Category Archives: Let’s make this an election issue

A modest proposal, Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Montréal Landmarks, Perspectives on the City, Social commentary, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

Ten Attractions and Services we Bafflingly do not have in Montréal { part 1 }

2 Comments

This was originally going to be a list of ten items but I realized it was going to be an immense article. So I cut it in half and will finish it in part 2, due out shortly. I think it’s in our interest to keep these items in mind for our 375th anniversary, because frankly I’m starting to wonder just how we’re getting by without them. I can only hope this list serves as an astounding reminder of that which our metropolis is sorely missing.

1. Street vendors – I’ve complained about this many times before, and indeed, I do think it’s ridiculous for a city such as ours to have the kinds of restrictions we have vis-a-vis ultra-small scale business ventures. Especially in tough economic times such as these, the citizenry should have numerous options to sustain themselves through small-scale enterprise. Thus, we should relax restrictions so as to permit food vendors, newspaper kiosks with limited dépanneur services, busking and artisanal vendors within certain recognized public areas. Ideally, a network of city-owned kiosks, such as our Camilliennes, would be managed and rented to prospective entrepreneurs. Furthermore, free public markets akin to St. Mark’s Square in New York City should be integrated into urban residential areas. We are not completely without vendors in this city, nor we completely lacking in the necessary infrastructure. It’s just that we’re still too restrictive in an area of macro-economics that requires an open and competitive market. Let’s crack this nut wide open. In addition to providing numerous city and entrepreneurial jobs, such an initiative has the added advantage of ensuring our street corners and public places are peopled in part by individuals who have an interest in maintaining the security and safety of said place. It adds a lot of alert eyes and ears to our urban environment and can be used to increase security in the urban environment in a non-invasive fashion.

2. Public washrooms – a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned. Our city is unfortunately battered periodically by knock-out blasts of shit, piss and puke. While the smell of manure tends to be seasonal (i.e. – any time large-scale field fertilizing takes place anywhere in the St. Lawrence agricultural basin), the piss and vomit affront to your olfactory sensibilities is largely the result of the fact that we have too few public washrooms in this city. Frankly, if you don’t want homeless people shitting and pissing in the Métro tunnels and are tired of having to negotiate using washrooms at fast food restaurants and gas stations, then we need the city to propose a proper solution. Public washrooms, whether in the form of full service rest stations or stand-alone ‘pissoires’ are a vital necessity in any metropolis. For one its convenient, helpful and can even be turned into a small-scale business opportunity. Second, it allows the homeless to retain some dignity by offering them a valuable and necessary service they all too often have to fight for. And while in the past public washrooms were a public nuisance, replete with old drunks and various debaucheries, today we can use design and technology to mitigate this problem. In some cases it could be as simple as posting an attendant to ensure public rest facilities are kept clean and safe for all to use. And whatever the cost, it will pay for itself in that we’ll all benefit from a cleaner, more sanitary and human city.

3. Ferry service – in case you haven’t realized, Montréal is an island, the largest in fact in an archipelago at the confluence of the Outaouais and St. Lawrence rivers. It’s densely populated central business district and urban core is wedged in along the St. Lawrence and the eastern side of Mount Royal, adjacent to the sprawling Port of Montréal. And yet, for a city with a long and proud seafaring history, we are completely lacking in ferry service. If you consider all the communities along the St. Lawrence, Lac-St-Louis and Lac des Deux Montagnes, you quickly realize there is an exceptionally large population within the metropolitan region that can be accessed by using our local waterways. With almost a million people living on the South Shore and four overloaded bridges, I wonder why no one has yet considered developing ferry services for commuters? Service to communities to the West of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge would require terminals to be constructed either on the outside of the Seaway or with modifications to the Seaway, but either way, ferries offer considerable advantages to commuters. Among others, ferries can transport large quantities of people (not to mention vehicles) quickly across open waterways and deliver them right into the heart of the city. They’re arguably more efficient than trains and could open up the commuter zone to many distant communities, not to mention leave a smaller carbon footprint than a high-capacity bridge or tunnel.

4. A pedestrian deck on the Jacques-Cartier Bridge – this is a no-brainer. Simply put there’s no nice way to walk across the St. Lawrence, and while the Jacques-Cartier Bridge has both a pedestrian walkway and a bicycle lane, it’s hardly a nice walk. Traffic is deafening, the pathway is narrow and caged in (giving the impression of a very narrow prison yard) and the fact is the walkway seems bolted on and not terribly sturdy. It’s a doable walk for the adventurous, but not exactly ideal for tourists, families, the elderly or handicapped. Building an overhead deck would provide an excellent solution to this problem, and make the Jacques-Cartier Bridge a tourist attraction in its own right, akin to the Brooklyn Bridge. A renovation of the Art Deco support structure on Ile-Ste-Helene could allow for the provision of services and shops, while the upper deck could serve artisans and buskers, saving the existing pedestrian walkways for the exclusive use of bicycles. Moreover, a pedestrian deck would allow the crossing to remain open to motor vehicles when it would otherwise be closed for spectators watching fireworks displays.

5. A design museum & research institute – back in 2006 Montréal was proclaimed an international city of design by UNESCO, and for good reason too. We are in effect a global powerhouse when it comes to design, featuring not only ICOGRADA but some of the very finest design programs offered at any university, let alone the massive advertising, media and fashion sectors of the local economy which employs a great number of designers. It’s clear we take our aesthetics seriously, and we pride ourselves on our excellent architecture and urban planning. Yet at the end of the day, we have no facility to educate the public as to the importance of design, nor do we have an associated research facility to propel innovation in design. As long as this lasts our hold on the UNESCO title remains tenuous and subject to market forces. A design museum and research institute would help secure our status as leaders in design, not to mention provide an attraction geared to a mobile, well-educated and prosperous international audience. If there are tourists we desperately want to attract to our city, it is certainly those with the potential to invest in our city and the connections to propel interest.

Here’s what’s next:

6. A bilingual university
7. An aviation museum
8. A monument to world peace
9. Linear parks
10. A hockey museum & research centre

A modest proposal, Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Montréal Landmarks, Perspectives on the City, Scenes from the City, Social commentary, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

Montréal’s Lost Attractions – Keep this in mind for the 375th!

4 Comments

Our city has been built on birthday presents.

For Canada’s Centennial Anniversary we got a Métro system and 50 million tourists in six months, not to mention world attention and twenty+ years of urban renewal and densification projects. For the 350th anniversary of the founding of Ville-Marie, we got skyscrapers, new parks and a thoroughly rejuvenated harbour front. In less than six years we will celebrate not only the 375th anniversary of our city’s founding, but the nation’s sesquicentennial and the fiftieth anniversary of Expo as well. What a party! As you may well imagine, the City is looking for suggestions with regards to themes and ideas for the celebration. I can’t think of anything specific and all-encompassing yet (no kidding!), so I thought it might be an idea to explore some of our lost attractions to see if we can’t think of something worth saving now to be operational by 2017.

I’ve listed some examples in no particular order, ask yourself whether we’re better off without them.

1. The Montréal Aquarium – so we once had an aquarium located on Ile-Ste-Helene, a gift from Alcan to the City of Montréal for Expo 67. Today, part of the pavilion remains as part of La Ronde, though every time I pass by it seems painfully under-used. Opened in 1966, the aquarium featured local species of marine life in addition to penguins and a group of dolphins. The dolphins were trained and were featured in many live presentations, and could even access Lac des Dauphins (now best known as the launch site for the fireworks each Summer) through a specially built tunnel. The aquarium shut down for good in 1991 after a decade’s worth of bad publicity as a result of a labour strike which resulted in the deaths of some of the dolphins. When it was opened to the public in the mid-1960s it was a state of the art facility comparable to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

2. The Montreal Funicular – if you ever take the 80 going up Parc Avenue in the Winter take a look at the mountain between Pine and Rachel, you may notice an odd dark line working it’s way up the side. At first glance it may appear to be little more than a rockslide, but make no mistake, this is actually all that remains of the Mount Royal funicular railway, which over a hundred years ago provided the path of least resistance to the top of Mount Royal. A the top was a rickety wooden platform offering a tree-top perspective on the bustling metropolis below. It didn’t last too long, going up against Frederick Law Olmstead’s protestations in 1884 and deemed structurally unsound by 1920 when it was dismantled. While I’m not in favour of cutting up the side of the Mountain to build a new funicular, I wouldn’t mind seeing a return of the No. 11 tram line to speed people to the top of Mount Royal.

3. Le Pélican – this is a full-size replica of Le Pélican, a ship commanded by Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, born in Ville-Marie in 1661. The Pélican was abandoned after being holed below the waterline during the Battle of the Hudson’s Bay during the War of the Grand Alliance in 1697 after successfully repelling an attack by a superior English naval force. In 1987 construction commenced in La Malbaie on a full-size replica of this famous ship, which was brought to Montréal and moored here as part of our 350th anniversary. I remember visiting the ship with my brother and parents back in `92 or `93, though it wouldn’t be long before the project failed and the replica was sold to some American theme park. It has since been severely damaged and isn’t being used. One of the big problems for the project was their inability to secure authentic artifacts (or even replicas) for the interior of the ship, and thus had little to offer guests in the ways of demonstrating what life would have been like on a 17th century French warship. I wonder if such a project could succeed today. Isn’t it odd that a seafaring city such as ours doesn’t have a maritime museum?

4. Eaton’s Ninth Floor – when I was a young lad my mother worked in the city, and I thought this to be terribly grand, worth every minute of the commute. Up high amongst the skyscrapers, in with the hustle and bustle, in beautifully designed testaments to human ingenuity and innovation. She told me of eating here, that is was very popular amongst the white-collar crowd. A restaurant designed to look like an ocean liner (which of course translated in my young mind as being fisherman-themed and offering a uniquely all-seafood menu), it would be much later before I saw this gem of Art Deco interior design. The space still exists, though it has been mothballed pending renovation work that never seems to get off the ground. It’s apparently beginning to show signs of decomposition, and has been on Héritage Montréal’s watchlist for some time. It makes me wonder why the city doesn’t step-in and try to successfully operate a full-service, for-profit restaurant. People ate there as long as it was open (more than sixty years) simply because the food was delicious and reasonably-priced, and the setting was jaw-droppingly beautiful. Today office workers munch on Tim Horton’s while looking at their computer screens. C’mon…

5. Corrid’art – a simple project that transformed Sherbrooke Street from Pie-IX to Atwater into a nine-kilometer long outdoor art gallery, featuring the works of some sixty major local artists. It was supposed to be the principle cultural component of the XXI Olympiad, but the entire project was scrapped (literally) at the last minute by Mayor Drapeau, who considered it obscene and ugly. It was up for about two days, and was designed to feature some 700 performances spread out along the route. Moreover, this project had an urban-planning component, wherein it’s design allowed a aesthetic link to be made between the Olympic Park and the Downtown for tourists unfamiliar with the city. Why isn’t this done every year during the temperate months for precisely the same reasons (to showcase local artists and ‘connect’ the Olympic Park with the city?)

6. The Last Vaudeville/Atmospheric Theatres (including The Rialto, The Empress, the Loew’s Palace and Imperial Theatres). Of these four once great theatres only the Rialto and Imperial remain somewhat operational, though neither offer the regularly scheduled programming of multi-purpose theatre spaces you may find elsewhere. The Empress is a perpetual ‘what-if’ and the Palace is now a high-end gym. For a city constantly kvetching about lack of venue space, I wonder again why our city refrains from purchasing these local landmarks to be used as for-profit venues with regularly scheduled programming largely featuring local talent? Imagine if the City took it a step further, using revenue collected from ticket and concession sales, rentals and affiliated businesses to finance the renovations of other theatres? The point is that declaring some building a heritage site is a largely worthless gesture unless you plan on using it for its intended purpose. Either way, if other city’s can save their antique theatres, so can we.

We might not be able to fully articulate why we need these kinds of attractions except to say that it’s ultimately good for business and good for tourism. For me it’s an issue of following through on investments and never abandoning a project that involved or involves tax-payer money.

We’re a unique city in that we can depend on a steady stream of tourists each year, but from time to time we need to ‘spend money to make money later’ – key sectors of the economy need to be stimulated occasionally by city-led redevelopment projects, and these projects have in the past led to some of our greatest achievements. Now might not be the best time to plan an Expo or another Olympics, but you should know we’re better equipped to handle events of that size today than we were when we had them initially. We have better infrastructure, two international airports, an excellent mass-transit system and more convention and hotel space than we know what to do with – this is ours to use to turn a profit for our city, for ourselves. And while we still need to plan large international events to stimulate development on a large scale, there are still plenty of things we can do on a much smaller scale to increase tourism and tourist revenue. And what better place to look for inspiration than our own history books?

A modest proposal, Economic commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Montréal Landmarks, Perspectives on the City, Political commentary, Social commentary, Unrealized development projects, What were they thinking?, Worth reconsidering

A few things every Montrealer ought to know about Mirabel International Airport

11 Comments

So I’ve been having a lot of discussions about Mirabel over the last few weeks, thought I’d share some ideas.

1. We still need it. Montréal is a major international tourism destination in addition to being a key port of entry for immigrants and refugees. Our city is growing as is interest in our city, this is undeniable. As we stimulate our development and continue on our path to becoming a truly global city, we will require an airport that can handle a steadily increasing number of passengers. Such an airport will grow, by necessity, to serve a steadily increasing population base and will stimulate industrial development around it. It is for these reasons primarily that Montréal must shift its focus away from Trudeau and back towards Mirabel. Trudeau is at capacity, Mirabel is only one-sixth of its planned size. What else is there to do? Moreover, it would be advantageous to re-purpose Trudeau to handle cargo flights and aircraft manufacturing and maintenance, given the existing concentration of industry and infrastructure adjacent to the airport. Mirabel, by contrast, is located in a rural area with plenty of room to grow. Built away from the city, Mirabel can operate twenty-four hours a day and a purpose-built infrastructure can be implemented so as to make access to the airport efficient and effective across the metropolitan region. Similar infrastructure redevelopment in Dorval is proving exceptionally difficult to implement.

2. The lack of access that led to Mirabel’s demise is either currently being implemented, in use, or otherwise still on the drawing board. Highway 50 from the National Capital Region (population 1.4 million) is about to be completed, I believe, as far as the intersection with Highway 15. The AMT runs trains between Montréal and Mirabel, on a track which can access the Deux-Montagnes Line (and by extension Gare Centrale), in addition to the Parc Intermodal Station. The train station at the airport has already been completed. We’re closer to realizing high-speed rail access to the airport than we realize – the problem is that we’re focusing on the wrong airport. Completing Highway 50 so that it connects with Highway 40 near Repentigny will allow a Northern bypass to mirror the now completed Highway 30 Southern bypass. And what better way to justify the construction of a new South Shore span than by simultaneously completing Highways 13 and 19? This way, the Montréal metropolitan region would be served by four East-West Highways intersected by a similar number of North-South Highways. A ring-road would be created, and Mirabel would finally be able to adequately serve the metro region, providing the catalyst and focal point for new highway development. And that’s just the highways. While the Fed claims high-speed rail is an expensive dream, there’s no denying the very real demand within our own metropolitan region – so let us lead the development by starting on a smaller scale. A bullet train running between the Downtown of Montréal and Mirabel will lead to the creation of a high-speed rail link between Mirabel and Ottawa. Then it will be expanded from Mirabel to Québec City. A train travelling at 120km/hour could run the distance between Ottawa and Mirabel in about an hour. At a slightly higher speed the trip from Mirabel to Downtown Montréal could be made in as little as fifteen minutes. All of this would improve transit and transport throughout the region, and expand our airport market to a considerably larger population, perhaps more than five million people across three borders. Let’s pay for it now so that we may profit from it tomorrow.

3. Low jet-fuel prices and longer-range aircraft made stopping at Mirabel unnecessary in the 1980s and 1990s and gave rise to Pearson Int’l Airport in Toronto as chief Canadian gateway due to the rise of Toronto’s economic prominence and rapid population growth. Today, fuel prices are high and unstable; though aircraft have grown in size considerably, so Mirabel may once again be in position to wrestle away the title of Eastern Gateway from Toronto. This is the kind of economic competition our State requires, and perhaps Toronto may be better off re-focusing it’s efforts on trans-hemispheric travel. Who knows? I’d just like to see what would happen if we pushed ahead with Mirabel to take business away from Pearson. It’s what capitalism is all about right? Better public transit access to strategically situated airports able to adapt to new technologies will define the gateways of tomorrow, and for this reason Mirabel is superior to Pearson in many respects. Let’s see what the free market has to say about it. Again, Pearson, though large, is nearing capacity and constrained from large-scale growth by what has already grown up beside it. And we can’t grow unless we have the infrastructure to allow for growth. So whereas the citizens of Toronto may one day have to plan an entirely new airport even further away from the city centre, all we have to do re-connect our airport to our metropolitan ‘circulatory system’. The advantage will soon be ours.

4. Mirabel wasn’t designed to fail – we let it fail. Fixing it is still a possibility, but we need to act quickly so we can save what’s already been built. We don’t want to have to start from scratch at some point in the future because we lacked foresight today – that’s criminally negligent economic policy. We spent a lot of money in the past and haven’t seen a decent return on our investment. So, invest anew – but invest in fixing the problem, once and for all. Whatever the initial cost, it cannot compare to the potential return a fully operational Mirabel would provide in terms of direct revenue and indirect economic stimulus. There are no mistakes, just innovative solutions. If we were really smart, we’d recognize that planned regional transit and transport projects can be brought together under a larger plan to provide the access necessary to make Mirabel a viable solution to our airport problem. Ultimately, it’s all inter-related and could stimulate key sectors of our local economy.

We were once a daring and imaginative people, we had bold ideas and planned on a grand scale. Somewhere along the way we became convinced we were no longer capable of performing at the same level, and settled into a holding pattern of society-wide malaise. Today we are restless, and we are daring to ask how we came to be, and where our former power came from. Of late, it seems that we’ve regained our swagger, our attitude. So let us push those in power to dream big once more, and push for the long-term, multi-generational city-building we were once so good at. We have it in our blood, but our pride is still damaged. Let us regain our spirit by turning our past failures into tomorrow’s successes.

A modest proposal, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Political commentary, Social commentary, Urban Redevelopment

A few things every Montrealer should know about our city.

3 Comments

Consider this:

1. It took only five years to build the first twenty-six Métro stations, which included most of the Green and Orange lines and all of the Yellow Line. 5,000 men and women worked on the project which cost $213,7 million (about $1,5 billion adjusted for inflation) and delivered the project on budget and ahead of schedule. The Métro was steadily increased between 1976 and 1988 at which point a provincial moratorium prevented new construction until the Orange Line extension into Laval was completed in 2007. That three-station extension cost $745 million and took five years, with only 700 people employed. I think we screwed up somewhere along the way, as we’re certainly not getting our money’s worth anymore.

2. The Métro was primarily paid for via the following system: the city acquired properties along planned tunnel routes where stations would be placed. After demolishing whatever was above ground they dug out the pit and built the station, and then auctioned off the rights to build on top of the station. This is a fail-safe solution to finding immediate capital investment for Métro extension that properly utilizes free market capitalism to the benefit of a community – property developers want Métro access directly into their buildings. And make no mistake – the City owns the land around stand-alone station exits, and it’s only a matter of time before the private sector comes along to make an offer. Why aren’t we using this method today?

3. During the Oka Crisis in 1990 the Mercier Bridge and three key highways on the South Shore were blockaded by the Kahnawake Mohawk Nation in solidarity with the Mohawk of Kanesatake. Some enraged residents of Chateauguay began construction of an unplanned four-lane highway around the Kahnawake Reserve – it was later integrated into the A30 highway project. How is it that we are so helpless so as to rely almost entirely on either the provincial or federal governments during times of peace, but during times of conflict we suddenly realize we can come together and do pretty much whatever we feel? People voluntarily collaborated to start building a highway.

4. Speaking of bridges, how is it that the new Champlain Bridge is estimated to cost$5 billion and take ten years to build when the original Champlain Bridge cost $265 million (adjusted for inflation in 2011 dollars) and only took four years to complete? And how is it that the Victoria Bridge, Jacques-Cartier Bridge and Mercier Bridge are all significantly older than the fifty year old Champlain Bridge and yet are in better shape? Did we design this bridge to fail or are we really grossly over-estimating wear and tear? And did you know that all of our current bridges or tunnels were completed on-time (under five years in each case) and under budget?

5. Speaking of highways – did you know that Mirabel International Airport failed largely because the Fed and provincial government couldn’t agree on how to finance the construction of one highway and one rail line? Moreover, both Dorval and Mirabel airports have fully functioning train stations built under the main terminals, and they’ve both only ever been used for parking? Furthermore – most of the rail line needed to link Mirabel airport with the city is currently in use – the Blainville and Deux-Montagnes lines were supposed to create a loop, with a stop at the airport.

6. We built Mirabel after experience with Dorval during Expo, when we realized it was far from ideal to handle the likely yearly passenger load of an expanding metropolis. Ergo, Mirabel was built and designed to be gradually expanded until it had a fifty million passengers per year capacity. This is roughly the number of people who came to Montréal during the six months that Expo was open. But of course you can’t increase passenger load, nor the number of tourists, nor the city’s chances of hosting major international events, if you don’t have an airport to serve them. Mirabel was operational for only twenty years, how on Earth did we expect it to turn a profit after so little time in use?

That’s all for now, but please keep these issues in mind. We need to get serious about our city, and we need to know that, once upon a time, we easily turned our dreams into reality.

So I ask you, why can’t we do this today?

A modest proposal, Arts & the City, Cultural commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Montréal public art, Perspectives on the City, Public art proposal, Scenes from the City, Urban Redevelopment

Please Mr. Mayor, I want some more… public art.

1 Comment

So I’m a big fan of the Art Nouveau style, especially the works of Czech artist and interior decorator Alfons Maria Mucha. So as you might imagine, I was quite impressed when my brother told me about a new mural that had gone up recently in NDG at the corner of Madison and Sherbrooke Street West. You can read all about the A’shop graffiti crew’s work on this mural here.

Over the last few years I’ve noticed some interesting new murals have gone up, like the one on the side of the Old Brewery Mission (which can be seen from Viger and St. Laurent) or the one on the wall next to Briskets on Beaver Hall Hill near Boul. René-Lévesque. There are public art gems all over the city, some official, some less so. A personal favourite is the portrait of René Lévesque just in from Stanley across from the Odyssey book store – you’d never see it unless you were attracted to exploring back alleyways in the first place.

That said, there’s also an inordinate amount of shitty graffiti and tagging (like scrape tagging, bane of plexiglass everywhere) which is causing small business owners and landlords a fair bit of consternation, given that the City tries to get them to foot the clean-up bill and will fine those who don’t take care of the problem immediately. This isn’t entirely fair, though the City wants to encourage property owners to take the necessary precautions to prevent vandalism, such as installing lights in darkened areas around buildings, not to mention using motion detectors and exterior paints that allow for easy graffiti removal etc. Typically, property owners are disinclined from doing such things, given the added costs, and instead ask that the City provide more public security, if not police, to prevent vandalism.

I personally think this is a waste of tax-payer money; police need to focus on real crimes and public security, well frankly they could use a gigantic chill pill. Some kid tagging a building is hardly akin to an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, though given the actions of some law enforcement, you wouldn’t know it. Clearly property owners have a responsibility to keep their buildings well lit, and generally speaking this is the best way to deter vandals or up-and-coming artists with a lack of canvas.

That said, the City also has a responsibility to try and sift through the masses and figure out who has actual artistic talents. Our city’s artists need places to hone their skills and craft, and when it comes to graffiti, we have a lot of ugly white/beige/grey walls that could use some public art. The City should solicit graffiti artists and art collectives to decorate our big blank walls – we have far too many of them. Small discounts on taxation or utility costs to property owners would be an excellent incentive, and a further treatment of finished murals could prevent them from being damaged by vandals, the elements etc. If we were to take this a step further, we would secure abandoned properties to be used by graffiti artists so that they can practice. But we need to go about this in a more enlightened fashion.

I think we can all agree, graffiti is a legitimate artistic style and medium. That it is still commonly, subconsciously, thought of being akin to vandalism is unfortunate, but this is merely another reason for the City of Montréal to come out ahead and try doing things a different way.

Murals such as the one above aren’t merely impressive, they can increase land value (for what should be obvious reasons), and offer necessary outlets for the vital creative class within our community. Apply this on a city-wide scale and we might be able to put a real dent in ‘vandalism’ while offering bored kids a method of expressing themselves. Moreover, if the City were to secure abandoned properties to be used for this purpose, we can prevent kids from getting killed in train and Métro tunnels. R.I.P. Jays.

Speaking of which – when the Métro was originally designed, public art and art of a particular historical/socio-cultural significance was featured prominently in each station. This is still largely the case, though I find there are still plenty of drab concrete walls that could be spruced up. Point is, whatever investment funds are necessary to stimulate the creative class and support new public art projects is really a drop of water in an immense bucket. Such an investment will lower the crime rate, provide creative outlets to inner city youth, increase property values and generally brighten people’s days. If a crowd can be formed to watch a demonstration or the demolition of a building, then they will certainly congregate to see some public art.

Ultimately, it’s an investment in ourselves.

Final thought: Grain Silo No. 5 as an immense mural (with at least one part featuring a trompe-d’oeuil giving the perspective of what’s on the other side).

We’re not doing much else with it, so why not? We could probably get every single artist in the City working on it at the same time. It would certainly generate a lot of buzz in the art world.

So please Mr. Mayor, I want some more public art in my city. Let’s give the creative class, the guts of our society, a real stimulus package.

Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Perspectives on the City, Urban Redevelopment

Is it time to create West Island transit authority?

4 Comments

So I just saw this post from the West Island Gazette concerning the problems commuters can expect what with the commencement of major renovations to the Turcot Interchange next year. Apparently, the MTQ will allow an eastbound lane on highway 20 to be used exclusively by buses, which will certainly be a benefit to West Island commuters. However, there is also a proposal to cut back on one lane on St. John’s Boulevard so that it can be used exclusively for buses; this will no doubt add to the gridlock experienced by West Island motorists on its North-South Axes. The illustration above is a proposed roadway designed to serve as a new North-South axis connecting highways 20 and 40 in addition to Gouin and Pierrefonds boulevards, on the western edge of residential expansion on the West Island. Doubtless, construction of a large suburban boulevard would certainly lead to additional development further West, on effectively what is one of the few large open tracts of raw Montréal wilderness left on island. I can imagine the land between this proposed road and the Anse-a-l’Orme Trail could see a rapid and degenerative transformation within a few years unless certain protective practises were adopted, such as those observed in the United Kingdom with respect to the established green belts. In spite of this danger, this new roadway would at the very least help minimize congestion in the West Island. And if I’m not mistaken, this seems to be the same location for the once proposed highway 40 to highway 440 link, a project which has been dormant since about 1977. See more about that here.

This plan would see a major highway built to run from the 40 up along the Timberley Trail, across Ile Bizard (effectively bisecting the island) towards Ile Bigras and then through Laval-des-Rapides to join Highway 440. Now while I’m generally not in favour of new highway construction, if we were to go forward, developing with ecological and economic sustainability in mind, we can built efficient roadways and integrate public transit systems as well. The biggest issue for me is that Montréal is missing key links to create an effective ‘ring-road’ system, and this route could alleviate congestion on highways 40 and 440, not to mention the other North-South axes serving the West Island. With an southern extension, it could intersect with Highway 20 as well, which would be even more efficient.

That said, planning highways through residential zones with ecosystems that need to be preserved presents additional complications which need to be taken into consideration. As an example, given the experience with the previous pedestrian crossing at Woodlawn and Highway 20, we know that highway traffic needs to be isolated from residential traffic, and so such a project would necessitate a service road, underpasses and overpasses, not to mention a couple of bridges as well. We also know that building an elevated highway is problematic, and not only because they’re eyesores that can negatively impact land values on either side. Moreover, additional new residential boulevards will be required to help with alleviate congestion on the three current principle arteries. As an example, Jacques-Bizard/ Sommerset should be extended to connect Gouin, de Salaberry, Brunswick and Pierrefonds Blvds with Highway 40 while Antoine-Faucon should be developed into a boulevard in its own right, to connect with the Anse-a-l’Orme trail.

Planning with this in mind would be made easier if the West Island communities consolidated their efforts into a single collaborative transit and transportation authority designed to administer road and highway development, public transit and transportation infrastructure. Imagine a West Island version of the STM, STL or RTL, with the added responsibilities of planning and executing the construction of new roadways (with public transit in mind). West Islanders need to plan for roadway construction with new development in mind, but this shouldn’t preclude us from integrating ecologically sustainable public transit systems into our new roadways. No matter which way you cut it, we need to be masters of our domain, and can no longer depend on others to solve our planning and transit problems. A West Island transit authority could do just this.

Depending on how you define the West Island, it’s population ranges from 225 to 300 thousand people and there is plenty of room to grow. It’s largely flat with long, wide boulevards and streets and there is a considerable amount of daily internal movement, making public transit a necessity both within West Island and between the West Island and the City of Montréal. Furthermore, West Island residents commute in large numbers; the two most used AMT commuter train lines both serve the West Island. Despite the generally good public transit coverage offered by the AMT and STM, many West Island residents feel public transit options are limited and roadways are as overly congested as the express buses and trains running between the city and suburbs. With all the new highway work projected over the next few years, residents have a pressing reason to unite and begin developing sources of revenue to build new roads, highways and public transit alternatives. Simply put we need our own lobby and leverage group, and taking on this responsibility will, at the very least, allow us to develop a system appropriate to our own needs.

Consider the following:

A) West Island residents have a legitimate reason to ask for a Métro connection to the West Island, ideally to Fairview along the Highway 40 corridor. Whether this comes to be as a new line or an extension to an existing line (such as the Blue Line, which could pass through Airport on the way to St. John’s Blvd), we have a large enough population to make good use of it, and this in turn would cut down on commuters using their cars or the multiple existing express bus lines. That said, unless the West Island municipalities are willing to develop a significant portion of the construction capital by themselves, the STM will have to focus on its chief customers; that is to say, the residents of the City of Montréal. A unified West Island transit authority would be in a better position to administer such a large project, and the transfer of public transit responsibilities to the new body may in turn liberate additional funds from the STM to help in the development of a new Métro line. But we need to be able to stand on our own two feet.

B) The West Island’s geography and urban planning have produced a large area defined by its flat topography and wide streets – ideally suited for a large surface tram or trolleybus network. Two dozen lines could cover all the principle North-South & East-West axes, in addition to express lines running along the highway service roads and a ring-route using Lakeshore, Beaconsfield, Senneville, Gouin and des Sources boulevards. Such a system would mean the STM and AMT could move away from using express buses given that the trams would connect to major transit junctions, such as the Dorval Circle area, Cote-Vertu Métro station, Bois-Franc station etc. The STM could then re-focus its West Island operations away from the major thoroughfares and instead better serve the vast expanses of suburbia. Trams have the advantage of carrying more passengers than regular buses and are quieter, more efficient and could more effectively shuttle West Island commuters into the higher capacity systems, such as the Métro and AMT commuter trains.

Either way – just like Laval and Longueuil, the West Island has particular transit and transportation needs, and we should form a collaborative organization to support the sound development of a better local system. We should do this not out of frustration but because we need to take responsibility for our own development, and such a large enterprise gives us real economic power, not to mention potential political leverage. We should do this ultimately to help empower ourselves, and potentially improve public transit throughout the region as a result of our inspired leadership.

This is something that we can accomplish and it would be a great credit to our community. We’re only going to get bigger, so we can’t rely on outside agencies and land speculators to dictate development any more. The West Island needs to recognize it is a viable community now, with a history and a culture all its own. We aren’t merely a local Levittown, a random collection of houses built according to market directives, and so we need to start thinking bigger, and thinking more precisely about what we can achieve and build for ourselves, together. We may be inclined at some point in the future to unite the independent communities of the West Island into a single urban agglomeration to best represent our needs and desires on a larger scale. Frankly, I think it’s inevitable that this will happen. Building our own transit agency is a good stepping stone to realizing this goal, not to mention a strong foundation on which to base it. And if we were to embark on such a plan, there’s no doubt in mind we can conspire to make public transit the preferred method of getting around the West Island and for commuting into the city. It would help stimulate our economy and ultimately lead to better living and healthier lifestyles. These are but a few reasons, I’ll elucidate the rest later on.