Infrastructures : informations, discussions générales et actualités

[Habsfan]

C'est normal que les villes croissent... mais l'ajout d'autoroutes les font croisser d'une autre façon que s'il n'y avait pas eu d'ajout, c'est ça le problème.

 

La région coninue à grandir. Oui, mais comment? Je veux bien construire de nouveaux ponts si effectivement il y a un problème de congestion (et il y en a assurément)...

 

Je comprends ton argument, mais élargir la Métropolitaine ce n'Est pas comme si on demandait d'élargir la 30 ou la 640. Élargir ces deux autoroutes de banlieu ne ferait que créer des banlieus encore plus loin.

 

Élargir la 40 à 4 ou 5 voies(ce qui devrait être un minimum selon moi) aiderai avec la fluidité du traffic sur cette artère très importante pour la ville de Montréal!

[ToxiK]

Je suis très en faveur de transport en commun et je crois qu'un vrai plan de TOD pour la région de Montréal serait énormément bénéfique. Mais je suis d'accord que la 40 entre les deux 15 a absolument besoin d'être repensée. Deux autoroutes qui n'en deviennent qu'une seule, même sur une courte distance, ça n'a aucun sens.

[Habsfan]

Je suis très en faveur de transport en commun et je crois qu'un vrai plan de TOD pour la région de Montréal serait énormément bénéfique. Mais je suis d'accord que la 40 entre les deux 15 a absolument besoin d'être repensée. Deux autoroutes qui n'en deviennent qu'une seule, même sur une courte distance, ça n'a aucun sens.

 

Bien dit,je d'accord avec toi. JE crois qu'on peux dire que nous sommes tous en faveur d'un plan de transport intelligent est nécessaire pour la ville. Mais de penser que les autos vont disparaître du protrait serait na¸if de notre part. Même avec les prix du pétrole qui augmentent, il y a de plus en plus de véhicules hybrides, et d'ici 10-15 ans, nous verrons des véhicules entièrement électrique sur la route. Donc nos autoroutes seront toujours nécessaires, et la 40 c'est LA plus importante en ville! Il ne faut pas la négliger!

[ErickMontreal]

A litany of problems on Quebec's roads

BRETT BUNDALE, The Gazette

Published: 9 hours ago

 

1970: The de la Concorde Blvd. overpass is built over Highway 19 in Laval. During construction, some diagonal bars and steel reinforcement beams are not anchored properly.

 

2004: After a report requesting an examination of the de la Concorde overpass, an engineer conducts a special inspection. No further action is taken.

 

Sept. 30, 2006: A large piece of concrete falls onto Highway 19 from the overpass. The viaduct collapses an hour later, crushing cars and killing five people.

 

October 2006: The provincial government launches a commission, led former premier Pierre Marc Johnson, to investigate the circumstances that led to the tragedy and to make recommendations to ensure road safety.

 

June 2007: Quebec says it will spend $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion to replace the crumbling 12.76-kilometre Turcot Interchange and its 25 overpasses. Most of the new road system will be built at ground level. Construction is to begin in 2009. The entire project ia to be completed by 2015.

 

July 2007: Transport Quebec announces 135 highway overpasses and elevated ramps could be unsafe and need to be more closely inspected.

 

October 2007: The Johnson commission releases its report. Its 17 recommendations include spending $500 million a year for 10 years on bridge and overpass repair and construction.

 

After the report's release, Premier Jean Charest and Finance Minister Monique Jérôme-Forget announce a $30-billion,

 

15-year plan to overhaul and upgrade provincial roads, buildings and other infrastructure. About $9.8 billion is to go exclusively to Quebec's road network.

 

January 2008: The Quebec government hires a private consultant to see if the Turcot project could be done as a public-private partnership. The conclusion: It would not be big enough to interest the private sector.

 

March 2008: The city of Montreal considers electronic tolls to help fund repairs for worn-out roads and infrastructure.

 

April 2008: Transport Quebec finishes the inspection of 135 highway overpasses and elevated ramps. Four are closed, 22 have a reduced weight restriction until major repairs can be made, 26 have certain restrictions until repairs can be made and 83 have no weight restrictions and require only normal maintenance.

[cjb]

Je me suis blessé solidement hier en vélo à cause d'un énorme nid-de-poule à Montréal.

 

Très dangereux autant pour les voitures que les cyclistes.

[Malek]

Laval plante des arbres

Canoë Virginie Roy

07/08/2008 16h57

 

 

 

Plus de 1 575 arbres et arbustes seront plantés dans le secteur des boulevards Saint-Martin, le Corbusier et du Souvenir, à Laval.

 

© Canoë

 

Si cette année, Mère Nature n’a pas choyé les Québécois cet été, les problèmes reliés aux îlots de chaleur persistent toujours. Afin de contrer ce phénomène, la Ville de Laval a décidé de prendre le taureau par les cornes. Ainsi, près de 2000 arbres seront plantés dans la ville.

 

En effet, la Ville de Laval a fait l’annonce cette semaine de travaux d’aménagement verts qui aideront à combattre les gaz à effet de serre. Une grande quantité d’arbres et d’arbustes seront donc plantés dans la ville, a annoncé le maire de la ville Gilles Vaillancourt. Dans un premier temps, des arbres et arbustes seront plantés dans le secteur des boulevards Saint-Martin, le Corbusier et du Souvenir.

 

Causé par l'urbanisation, un îlot de chaleur se définit comme étant une zone urbaine caractérisée par des températures estivales plus élevées de 5 à 10 degrés Celsius que dans l'environnement adjacent.

 

C’est lors de la séance du conseil municipal du 4 août dernier que la Ville de Laval a décrété des travaux afin d'atténuer les effets incommodants des îlots de chaleur et combattre ainsi les gaz à effet de serre. En plus de contribuer à l'amélioration de la qualité de l'air et de réduire les effets nocifs des îlots de chaleur, cette initiative permettra également à embellir l'environnement urbain de la municipalité.

 

«Plus de 1575 arbres et arbustes seront plantés afin de contribuer à notre objectif de réduire les gaz à effet de serre sur le territoire lavallois. Il est essentiel que nous fassions également notre part en déployant des efforts significatifs pour faire face à une situation qui nous concerne tous», a déclaré dans un communiqué M. Vaillancourt.

Depuis 2004, 169 307 arbres ont été plantés sur le territoire lavallois, ce qui s'ajoute à 2 410 mètres d'écrans végétaux (150 200 saules européens) construits à proximité de voies de circulation. La Ville de Laval tient également à rappeler qu’ils ont aussi acquis près de 3 millions de pieds carrés de milieux naturels, permettant ainsi d'atteindre une superficie de milieux naturels protégés équivalant à 5% du territoire lavallois.

 

http://www2.canoe.com/infos/environnement/archives/2008/08/20080807-165756.html

[le calmar]

Go Laval! Dans 30 ans ça pourrait être beau!

[Malek]

Traffic may be good for you

James Cowan, National Post

Published: Sunday, August 17, 2008

 

Sixty-three minutes is the amount of time the average Canadian spends in traffic each day. People in ancient Greece, Berlin in 1800 and Washington, D.C., in the 1980s all faced roughly the same commute time. The "one-hour rule" is one of the constants of traffic engineering. Regardless of when you lived, where you live or whether you travel by foot, horse, car or commuter train, studies suggest you likely spent roughly 1.1 hours in transit each day.

 

Travellers since antiquity have had an hour daily to ponder the conundrums of commuting. Yet a new book suggests that for all this time spent in traffic, we know shockingly little about it. In Traffic: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us), author Tom Vanderbilt suggests road rage might serve a social purpose, sitting in gridlock could be healthy and that those people who wait until the very last moment to merge into a lane might help traffic flow.

 

During a recent visit to Toronto, Mr. Vanderbilt admitted these facts may become apparent after pondering mountains of academic papers and speaking with traffic experts, but they are harder to intuit while sitting behind the wheel. "The problem is that we all have a different view through our windshield of what the real, objective reality is," he said. "We can't see the whole system to analyze whether there will be a 15% improvement in throughput if we follow traffic a certain way."

 

Mr. Vanderbilt himself experienced a revelation while pondering the phenomenon of late-merging. Like many other drivers, he used to quickly move over when a sign announced his own lane would soon end. Like many drivers, he became frustrated when cars stayed in the dying lane and then nudged over at the last minute.

 

After some research, he discovered that late-merging drivers might not be cheating the system, but helping it instead.

 

As one driver told him: "Isn't it obvious that the best thing to do is for both lanes to be full right up to the last moment . . . That way, the full capacity of the road is being used, and it's fair for everyone, rather than a bunch of people merging early and trying to create an artificial one-lane road earlier than necessary."

 

To some, this may seem like overly aggressive driving, but Mr. Vanderbilt's book suggests highway belligerence is not necessarily a bad thing. If you honk at someone who cuts you off, it just might shame the other driver into being more cooperative in the future.

 

"We instinctively have a desire for justice and we don't like to see the rules that we have agreed upon violated," he said. "It raises the question about if someone is doing something bad in traffic stream and it's going unchecked, is there a benefit in punishing them in some fashion?"

 

(Mr. Vanderbilt also notes that severe road rage is relatively uncommon. Despite some high profile cases, only a dozen people are shot by fellow drivers each year in the United States. Fatigue causes 12% of crashes, leading the author to warn we are better to "watch out for yawning drivers than pistol-packing drivers.)

 

Encouraging more honking and bird-flipping may strike some drivers as a far-fetched way to improve road safety. However, Mr. Vanderbilt notes drivers are equally unlikely to accept far more mundane traffic solutions. For example, most Americans reject roundabouts as a traffic solution despite evidence they reduce both the potential for crashes and delays caused by having to stop for a red light.

 

"There's no reason why we can't have roundabouts in the United States, but in town after town people are complaining about them," Mr. Vanderbilt said. "They've tried to recall politicians in small towns who tried to put in roundabouts. People say they're right for Europe but they're not right for America."

 

Drivers seem equally muddled when it comes to assessing how they feel about their own daily commute. While studies show that satisfaction with one's commute begins to drop when it takes more than 30 minutes each way, there is evidence to suggest people cherish those 30 minutes as a buffer zone between home and work.

 

"If you give people a list of 20 activities, they rank commuting at the bottom of the list," Mr. Vanderbilt said. "But if you ask people how many minutes they want to spend commuting, the answer is not ‘zero minutes,' it's something like 15 minutes."

 

Beyond the one-hour rule for commuting, there are few other constants that can be applied to drivers regardless of what city, country or continent they occupy. One, however, is that most drivers consider themselves superior to everyone else on the road. Studies conducted in the United States, New Zealand and France have all shown that a majority of drivers rank themselves better than average. This is statistically improbable, but demonstrates the gap between driver perception and traffic reality. "The single largest thing that people have wanted to talk to me about is why drivers in the left lane won't get out of the way when I'm going faster," he said. "The idea that the left lane is reserved for faster traffic is a loose thing -- sometimes it's a law, sometimes it's not. But the people who claim it's a law are likely exceeding the speed limit by 15 miles an hour, so it's a bit of chutzpah to complain about people breaking the law by getting in your way."

 

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=730354

[Malek]

 

New York City is testing a small batch of LED streetlights that redesign not only the light, but the entire lamppost as well. With current bulbs rated for about 24,000 hours, the new LED models, which rate for between 50,000 and 70,000 hours, would be a huge improvement. In addition to lasting longer, the LEDs would also use 25% to 30% less energy and emit no harmful chemicals when discarded. The initial test will only consist of a mere six new lampposts, but if it goes well look for the city to start slowly replacing the old versions with these fancy upgrades. Awesome. [NY Times via PSFK]

 

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/lighting-the-big-apple-with-leds/

[JFrosty]

Je rêve du jour où on aura des beaux lampadaires au LED à Montréal!