null part.

A noter que ces rendus demollissent la facade en brique sur Bleury alors que les rendus precedent la restauraient, dommage. Mais bon, magnifique project, donc +1.

J'habite a Seattle depuis un ans. Seattle/Vancouver sont assez notoire pour le taux massif de sans abris. Ce n'est pas un myth. C'est literallement 20x pire qua Montreal. Il y a les deux "systeme" ici. Une grande partie des sans abris cache leurs cabanes/tente dans la verdure. La ville interdit officielement les campement individuel permanant, mais ne fait (volontairement) rien pour eviter une escalation. Mais il y a aussi des tent-city. Travailleur sociaux ou pas, les hidden tents sont beaucoup moin problematique que les pusher infested tent cities. La France, l'Angleterre (et Montreal Nord) ont fait des experimentation de logement sociaux de grande taille dans les annees 60/70 et ce fue un desastre. Les tours sont devenues des Getho verticaux sous le controle de gangs de rue. Une tent-city, c'est encore pire, il y a pas de porte. Les piqueries /soupe populaire sont un meilleur moyen de connecter les travailleur sociaux aux addicts. C'est plus facile a controller et securiser. Encore la, [c'est pas facile](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51216187). Ce mass shooting est pas loin de mon travail. Ce "spot" est fameux et tout le monde font le tour 1 rue plus loin pour pas passer la. C'est proche d'un shelter et la limite entre 2 gangs. Il y a des "soldats" des deux camps armee 24/24 pour proteger la ligne. C'est ca qui arrive quand tu concentre les sans abris, tu concentre "la business" aussi.

Well, at least see the bright side. The renders and the final result are 1:1. What you saw is what you got. What got approved is what they got. Far cry from what some of these Griffintown projects turned out to be (let alone Downtown. Cough-19: Drummond, Cough-19).

Parfois c'est plus que ca. Il y a des endroits ou le sol est tres compacte. C'est commun dans les endroits autrefois sous des glaciers de l'aire glaciale. Il y a encore une tension presente parceque la glace poussait sur le sol. Les grand lacs existent a cause de ca. Quand on creuse, ca permet de liberer la tension et deforme le sol. En generale montreal est pas trop a risque parce que c'est pas parfaitement plat, donc il y avait deja des "weak spot" pour que le sol perde sa tension. Mais dans le cas de l'ONF et ArtDeVivre, ils ne veulent vraiment pas que ca bouge le tunel de metro, donc ils utilisent cette technique. Les dalles de stationnement vont permettent de retablir l'equilibre du sol.

Worst than that, the detour had a detour, which had a detour. No joke here. Part of aqueduct path was closed to install a pipe or something. *That* detour brought me to another detour near Boulevard LaSalle (telecom or Hydro, I don't remember). It is rather obvious to say that the next time, I used the streets :P.

Rendu la, le quartier chinois c'est St-Cath ,Guy, Atwater et Sherbrooke. Ca manque de rue pietonne comme De La Gauchetiere, mais c'est plus vibrant sinon. C'est pas une mauvaise chose. Le style "Concordia Ghetto" est une meilleur approximation de Hong Kong que St-Laurent.

There's a difference between a NYC high cost development and the ICAO. The support structure isn't remotely the same. Hudson yard is possible because the land price is very high and the condos with views on the river delta are priced very (very, very) high. The highway would need serious modifications to add the columns of such a building (or a support platform). Also keep in mind that train tracks are not as wide as a "5" lane highway (but close-ish at the widest point of the triangle). Assuming the land gets to ~100M CAD within 10 years, then you have to spend 200-300M+ CAD to refactor the highway configuration without being able to ever close more than 1 lane in each direction. Plus planning, permits and delay, you are at half a billion to reach the ground level. The render above has the weight distribution right on top of the lanes. This would requires some kind of arch support (I think TDC1 has something like it, but the tunnel is very narrow). The height of this alone would require to bury the highway much deeper, at which point it will touch the metro tunnel that crosses the highway "near" there. So, IMHO, if the building above would be built as-is, it would collapse or bankrupt the builders.

Je pense pas que c'est possible, l'autoroute villa-marie est en dessous, right?

I am not a photographer, but this is a badly executed photoshop. The sky is bucket filled in a solid color and the rest of the picture was desaturated + gamma using the colors correction sliders. You can see the rooftop of the quatier de la montagne, Icone 1 and the building on the left have bucket-fill and underexposition artifacts. It does give an effect and makes the Cohen mural pop, but this really isn't an HDR shot. The point of view itself is great. Bring in the downvotes

Ce qui est special est que la ville veux proteger les vues sur la montagne, mais que dans cet angle, le 1 Square Phillips, "SNC 2" et Maestria vont tout bloquer. En contrepartie, avec les 2 200m de la BN et Broco, ca va donner une nouvelle largeur au Skyline.

23 Juin