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Jeremy Searle — Reviving Montreal's 'coffee shop' economy Unfortunately for all of us, Montreal seems to have descended to the level of a coffee shop economy in which expensive cups of coffee are status symbols for people whose personal finances are often in a tight way. Recently, I wrote about the need to make the public investments to put our downtown into shape by buying up some of the more strategic empty lots and using them either for new park space or for the building of public housing. Today, I want to look at generating economic activity and wealth in the western part of town and on an island-wide level. Reviving the west end economy Commercial: Back in the bad old days of ex-mayor Jean Drapeau, our city was cut in two for the excavation of the Decarie Expressway trench and since then business to the west of the highway has largely languished. While it is not practical to cover over the Decarie Expressway, it would be relatively simple to hide it and to thus knit our city back together again. All that is necessary is to build an extra section of bridge on each side of the Decarie overpasses (especially at Sherbrooke Street) and to then either erect buildings (à-la old London Bridge) or put in park space backed by barriers high enough to make the highway invisible. Once the highway “disappeared” and the city became one again there would be no obstacle to the expansion of commerce and business activity continuing to flow west instead of hitting a wall at Decarie. Meanwhile, the businesses on and around the Decarie service roads heading north and south would also benefit from having the highway hidden. It would be a very simple matter to clamp on an extra lane of roadway (attached to the highway walls with cantilevered supports) that could be used either as bicycle path or as host to additional greenspace. Residential: In order to boost economic activity and bring down the average costs of maintaining the city it is also necessary to attract in more people — both to share the load and to support local business and commerce. The most obvious location to attract thousands of higher end taxpayers, investors and spenders would be the Glen Yard site currently earmarked for the new McGill hospital. Clearly, high value land should be used for activities that directly or indirectly generate the taxes that finance hospitals and other such publicly funded institutions. Given its superb location at the intersection of Westmount and eastern NDG the Glen Yards site, with its easy access to both the Vendome Metro station and the downtown Ville-Marie highway, is a perfect location for residential development. Ten-thousand or so new high end condo dwellers in the west end would both boost the economy and throw a massive injection of extra taxes into the Montreal public economy. The McGill hospital could be better built on the Blue Bonnets site at Jean Talon and Decarie — a site that has access to the same Metro line (Namur) and similar or better highway access. In addition, having the hospital there would force the provincial government to ante up for the much needed Cavendish/Royalmount road link which would also re-route much traffic from the Trans Canada to Decarie, thus lessening congestion at the major intersection. Boosting the island-wide economy: For any society or economy to function well, each generation has to make the effort to leave some substantial legacy for the next unless a wearing down and eventual collapse is to be accepted. Sometimes it is investments in canals or railways or roads or airports or dockyards or cultural and recreational facilities and sometimes it is simply my parents’ generation fighting to save the world. Sometimes it is simply a question of building on the shoulders that they have set us on and sometimes it is a question of rebuilding or repairing that which previous generations have already built for us. Sometimes it is simply a question of finishing the job that our predecessors failed or forgot to complete. Unfortunately, since the epoch of ex-mayor Drapeau and his establishment of the modern Montreal tradition of ignoring infrastructure maintenance in favour of frills, little has been done in terms of maintenance and our city is falling into disrepair. One way to boost the Montreal economy would be to undertake a massive program of road and water main rebuilding. This would have the same positive effect on our economy as any other kind of construction boom and would also help us to grow our tourist economy while making us generally feel better about ourselves. Obviously, our leaders would have to convince the federal and provincial governments to come up with a large chunk of the money necessary to implement such a scheme. However, the single greatest guaranteed boost for the west end and for the Montreal and regional economy would be the completion of the Decarie Expressway (15) with a direct link to the Laurentian Autoroute (15) to the north. The tunnel under Ville St. Laurent to connect the two together would get vehicles north and south without unnecessary delays related to detouring onto the TransCanada while the TransCan itself would be freed from most of its traffic congestion. The tunnel link has already been studied and approved by the Ministry of Transport but no one seems interested in actually getting it dug. The Decarie/Laurentian tunnel would eliminate uncounted lost hours in pointless idling and back-ups, lessen commuter trip times, save business money, get us all around faster and more efficiently and make our supporting road systems function more smoothly — which would in turn give our economy a much-needed shot in the arm. And, since better flowing traffic generates less pollution, making the traffic flow better would also help to achieve environmental objectives. Does anybody have a shovel? Let’s start digging. http://thesuburban.com/content.jsp?sid=34883087211204213941721025245&ctid=1000004&cnid=1015175

Does New York City Need More Taxis? The City of New York is planning to add 2,000 more yellow taxi cabs onto its streets. They'll be wheelchair accessible and raise a bunch of money for the city. The new licenses could fetch up to $1 billion at auction. And the hope is that the extra taxis will make life better for the many New Yorkers without cars. Charles Komanoff disagrees. The transport economist has been analyzing the city's traffic patterns for almost 40 years. He argues that putting more cabs on the streets will actually slow down traffic — so much so that it would cost travelers not just time but also money. True, it would be easier to find a cab. But Komanoff argues that all those extra cabs would slow down traffic by 12 percent in the city. And they wouldn't just slow down traffic for their passengers. They would slow it down delivery trucks, buses, private cars — everyone. Komanoff has been collecting data about New York City's traffic patterns in a massive spreadsheet. In the data you can find every lane on every road in the heart of Manhattan. He calls his data trove the Balanced Transport Analyzer. He figures the slowdown due to the new cabs would cost the city $500 million a year in lost time. We'll have to wait to see if Komanoff's predictions will come true. The decision to add more cabs in New York is now being challenged in court. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/31/157477611/does-new-york-city-need-more-taxis

Montreal Forum adds a touch of Dawson College class Brenda Branswell Montreal Gazette August 9, 2010 MONTREAL - Some Dawson College students will have classes this year in a place they probably never expected to study - the old Montreal Forum. The downtown college is renting additional space in the Pepsi Forum because of an influx of 300 additional students. Dawson is creating nine classrooms in the building, including two computer labs for students who are studying social sciences, said Donna Varrica, a college spokesperson. Dawson is one of several colleges that is accepting more students for the coming school year. The decision to take in extra students came in June when the Quebec government announced it would inject more than $1 million to deal with the space problem at Montreal Island's crowded CEGEPs. Varrica said the top priority for Dawson was to find extra space that wasn't far from the college. Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Forum+adds+touch+Dawson+class/3378079/story.html#ixzz0w9Kr4HzN

Ottawa pledges tax cuts as surplus soars STEVEN CHASE Globe and Mail Update September 27, 2007 at 1:02 PM EDT The Canadian government racked up a monster surplus of about $14-billion for the last fiscal year, Ottawa reported Thursday. It said it has used the surplus to retire national debt and will funnel the $725-million interest saved as a result to Canadian taxpayers through tax cuts. That is a break of about $30 to $40 per tax filer in annual savings, depending on how it is allocated. That surplus far exceeds the $9.2 billion forecast in the last budget. Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulates Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on March 19 after the government's budget speech. It is an embarrassment of riches for the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which said Canadians were overtaxed when it took office and vowed that there would be no more surplus surprises. Ottawa's coffers are swollen by extra personal and corporate income-tax revenue generated by richer profits from a commodity boom. By law, all this excess cash – $14.2 billion – has been used to pay down Canada's debt and is not available for spending. However, the interest savings generated by the debt paydown – a fraction of the overall surplus – will be used to fund tax reductions, as promised by the Harper government. The surplus hit $13.8-billion and Ottawa ultimately reduced its debt by $14.2-billion last year, the government announced.

New York évoque la faillite Devoir Le Édition du vendredi 10 avril 2009 Le maire de New York, Michael Bloomberg, a affirmé hier que la Ville allait devoir supprimer de nombreux emplois pour éviter la faillite. Le maire, engagé dans des négociations tendues avec les syndicats d'employés municipaux, a affirmé que 7000 emplois supplémentaires devraient être supprimés, à moins de réduire drastiquement les avantages des salariés. «Nous ne pouvons pas continuer. Le coût des retraites et de la couverture maladie pour nos employés va provoquer la faillite de cette ville», a-t-il déclaré sur la chaîne de télévision NY1. M. Bloomberg doit présenter le budget de la Ville, qui ne peut pas statutairement être déficitaire, d'ici la fin du mois. Les dirigeants des différents services municipaux ont jusqu'à lundi pour proposer des réductions de dépenses. La récession et la crise à Wall Street ont provoqué un trou béant dans les finances de la Ville, qui reposent lourdement sur les taxes imposées aux entreprises financières. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Job cuts needed to stop NY bankruptcy: mayor 22 hours ago NEW YORK (AFP) — Sweeping layoffs of government employees are needed to prevent New York going bankrupt, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday. Bloomberg, who is in tense negotiations with municipal workers' unions, said an extra 7,000 jobs would have to go unless major reductions are made in employee benefits. "We cannot continue. Our pension costs and health care costs for our employees are going to bankrupt this city," he said in comments broadcast on NY1 television. Bloomberg, running for a third mayoral term at the end of this year, said that proposals from unions so far were "nowhere near what is adequate." The possible job cuts, first announced Wednesday, would be on top of 1,300 already proposed and another 8,000 that could be axed through attrition. Department heads have until Monday to propose cuts and Bloomberg must present the city budget by the end of the month. The city is barred by law from running deficits. The recession and the Wall Street crisis have knocked a huge hole in city finances that traditionally relied heavily on taxes from financial companies. The budget office on Wednesday said that 7,000 extra job cuts would allow the city to cut a further 350 million dollars in expenditure.

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