rive-sud Pont Mercier: rénovations et reconstruction

[Cyrus]

(Courtesy of The Montreal Gazette)

 

How about if you want to live off island, get a job off island. Even if people have space on the train, they rather be imbeciles and be stuck in traffic.

 

But it is kind of silly. What declares island... soon you are "get a job in the same borough/town" and then "get a job on same street" etc.

 

It gets compounded by the trend of having shorter term employment and zig-zagging up the corporate ladder at different companies - the get a job at 18, retire at 65 with a gold watch doesn't exist anymore.

 

However, owning a house, or even a condo, is a long-term investment and you can't be selling houses and buying another every 2 years or even 5 or 10.

 

Then add in your wife, who might work very close to your home and you on the other side of town, or maybe you can walk to work but she drives 50 km one way.

 

As the city grows this tendency just grows further. And, Montreal seems relatively hostile to industrial development and there isn't much space outside of the east end, so a lot of jobs are moving out to the fringes...

 

The real issue for the Mercier is the guys who work in the South Shore, especially in Chateauguay and elsewhere who are used to an easy-peasy drive down the 138/132 and now, not really have congestion, but that whole road is completely closed and they have to detour via Champlain (very far, traffic absurdly bad) or Langlois (even father and driving through the town is a bitch). It's a total mobility breakdown of a situation that sucked to begin with (well okay - reverse-peak operations on Mercier are usually good. But the 20 and the Champlain are terrible)

 

Now if the original plans for Autoroute 13 were followed, we'd have a 6 lane freeway bridge going from the 20 into Kahnawake meeting with the 138/132 (future Autoroute 30 at the time). Instead we had some whiny bitches in Lachine to "save the golf course" that the road was going to be built upon. Of course, in the 1990's the golf course had houses built on it and that was that...

 

La voie réservé du Pont Champlain est utile pour l'heure de pointe du matin, mais à l'heure de pointe du soir, elle est plus encombrante qu'utile. Les bus, du côté de l'ile, embarque à la dernière minute sur la 15, là où le trafic d'approche du Pont cesse. Il n'y aurait qu'une différence de quelques secondes entre un bus dans la voie réservée et un sur la travée normale du pont. Pour l'avoir utilisé pendant 3 ans, j'ai rarement vu mon bus aller plus rapidement que la circulation de l'autre côté du muret.

 

Par contre, en tant qu'automobiliste, c'est l'enfer d'entrer à Montréal le soir. C'est pire qu'à l'heure de pointe du matin, et la seule raison de cet engorgement, c'est la ¦²¤£± de voie réservée.

 

Je pense que l'AMT doit etudier serieusement a cesser l'utlisation de la voie reservee pendant ce crise... c'est peut-etre possible que l'additon de cet train-de-bus va tuer le circulation sur "l'autre" cote du pont, mais si ca ne l'affecte pas trop, ca serait utile...

Modifié 20 juin 2011 par Cyrus

[ToxiK]

 

Je pense que l'AMT doit etudier serieusement a cesser l'utlisation de la voie reservee pendant ce crise... c'est peut-etre possible que l'additon de cet train-de-bus va tuer le circulation sur "l'autre" cote du pont, mais si ca ne l'affecte pas trop, ca serait utile...

 

Je ne suis pas certain de te suivre. Tu veux qu'on ferme la voie réservée du pont Champlain? Si les autobus ne passent plus (ou même s'ils sont simplement ralentis), les usagers vont reprendre leur voiture et empirer une situation déjà critique.

[Cyrus]

Non non, juste a mettre les autobus sur l'autre cote du pont, avec la reste du circulation...

[OursNoir]

Je ne suis pas certain de te suivre. Tu veux qu'on ferme la voie réservée du pont Champlain? Si les autobus ne passent plus (ou même s'ils sont simplement ralentis), les usagers vont reprendre leur voiture et empirer une situation déjà critique.

 

Seulement celle de l'heure de pointe du soir. Avec la configuration actuelle des échangeurs du côté de Montréal, les autobus, même sans la voie réservée sur le pont, n'aurait pas à ralentir une miette pour traverser jusque sur la rive-sud même en empruntant la travée normale du pont.

[Né entre les rapides]

By now, it is becoming clear that what began as a mere "facelift" of a single, albeit important bridge is turning out to become the most significant prompting event toward a fundamental rethinking of the way governments and their agencies will approach the (multi-facetted) transportation issue in the Montreal REGION.

 

If so, the associated pain will not have been for nothing. This however shall not distract us from insisting that the hundreds of thousands of people most affected by the current mess, be relieved and compensated by every means possible asap.

[Cyrus]

I tried to go from my cottage to home yesterday evening. I decided to take Monsignor-Langlois bridge in Valleyfield, Champlain was "jammed to the 30" on the radio at the time.

 

Was relatively okay up R-201 but jammé solide in Valleyfield where it has the wide median & 4 lanes. Just terrible terrible terrible. Once it went to two lanes and over the bridge and turned into a freeway it was fine onto the 20. Then boom the 20 was jammed solid for ~3 km west of the 540... In all it cost me roughly 2 hours versus just taking Mercier at the same time...

 

On the way there though, I went via Champlain and took the new section of Autoroute 30 bypassing Delson/Ste-Catherine. Wow this highway is quite nice and there is one really nice straightaway there

[Cyrus]

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/06/23/william-watson-privatize-bridges-before-they-fall/

William Watson: Privatize bridges before they fall

 

 

William Watson Jun 23, 2011 – 9:00 PM ET

 

 

 

 

The things you see when you don’t have a Molotov cocktail in hand! Vancouverites rioted last week because of excesses of alcohol, testosterone and soft goals by the Boston Bruins. This summer Montrealers have much better reason than all that for a riot, yet are taking repeated provocation by their public sector with admirable, inexplicable but surely also finite patience.

 

I don’t really recommend rioting as a way of impressing our dissatisfaction upon our governors. But if a riot did occur, who could be surprised?

 

Montreal is an island. Because of high taxes and an anti-development ethic by the island’s municipal administration and also because many Montrealers simply prefer a suburban lifestyle, hundreds of thousands of them live off the island and commute to the city every day, a goodly proportion by car. From the south shore of the St. Lawrence, there are four bridges and a tunnel. Despite the stunningly obvious fact that these are crucial pieces of infrastructure, neglect and mismanagement of truly Soviet proportions have now brought us to the point where two of the bridges are literally in danger of falling down and are having to undergo emergency closures and hundreds of millions of dollars of repairs, many of them federal dollars contributed by taxpayers from all the provinces. (Thank you, P.E.I.!)

 

One of the bridges, the Mercier, built as a stimulus project in the early 1930s, has been closed to trucks for several months now. Last week, the two lanes of its upstream span were closed indefinitely on an emergency basis because an engineering report warned that the steel plates supporting it were dangerous. Then this week, one of the two remaining downstream lanes was closed for half a day because a foot-long pothole opened up — through which the river below apparently was visible. An even better view of the river was afforded by a similar but larger pothole last winter. (The bridge’s official website says the federal bridge corporation responsible for it is dedicated to “transparency,” though you would think not of the bridge itself.)

 

Needless to say, the inconvenience to 80,000 drivers who use the bridge every weekday is massive. The website, rather cheekily in the circumstances, advises them to use alternative routes into the city, including the Champlain Bridge. Unfortunately, that bridge, which became the object of competitive pledging during the federal election campaign’s French-language leaders’ debate, is also facing major lane closures. An engineering study conducted last year reportedly concluded that the possibility of a partial or even complete collapse could not be excluded. To keep the bridge standing for the next 10 years, almost $400-million in repairs are being made, much of the money coming again from federal taxpayers. (Hello, Saskatchewan, and many thanks!) After that, a new bridge will be necessary. Ten years might seem like enough lead time to get a replacement underway, but as the province has only now just started building a new super-hospital that has been in the planning since 1992, maybe as of 2021 the six lanes of the Champlain Bridge will simply stand idle, if they’re standing at all.

 

A further complication, which in fairness you potential contributors to the one or two or three billion dollar cost of the new bridge should be aware of, is that construction costs are higher in Quebec than elsewhere — 30% higher being the most common estimate — because of a combination of corruption, collusion, extortion (by the Mafia) and union-friendly labour laws. Look on the bright side, though: fully 70% of your tax contribution won’t be pure waste.

 

The truly shocking thing about all this is that, not only aren’t people rioting, most don’t even seem to think the systemic incompetence exhibited in the mismanagement of our bridges is reason to look at a new way of doing things.

 

Rust happens. Bridges wear out and need to be maintained. Depreciation isn’t rocket science. Though there really can’t be a more basic function of government than to keep key infrastructure operating safely, successive generations of Quebec’s politicians, from all governing parties, have skimped on bridge maintenance and instead spent hundreds and thousands of billions of dollars over the years on other things. (Just this week, Montreal’s auditor issued a damning report about mismanagement of a trendy new bike-rental program whose fees come nowhere near covering its costs.)

 

A predictable excuse for incompetence is overlapping jurisdiction. Thus the section of the Mercier Bridge that crosses the St Lawrence Seaway is operated by the federal government, while the rest of it is provincial, with the government of Kahnawake, a Mohawk reserve through which it passes, also playing a role.

 

There are equally predictable recommendations for how to fix the problem. Thus some people say we need a bridge “czar” to crack heads and force the different jurisdictions to behave better and cough up the required cash. Why an extra level of officialdom and no change in incentives will lead to a different result is not explained, however.

 

There is another model, of course, a post-Czarist, post-Soviet one. Let private companies bid for the rights to build and operate toll bridges, with prescribed limits on the tolls, if you insist, and substantial penalties for any deaths caused by unsafe driving conditions on their bridges. When people own a revenue-generating asset, they tend to take care of it. Moreover, loss of toll revenue provides a strong incentive to do maintenance quickly and at night, thus minimizing the disruption to traffic and inconvenience to consumers — which is essentially the exact opposite of the approach taken by ministries of transport and government bridge corporations, which usually act as if consumers are the inconvenience.

 

Yes, yes, private ownership won’t be a perfect solution. It has its problems, too. But there’s no way it could be worse than what we have now. Only blind, stubborn ideology stands in the way of giving it a try.

[monctezuma]

Transport

Virage vers le transport collectif

Héloïse Archambault

Le Journal de Montréal

07/08/2011 05h17

 

De nombreux travailleurs de la Rive-Sud ont troqué la voiture contre le train ou l'autobus, depuis le début des travaux sur le pont Honoré-Mercier, un virage qui se traduit par une hausse d'achalandage de 30 %, dans les transports collectifs.

 

«C'est directement lié aux travaux sur le pont, confirme Brigitte Léonard, déléguée aux communications à l'Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT). Les gens ont rapidement modifié leurs habitudes.»

 

Depuis la mi-juin, 500 usagers de plus utilisent, chaque jour, le train de banlieue qui relie Candiac à Montréal. Il s'agit d'une hausse de 30 %.

 

Du côté du Conseil intermunicipal de transport (CIT) Saint-Laurent, qui dessert, notamment, la ville de Mercier, le constat est le même.

 

«On a enregistré presque 5 000 passagers de plus, en juin, constate la directrice générale du CIT Francine Crête. Avec les travaux du pont Mercier, de l'échangeur Turcot et de l'autoroute 30, il n'y a pas de doute que les gens délaissent leur voiture.»

 

Nouveaux départs

 

Afin d'absorber cette augmentation de l'achalandage, l'AMT a mis en place six départs additionnels quotidiens, sur la ligne de Candiac.

 

«On réussit à bien desservir la clientèle malgré une hausse soudaine du nombre d'usagers», poursuit-elle.

 

D'ailleurs, quelque 500 nouvelles places de stationnements seront aménagées dans les différentes gares de cette ligne de train.

 

Usagers satisfaits

 

«C'est certain, que je ne prendrai pas mon auto pour traverser le pont, commente Madeleine Derome, qui prend le train de banlieue à Saint-Constant, depuis trois semaines. C'est une perte de temps et d'énergie.»

 

«C'est trop de trouble, en auto, ajoute un autre usager, qui a pris la décision de délaisser sa voiture depuis un mois. Le train est beaucoup plus confortable ; je suis écolo, et je sauve de l'argent et du temps.»

 

Départs permanents?

 

Malgré la fin des travaux sur le pont Mercier, prévue en septembre prochain, l'AMT compte bien fidéliser cette nouvelle clientèle.

 

Toutefois, l'agence ne peut garantir, pour le moment, que les six nouveaux départs quotidiens resteront à l'horaire.

 

«On doit faire des vérifications avec le Canadien Pacifique ; on ne peut rien garantir, indique Mme Léonard ; mais, avec la rentrée scolaire, qui est toujours fastidieuse pour le transport, on est persuadés que les gens vont rester fidèles.»

 

«On souhaite les garder avec nous ; c'est une chance à ne pas manquer», croit aussi Mme Crête.

[ProposMontréal]

500 usagers de plus chaque jours et c'est 30% de plus. Ça donne environ 1675 utilisateurs en temps régulier qui prennent avantage de ce service.

Est-ce que l'AMT fait ces frais avec plus ou moins 1675 utilisateurs par jour ? Ça ne semble pas beaucoup pour faire rouler un train à quelques reprises par jours avec la main d'oeuvre, le matériel roulant, etc...

 

Est-ce rentable ?

[Cyrus]

500 usagers de plus chaque jours et c'est 30% de plus. Ça donne environ 1675 utilisateurs en temps régulier qui prennent avantage de ce service.

Est-ce que l'AMT fait ces frais avec plus ou moins 1675 utilisateurs par jour ? Ça ne semble pas beaucoup pour faire rouler un train à quelques reprises par jours avec la main d'oeuvre, le matériel roulant, etc...

 

Est-ce rentable ?

 

surement pas, ayoye Pour comparison, l'achalandage normale quotdien du pont Mercier c'est 80 000 vehicules (donc quelquechose comme 90 ou 100 000 personnes) Il n'est pas pour rien que tout le monde faut payer tellement en frais d'immatriculation et taxes d'essence...