autoroute 10 Autoroute 10 (Bonaventure - portion au nord du canal (boul. urbain))

[jesseps]

A four-month overhaul of the 44-year-old Bonaventure Expressway will kick off Sunday night with the shutdown of the highway's Montreal-bound lanes from 10 p.m. until 6 am. Monday.

 

The closures will include a shutdown of the Mill St. on ramp, the complete closure of Pierre-Dupuy Ave. under the Bonaventure Expressway as well as the blockade of one of two southbound lanes on Pierre-Dupuy Ave. and one of two lanes on Des Irlandais St. going north. The same shutdowns will be in effect as of 10 p.m. Tuesday night until 6 a.m. Wednesday.

 

On Monday at 10 p.m., lanes of the Bonaventure Expressway heading toward the Champlain Bridge will be closed until 6 a.m. The closures on Pierre-Dupuy Ave. and Des Irlandais St. will be resumed and the Wellington St. on ramp will be closed.

 

Those shutdowns will be repeated between 10 p.m. Thursday until 6 a.m. Friday.

 

The repair work on the Bonaventure Expressway follows maintenance work scheduled for this weekend on the Champlain Bridge.

 

The two of the span's three Montreal-bound lanes will be closed from 10 p.m. Friday night until 8 a.m. Saturday. The same shutdown will recur as of midnight Saturday until 8 a.m. Sunday.

 

For more details on the repair work and detours, go to http://www.pontchamplainbridge.ca/eng/

 

(Courtesy of The Montreal Gazette)

[MTLskyline]

Rethinking the Bonaventure

 

City hall wants to get rid of the elevated expressway -but maybe that's not such a great idea

 

By HENRY AUBIN,

The Gazette June 19, 2010

 

Montreal is the capital of false premises. You know the routine. The Olympics will be self-financing. Mirabel Airport will be essential for meeting future demand for air travel. We can close hospitals and reduce medical personnel without reducing quality of care. A municipal merger will reap economies of scale. A metro to Laval will cost $179 million. Creating the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal will curb urban sprawl. Montreal city hall doesn't need a code of ethics.

 

Now the antennae on my false-premise detector are wiggling again.

 

Hmm. What's this? They are pointing to the plan to demolish that part of the elevated Bonaventure expressway that is between the Lachine Canal and downtown. The problem is the premise that turning the expressway into a ground-level boulevard would ignite a development boom in Griffintown and give Montreal a "prestigious entrance." Jacques Cote, head of the Societe du Havre, the para-public Montreal agency that proposes the project, puts the cost at $141 million in 2008 dollars.

 

Almost everyone -myself included -has bought into this idea ever since former premier Lucien Bouchard, named by the SHM to study the area, first helped pitch it in 2004.

 

One of the rare skeptics is Joe Baker, former dean of Universite Laval's school of architecture and a veteran critic of soulless development.

 

Like many of us, Baker has been concerned about some of the project's secondary features. (One is the SHM's plan to reduce the heavy bus traffic on the ground-level expressway by shunting it to Dalhousie St., near a new residential neighbourhood. Another is the expectation that real-estate developers will clamour to build office towers and condos on the ground-level median strip.) But Baker goes much further. He questions the need to scrap the elevated roadway in the first place.

 

I poked around the expressway yesterday and came away impressed by his arguments.

 

First, when you walk around the streets on either side of the elevated road, you're hardly aware of the traffic above. It's hard to see how bringing traffic to ground level would improve any future residents' quality of life. The traffic's visual presence and its noise would only be that much greater.

 

Second, the SHM has said that a ground-level boulevard would make it easier for pedestrians to get from one side of the roadway to another. But think about it: There'd be eight lanes of traffic.

 

Right now, it's easy to walk under the expressway on the perpendicular streets. Lots of natural light. It's not dark and spooky as it is where St. Antoine St. goes under the train tracks next to Place Bonaventure.

 

Third, there's nothing so bad about the current entrance to the city. I've always found that the metropolis looks attractive as the expressway curves and sweeps into the city.

 

Fourth, and most important, the roadway's underside looks well maintained. No one is saying it's about to fall. Cote tells me it would cost $45 million by 2017 to fix it up to last until 2037.

 

True, that's serious money, but it's a third of the cost of the SHM project. And it doesn't have the downside of ramming about 1,900 buses a day through a sidestreet near hundreds of condos.

 

Baker's solution: Save money and years of traffic-disrupting construction by simply improving the status quo. Replace the parking lots and construction-material depots under the expressway with more creative uses. Refit the expressway and University St. with bus lanes. Don't demolish anything until someone comes up with a superior plan.

 

"The expressway-demolition plan," he says, "is one further indication of the need to establish an urban-planning authority under competent leadership."

 

Amen.

 

Oh, and a final note. Look at my opening list of major schemes based on false premises. What do the medical cutbacks, the merger, the Laval metro and the Communaute metropolitaine de Montreal all have in common? Lucien Bouchard's government dreamt up each. Beware of his brainstorms.

© Copyright © The Montreal Gazette

 

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/montreal/Rethinking+Bonaventure/3173931/story.html#ixzz0rSQ8dzom

[SKYMTL]

the para-public Montreal agency that proposes the project, puts the cost at $141 million in 2008 dollars.

 

So that's what? $500 million in Quebec-cost-overrun dollars?

 

I'm just happy that I'm not the only one who thinks the whole demo of the Bonny is a downright horrible idea which will never spark the redevelopment of Griffintown.

[Habsfan]

Tell you the truth, i'm not exactly sure what would be the best option. I've been using Bonaventure Expy. for as long as I can remember. It's always been my "entrance" to Downtown Mtl. Does it NEED to be torn down? I doubt it, but We've been told that an urban blvd. would be so much better. Is that really the case? Once again, I have my doubts.

 

I can see it coming.... we (our society) will debate about this project for another decade, and by then, the cost of the project will have reached 1 billion$.

Modifié 21 juin 2010 par Habsfan

[Cataclaw]

Bonaventure will still remain, only the last 650m will be at-grade.

 

We sometimes get the impression that a lot will change with this, but the express entrance into town will still be there, it'll just be at-grade.

 

If you're traveling at 70km/h on that stretch of the Bonaventure, you'd normally traverse that distance in 33 seconds. With a new boulevard max 50 zone, you'd traverse that same distance in 47 seconds assuming the lights are well synchronized. We're talking a difference of 14 seconds, something you wouldn't even notice at all. If you spend 40 minutes driving into town, 14 seconds more or less won't change much.

 

In exchange for the 14 seconds of driving time, we get:

a. A grand entrance for the city

b. Better street grid connectivity

c. New land opened for development /w potentially some highrises

d. Better quality of life for a neighborhood

e. Connecting east and west and allowing downtown to expand to the south with greater ease

 

I say it's worth it. If they replaced Bonaventure with a 1-lane road and a bike path, i'd cry foul too, but we're just bringing the road to street level and preserving the number of lanes over 650m of road. From a driver's perspective, it isn't that big of a change!

[Habsfan]

Good points. You've convinced me. Let's do this and stop fvcking around!

[SKYMTL]

And since when do we know how to properly-sync lights here in Montreal?

[IshmaelJones]

Bonaventure will still remain, only the last 650m will be at-grade.

 

We sometimes get the impression that a lot will change with this, but the express entrance into town will still be there, it'll just be at-grade.

 

If you're traveling at 70km/h on that stretch of the Bonaventure, you'd normally traverse that distance in 33 seconds. With a new boulevard max 50 zone, you'd traverse that same distance in 47 seconds assuming the lights are well synchronized. We're talking a difference of 14 seconds, something you wouldn't even notice at all. If you spend 40 minutes driving into town, 14 seconds more or less won't change much.

 

In exchange for the 14 seconds of driving time, we get:

a. A grand entrance for the city

b. Better street grid connectivity

c. New land opened for development /w potentially some highrises

d. Better quality of life for a neighborhood

e. Connecting east and west and allowing downtown to expand to the south with greater ease

 

I say it's worth it. If they replaced Bonaventure with a 1-lane road and a bike path, i'd cry foul too, but we're just bringing the road to street level and preserving the number of lanes over 650m of road. From a driver's perspective, it isn't that big of a change!

 

The difference in time to travel that 650m stretch is far more than 14 seconds...during the rush hours that is (morning and afternoon). If you're riding solo on the Bonav with no congestion and perfectly timed lights, this may be the case, but according to the SHM modelizations and simulations of ruch hour traffic in the new urban blvd, cars take up to 2 extra minutes to cross that stretch (avg 1min 21sec). We must understand that the project aimes to REDUCE vehicular capacity and in doing so, INCREASES car traffic, thereby "encouraging" motorists to opt for public transit options.

 

So, in exchange for 2 extra minutes, we are getting:

a- a grand entrance for the city...but at-grade this time

b- better street grid connectivity for some drivers, worse for most pedestrians, cyclists, and south-shore buses

c- new land - bordered by 8 lanes of traffic - open for development, to compete with canada post project land, Griffintown proj land, Lowney land ... basically cheaper and less polluted land

d- better quality of life for a neighbourhood...a neighbourhood in the south shore no doubt

e- East and west connection already exists and is easier + cleaner, and Bonav doesn't have to go down to facilitate development towards the south...just ask Devimco

 

So, in my opinion, there is no justification for such a waste of our money. Bring the LRT and give the south-shore and mtl the electric link they deserve...and THEN the Bonav (and/or a large urban blvd) will be pretty useless. However, this solution implies that the different levels of government have to actually speak to each other and comm-u-ni-cate.

[monctezuma]

And since when do we know how to properly-sync lights here in Montreal?

 

Lol jamais !?

 

Christophe-Colomb vers le sud à partir de Henri-Bourassa, les lumières sont synchro si tu roules à 75 km/h, mais la limite est du 50

 

St-Laurent à partir de Sherbrooke jusqu'à la 40, certains segments sont synchro, à 60 km/h alors que la limite est de 50, mais ceci ne tient pas compte des bretteux de volan qui conduisent à 40 voir même 30 sur St-Laurent et qui ralentissent le traffic jusqu'à Notre-Dame... Alors là, le synchronisme perd tout son sens et son utilité.

[Davidbourque]

C'est juste que la définition d'être synchro n'est pas la même qu'ailleurs

 

Ailleurs on Synchronise les lumières pour faire circulé les véhicule plus rapidement.

 

Ici, on synchronise les lumières pour arrêter les véhicule le plus possible. (chialage de piéton et cycliste surement..)

 

Notre Dame est aussi synchro vers l'est du tunnel ville marie jusqu'à Pointe-aux-Trembles a 85 Km/H le soir.