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

[gelu88]

I always figured the NIMBY claims were pretty bogus.

 

I use this route everyday and its pretty convoluted, some solution has to be found. But the big disappointment with this is that it is a $100 million investment that is not LRT compatible.

 

This means that any LRT is much further off and that the status quo concerning buses over champlain bridge will continue.

 

At this point if figure we will not see any change in this system until the new champlain is constructed is 2020-2030.

[Cyrus]

I've been to Atlanta every year for the last 4 years, and i spent 2 weeks in Houston 2 years ago. Aside from that i've been to 41 U.S. states and almost every major city. So what i'm about to say is not something random and unfounded -- it is based in experience:

 

Lots of sprawl-cities like Atlanta have excellent little downtown areas that are pleasant and livable. The problem is, these core areas are incredibly small. You walk in any direction for 10 minutes and you've left the core and suddenly you're surrounded by parking lots, fields, highways and single-family homes surrounded by large fences. Once you exit the core, you're in a different world entirely: one where you must get around by car or you'll be walking for hours.

 

In Montreal you could walk from the beginning of Sherbrooke in the ouest all the way to the industrial areas in the east and still be "in the city". You'd still be walking on shop-lined streets with bustling activity. Not so in Atlanta and other cities.

 

You might point out that NYC has an even crazier urban intensity but they have tons of highways and roads there too. Well, the key is balance.

 

NYC metro has a population in the 8-digit range. There are tens of millions of people living there, and over 8 million in city-proper. Over a million alone on the tiny island of Manhattan!! When you consider the huge density, the number of highways they have is actually modest. NYC's per-capita highway density is actually fairly low.

 

So again, it's about having a balance. Too many roads and you end up with an unsustainable and sprawl-prone city like Atlanta, too few roads and your economy suffers along with tourism, just the right number and your city prospers.

 

Please understand that i've never been an anti-car advocate. I strongly support the construction of A-30, A-25 and even the A-19 extensions. However, that being said, there is a very strong logic behind maintaining an ideal balance. People have been studying roads and cities for decades (and even centuries) and the consensus is that an optimal balance is necessary. You just can't have too many roads and you just can't have none either. Period.

 

I leave you with an example of a city that unquestionably has a road problem, one that has a good balance, and one that has too few roads:

 

Too many roads: Rochester, NY. This city has a ring-road built to autoroute standards surrounding its core. It's the periphery road with the shortest radius in the world! 500 meters! Can you believe it? You walk 6 blocks and you're already at the other end of the loop! This road has placed a huge grip on downtown Rochester, which is suffering badly. The road itself is virtually unused (i've driven on it, i've seen it for myself). Such a road is simply unnecessary. As a result, city officials have laid out plans to tear down the loop starting with the eastern part in order to let the city breathe.

 

Possibly too few roads: Vancouver. I know many people would disagree with me, but hear me out first : I feel that mass transit, though it is good in and around the core, i find it somewhat lacking in other parts. I think Vancouver has two options to correct this problem: Build more transit, or build an extra highway. At the moment, they're building a lot of extra transit with plans on the table to expand their network even more, so an extra road might not even be necessary if they continue like this. Time will tell, but Vancouver is experiencing solid population growth and issues might yet arise in the future.

 

Just the right balance: Montreal. And the proof? Look at our city. We have vast stretches of pure urban fabric. Look at a satelite view of Montreal then look at a satelite view of Pittsburgh. Montreal is continuous mass of city in all directions. Even our suburbs are fairly urban. Take a walk in many parts of Longueuil or Brossard or Laval and you'll notice a distinctively urban vibe going on. Our sprawl is very modest by North American standards. Now, i'm not saying our network is perfect, there are certainly improvements to be made (such as A-30, A-25, Turcot, adding lanes to the 15/20 between Turcot and Champlain, holy crap) but our huge offering of transit options is what gives us tremendous success. Road, bike, foot, metro, bus, train... we have all of these options in relative abundance. Go Montreal!!

 

Vancouver is getting a bunch of new roads under the Gateway Program. A lot of the new roads are unnecessarily crappy, particularly the approaches to the new Golden Ears Bridge, I mean 60 km/h ... damnit there is plenty room for a freeway standard and the associated 110 km/h speed limit. TransLink is wondering why nobody is using it and the toll revenue is too low...

 

They are also replacing the Port Mann Bridge with a new 10 lane structure with reserved bus lanes. Vancouver has been doing a lot of megabuck public transit projects for decades, like the SkyTrain, but that stuff is useless for the people in Abbotsford or my personal favorite, Coquitlam (say that 10 times fast). At least Montreal has heavy rail service in all directions (except east, LOL) and subway to Longueil and Laval.

 

Vancouver has serious mobility problems in and around the region, a lot of this is due to the geography and many deep and long waterways (somewhat like Montreal-South Shore) and a lot of the newer issues is from BANANA types.

 

One advantage to "sprawly" cities like Hotlanta is that homes are inexpensive and kickass. I've seen some of these HGTV shows where people are spending 300 k on basically a McMansion. OK, but damn, it's a mansion. The house next door to mine is listed at 375k and it is a cramped and ugly turd. In Vancouver that house would be 1.8 million easily, but still a turd (but still, a livable turd)

 

But are Rochester's ailments due to their road infrastructure, or just due to their being one of America's industrial heartland towns that basically all have been ailing and in some cases completely degenerated (East Camden, NJ anyone?)

 

An unnecessary road is certainly unnecessary.

 

But when a road is highly congested and offering a low level of service to the users, then IMO it is obvious that the level of service needs to be increased, either via road improvements (adding lanes, removing accesses, interchanges...) or network duplication (e.g. a ring road to bypass the original road).

 

Any city needs to offer a balanced amount of transportation options, any city with a large downtown core (e.g. Montreal) absolutely requires some kind of rapid-transit system like our subway. If you want to get around downtown Mtl, the metro kicks ass and is generally unbeatable. If you want to get from one side of downtown to the other side, well nothing will beat the Ville-Marie (takes about what, two minutes?)

 

The LOS in the metro rush hours, particularly orange line, is crap ever since the Laval stations opened, they need more trains on the tracks.

 

You need to have all kinds of options, but all of the options have to actually be... usable for lack of a better word. How can a city be "livable" when the residents are stuck in traffic all day, or crammed like sardines in the metro...

 

There is no excuse for the Metropolitan or Notre-Dame St, or even the VSP interchange, where the 20 east will back up all the way to Dorval Circle in the morning, and the 20 west all the way to the St Jacques exit of the Ville-Marie in the evening (holy crap!). Meanwhile the 40 backs up all the way from Vaudreuil to Repentigny, both ways, twice a day

 

The Bonaventure is a low-standard very crappy excuse of a freeway, typical of 1960's urban design, cutting corners to reduce property acquisition and construction costs but amplifying traffic problems. Example how in the winter everyone slides off the road because the curve is too sharp

 

But already the road operates at a very poor level of service, and the new project reduces the capacity by half (their estimation). Above all this road is a commuter / regional link road used for travel and has to accomodate that travel. Something like Ste-Catherine St. is just a shopping mall used as a destination and can handle a traffic-unfriendly design, sort of.

 

Even already the area sucks... I mean for example last Monday I was driving south down University St. at 11:30 AM. I am at the light at Rene-Levesque, and Rene-Levesque gets gridlocked, a mail van and a delivery truck block the box like AH'es and I was stuck waiting at the green for almost all of the cycle, until the delivery truck was able to move a few metres for me to go around, and almost hit the oncoming northbound traffic on University... This isn't rush-hour, it is almost the complete opposite, but the level of service for Rene-Levesque and University is basically F! And access is poor since southbound University is only allowed to go straight, no turning.

 

It would be pretty sweet considering the hill here, to dig and put University below Rene-Levesque and raise RL on a overpass structure, to permit motor and foot traffic to flow freely. Aside from the existing St-Jacques St. intersection, I don't think there would be any other really killer intersections in the new project, but these two intersections desperately require grade separation. It could even be aesthetically pleasing, have some local artists make it look nice, or perhaps give it a treatment like Queen-Mary Rd. on the Decarie. Or if I can really dream, partially sunken SPUI at both locations.

Modifié 18 juillet 2010 par Cyrus

[Cataclaw]

But are Rochester's ailments due to their road infrastructure, or just due to their being one of America's industrial heartland towns that basically all have been ailing and in some cases completely degenerated (East Camden, NJ anyone?)

 

An unnecessary road is certainly unnecessary.

 

A bit of both. Rochester was hit hard, but the ring road has contributed towards making the area undesirable as well.

 

Any city needs to offer a balanced amount of transportation options

 

Yep. Balance is the golden rule.

 

The LOS in the metro rush hours, particularly orange line, is crap ever since the Laval stations opened, they need more trains on the tracks.

 

You need to have all kinds of options, but all of the options have to actually be... usable for lack of a better word. How can a city be "livable" when the residents are stuck in traffic all day, or crammed like sardines in the metro...

 

Sadly yes. I hope they do something about this! Just increase the frequency of trains! Yeah it costs more, but just find a way to do it already!

 

 

There is no excuse for the Metropolitan or Notre-Dame St, or even the VSP interchange, where the 20 east will back up all the way to Dorval Circle in the morning, and the 20 west all the way to the St Jacques exit of the Ville-Marie in the evening (holy crap!). Meanwhile the 40 backs up all the way from Vaudreuil to Repentigny, both ways, twice a day

 

It's a delicate balance. A very delicate balance. Traffic is good and actually necessary, because it's a deterrent that encourages people to use public transit. If everything flowed perfectly 100% of the time nobody would take public transit, ever, and sprawl would increase 20-fold. We'd end up with a city so spread out that it stretches all the way to the U.S. border! A city who's footprint is so huge experiences a wide array of problems, problems that i've outlined in previous posts.

 

That being said... too much traffic is bad too, for all the obvious reasons. I find it totally unacceptable that A-15/20 headed towards Turcot from Champlain is 2 freaking lanes wide. The 4th busiest bridge in the world leads directly to... a narrow winding 2-lane stretch of highway?!? Which leads to Turcot a few km later... i mean come on. It's time we doubled the lanes on A-15/20 between Turcot and Champlain to 4-lanes each direction. It's just silly.

 

The Bonaventure is a low-standard very crappy excuse of a freeway, typical of 1960's urban design, cutting corners to reduce property acquisition and construction costs but amplifying traffic problems. Example how in the winter everyone slides off the road because the curve is too sharp

 

But already the road operates at a very poor level of service, and the new project reduces the capacity by half (their estimation). Above all this road is a commuter / regional link road used for travel and has to accomodate that travel. Something like Ste-Catherine St. is just a shopping mall used as a destination and can handle a traffic-unfriendly design, sort of.

 

Agreed that Bonaventure is pretty crappy 1960's design. However, it isn't used all that much (it's vehicles-per-day count is very low compared to all other highways in and around the island). I don't think the Bonaventure is a regional link at all, considering its very short length. The Bonaventure is a quick way to get into town, but... that won't change with the reconstruction project. It'll still be a fairly quick way to get into town, minus the horrendously cracked and bumpy surface lol.

 

 

Even already the area sucks... I mean for example last Monday I was driving south down University St. at 11:30 AM. I am at the light at Rene-Levesque, and Rene-Levesque gets gridlocked, a mail van and a delivery truck block the box like AH'es and I was stuck waiting at the green for almost all of the cycle, until the delivery truck was able to move a few metres for me to go around, and almost hit the oncoming northbound traffic on University... This isn't rush-hour, it is almost the complete opposite, but the level of service for Rene-Levesque and University is basically F! And access is poor since southbound University is only allowed to go straight, no turning.

 

It would be pretty sweet considering the hill here, to dig and put University below Rene-Levesque and raise RL on a overpass structure, to permit motor and foot traffic to flow freely. Aside from the existing St-Jacques St. intersection, I don't think there would be any other really killer intersections in the new project, but these two intersections desperately require grade separation. It could even be aesthetically pleasing, have some local artists make it look nice, or perhaps give it a treatment like Queen-Mary Rd. on the Decarie. Or if I can really dream, partially sunken SPUI at both locations.

 

Ok... now that's just nuts, no offense. We were finding some common ground here and achieving some consensus on some issues, but thatlast paragraph just blows me away, lol. You're proposing we dig a trench and have University pass under René-Lévesque like Sherbrooke/Berri? Why?! That's terrible! We're in downtown!! That would instantly wreck the entire urban fabric of the area. Why don't we build a clover-leaf interchange for Sainte-Catherine--Saint-Laurent while we're at it?

[Cyrus]

This is probably one of the biggest problems in Montreal, the lack of real planning on a "network" basis

 

For example, twinning the 15 between Turcot and Nun's Island would reduce some of the paralysis on the 20 and Decarie at Turcot, but you would still have massive congestion, because there are only three available lanes on Champlain (and the Bonaventure is going on one of them), and only two lanes on the "reverse peak". Seriously, it is more of a PITA to get OUT of Montreal in the morning than to get into it...

 

Meanwhile they want to reduce capacity on Bonaventure, which will massively increase the number of cars going north on 15 and taking the 720 exit, which currently ends at a "yield" unlike all the other freeway movements on Turcot. At rush hour the traffic there has to come to a stop, then floor the gas when a (rare) opening exists, but the volume on that movement is going to substantially increase.

 

The Champlain bridge is fixing to fall into the water, the feds have mentioned some words of a new 10 lane structure to replace the bridge.

 

Work is already ongoing to replace the interchanges all over Nun's Island.

 

And of course the 20 and Turcot are supposed to be entirely replaced.

 

Adding capacity is necessary and can be successful instead of just pushing bottlenecks, since virtually everything needs to be replaced completely at the same time.

 

But for various reasons, perhaps because of the JCCBI and MTQ and etc, nobody is thinking ahead to accomodate any kind of capacity increase... (well OK, the JCCBI said that the Nun's Island work is designed to accomodate a new bridge)

Modifié 18 juillet 2010 par Cyrus

[jesseps]

But for various reasons, perhaps because of the JCCBI and MTQ and etc, nobody is thinking ahead to accomodate any kind of capacity increase... (well OK, the JCCBI said that the Nun's Island work is designed to accomodate a new bridge)

 

The Government never thought ahead. A good friend of mine. His grandfather designed most of the bridges in Montreal. His grandfather told him that the government and the city just wanted everything to be like 2 lanes, but he pretty much had to force them to use the 3 lanes.

 

To me it seems the City and the Government have no real vision and want to try and build some sort of utopian society here in Montreal that nothing happens or they want to keep everything small. So whoever can't take it anymore just moves out to another city.

 

Even if we tried to fix the problem now. It be a huge mess. It be so hard to make most of the highways 4-5-6 lanes.

[Cataclaw]

Meanwhile they want to reduce capacity on Bonaventure, which will massively increase the number of cars going north on 15 and taking the 720 exit

 

Why do you keep assuming this?

 

The Bonaventure has very low circulation (by autoroute standards) and only a few hundred meters of the Bonaventure will be rebuilt at ground-level. Why would so many vehicles detour by the 15/720? That makes no sense at all. You're greatly greatly exaggerating the impact this will have on circulation.

[gelu88]

But for various reasons, perhaps because of the JCCBI and MTQ and etc, nobody is thinking ahead to accomodate any kind of capacity increase... (well OK, the JCCBI said that the Nun's Island work is designed to accomodate a new bridge)

 

Which brings us to another issue regarding the future of auto transportation. Its pretty well understood that gas prices will rise in the future, the only question is how much.

 

Do you really think auto traffic will continue to increase with $1.50, $2 or more gas?

 

 

because any infrastructure we build today will live in that reality. Its the same reason Bergeron is so Tram and bike crazy and its why this recent wave of "anti-car" policies are moving forward.

[Cyrus]

Which brings us to another issue regarding the future of auto transportation. Its pretty well understood that gas prices will rise in the future, the only question is how much.

 

Do you really think auto traffic will continue to increase with $1.50, $2 or more gas?

 

Definitely... the price has consistently been increasing and the traffic likewise... and inflation comes up on the other side as well. This also ignores alternative energy developments that could reduce the variable cost of operation significantly (e.g. Volt, Leaf and the simple natural gas...), the past is by far the best predictor of the future. The most annoying phenomenon particularly in Montreal is consistently increasing taxation of motor fuels, but that is an artificial problem.

 

The oil market has always been very volatile due to non-competitive pressures (OPEC) and the "finite, non-renewable" concept of petroleum, but of course there is no shortage of oil nor will there be in the forseeable future, so you end up with these long-term semi-stable price punctuated by massive spikes and just as massive crashes (like the 2003-2008 going up to 147$/bbl and crashing to 35$ shortly thereafter, just as in the 1979-1986 era).

 

There are also many inexpensive ways to power a vehicle, you could even do like they did in the Second World War and run your car on carbon monoxide made from wood, coal, garbage etc in a generator trailer (or perhaps installed in the back of a pick-up). Not user-friendly like gasoline, or as powerful, but very cheap!

 

Or move that process upwards and make synthetic fuels, particularly with the new "shale gas" technology, the natural gas market of the world and particularly North America is heavily oversupplied. One of the biggest CO2 emissions of man is actually wasted "flare" natural gas that is in areas not accessible for pipelines (e.g. Middle East, Nigeria). It is simple to produce very high quality gasolines from natural gas (GTL process), if oil prices rise for a long time, "free" flare gas and inexpensive shale gas will start to be converted to marketable petroleum liquid products (and of course the obvious and already existing CNG and LNG powered automobiles, common all around Europe and utility companies in N.America)...

Modifié 18 juillet 2010 par Cyrus

[Cataclaw]

Actually, that's not correct.

 

When gas rose dramatically in the U.S. a few years ago and it was a big issue, studies were performed and they pointed to one conclusion: Many people were abandoning distant suburbs in favor of closer ones, or abandoning the suburbs altogether in favor of the city center. People switched from car --> public transit in droves, and some even sold their cars to help make ends meet.

 

Gas prices fell, and things went "back to normal". If gas prices were to rise to 6$/gal, there would be a significant move towards mass transit.

[Cyrus]

Certainly there would be a bit of a change as people on the edge of where public transit is competitive will move over, but long-term, maybe instead of say a 5% annual growth in AADT and a comparitive 3% in public transit, you'd have 4% and 6% where that 1% of people move to the other mode... the only way you are going to have stagnation or decline in traffic is if the city gets Detroited and the population and economy plunges (but in the dynamic and prosperous suburban areas there is still lots of traffic)

 

If you look at what happened in the last spike, gasoline consumption in the US did go down. But primarily this was due to people not going on vacation... certainly, the traffic jams didn't disappear. Public transit use rose, but if 90% of people drive, and public transit sees a 10% higher ridership, it isn't very much.

 

Personally I remember when the gas was 1,50$/L and I was spending hours stuck in traffic to get into town, much worse than usual. Of course, at the same time, the MTQ had closed half the Ville-Marie for repair work so that played a big role, but it seemed evident that the number of vehicles going wasn't significantly less (especially in a global sense with people using other roads)

Modifié 19 juillet 2010 par Cyrus