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Oddball Ideas for the New Mayor

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Denis Coderre - credit to The Gazette
Denis Coderre – credit to The Gazette

Denis Coderre was sworn in as the 44th mayor of Montréal last Thursday, along with the city’s estimated 50,000 councillors (I kid, there are 102 councillors, and I’m not altogether certain we’re over-represented, but I digress).

Coderre said everything one would expect from an in-coming mayor. He promised to bring honesty and integrity back to the civic administration, return our city’s pride, work for the people and turn a page. Whether there’s any sincerity in these statements remains to be seen – Montrealers are understandably suspicious of municipal politicians these days given that our last two (who made similar promises) are implicated in a vast system of organized corruption, collusion and fraud that only served to further handicap the citizenry and the city’s financial well-being.

Mayor Coderre’s inauguration was over-shadowed by the veritable gong-show going on in Toronto and Rob Ford’s unintentionally hilarious declaration that, given the apparent orgy of cunnilingus taking place in his own abode, he had no reason to state to a female staffer (or prostitute, it’s not entirely clear) that he wanted to ‘suckle upon the life canal’, as it were.

If you haven’t seen it yet, get out of the cave, this may be the single greatest statement in the history of Canadian politics to date.

…

I’m being fantastically ironic of course. This is the greatest statement in Canadian political history:

Every time I watch this clip I’m struck by the patience and intellectual sophistication of the exchange. At the very end, Trudeau says to the reporter ‘I see you’re playing Devil’s Advocate, it’s a hell of a role…’ to which the reporter is left momentarily speechless. Contrast this with the relationship between the vast majority of today’s politicians and the press in general – it’s passive aggression from the former and undue reverence and politesse on the part of the latter. It seems the relationship was more respectful, and mutually critical, forty some-odd years ago.

There may yet be hope not all is lost – the Rob Ford scandal came to light because he pissed off so many people, and a lot of good journalists too. Andrew Coyne summed it up perfectly: the Rob Ford mess is a monster born of divisive and condescending populism.

Nail’s head, meet hammer hit…

But back home for a moment and our new mayor.

Mr. Coderre has an opportunity to turn a page and I would encourage him to do so. I think people want to see action, but not just in the form of establishing an office of the Inspector general, as he has proposed to do. Ergo I would strongly encourage our new mayor to start doing things – perhaps small things – and build up a list of real, actual, accomplishments. I want a checklist of reasonable, sensible and above-all-else realizable projects for the new year, and I want things done on time.

The people can be helpful in this case; the mayor has said he will work for the people, so it stands to reason that the people help him draft such a list.

So I put the question to you; what would you include on a list of simple, straightforward improvements for the city of Montreal?

My trouble is that I all too often think in terms of mega projects, so I’ll try to steer clear of such grandiose ideas in my own list.

1. Fix Place Émilie-Gamelin and Cabot Square. These are two large public green spaces roughly equidistant from the downtown core, and they’re both pretty beat up. New landscaping, lighting and design (and perhaps on-site services) are only part of the equation; both spaces can at times seem ‘overrun’ by the homeless. Our parks, plazas and public spaces must remain open to all; they cannot be a last resort, a place where the unwanted go. I would encourage the new mayor not only to beautify these spaces and better integrate them into our socio-cultural fabric, but further endeavour to develop new facilities to house the homeless and offer drug treatment. Long story short, no more needles in our parks, and no more police handling the homeless situation.

2. Reserved bus lanes, bike lanes and BRT systems. Probably the easiest improvements to public transport a mayor could make without implicating the province or adjacent cities, though these would need to be involved to truly make a dent in the broader, metropolitan traffic problem. Within the city the STM could develop more reserved lanes and, potentially a Bus Rapid Transit network that could alleviate some congestion on the Métro (which is now getting a bit out of hand, in my opinion). Key streets, avenues and boulevards for either reserved lanes and/or a BRT network: Pie-IX, Papineau, Jean-Talon, René-Lévesque, Sherbrooke, Saint-Antoine, Parc, Cote-des-Neiges, Décarie, Van Horne, Cote-Vertu, Gouin.

As to bike lanes, the more the merrier. We’ve got a good foundation but could go much, much further, and I’d argue more bike lanes should be separated from vehicular traffic by means of a simple concrete curb. Regardless of how well Bixi’s doing, Montrealers are increasingly turning to their bikes during the more temperate months to quickly traverse the urban core. And why not – it’s cheap, efficient and great exercise. Any measure to make it safer will assuredly encourage greater use.

3. A pedestrian mall. There’s an interesting correlation between the potential success of commercial retail enterprises and the degree of foot traffic passing through a given area. For anyone looking to start a new business, knowing where the people are walking is a crucial consideration when choosing a location. But notice I didn’t say anything about vehicular traffic or parking spaces. Our most successful commercial arteries are often clogged with cars looking for parking where they’re almost assured not to find any. Banning cars outright from some key streets would consequently result in making them more walkable, increasing foot traffic and the potential land value of rental retail properties at the same time. Saint Catherine’s Street seems to me to be a logical choice for our city’s first true year-round pedestrian mall. The street’s Gay Village section is routinely closed to cars each summer, parking spaces have been removed elsewhere so restaurants could install new seasonal terraces and the section passing through the Quartier des Spectacles is also routinely shut to cars – all without having any real negative effect on the street’s commercial viability.

So why not go all the way? From Atwater to Papineau, shut the street to vehicular traffic but keep it open for buses, delivery trucks and other municipal, emergency service and/or utility vehicles, widen the sidewalks and introduce street-side commerce in the forms of vendor stalls, kiosks and seasonal terraces. Allowing the No. 15 bus to barrel down the street unencumbered by vehicular traffic may make it a suddenly very popular route and would only add to potential foot traffic on the street.

4. Expand the Réso. Not the Métro, since this is quite out of our hands, but the intricate network of tunnels that link downtown office buildings, convention centres, universities, hotels, Métro stations and even apartment/condo towers all together, forming an insulated city-within-a-city. For as much as I enjoy walking around my city, there are times when the local climate is less than conducive to this. It’s not just the cold, but snowstorms, seasonal torrential rain, heat spells, early darkness – the Réso provides an alternative and comfortable method of getting around the city.

There are many potential new areas for expansion, namely every single condo tower going up around the Bell Centre, the new Overdale development adjacent to Lucien-L’Allier. The MMFA could be linked with Concordia, which in turn could expand its tunnel network south towards the Faubourg and Grey Nun’s Mother House. Other smaller connections, like the Forum and the Seville condos to the Atwater Métro branch of the Réso, or a connection between McGill University and the northernmost portion of the Peel and McGill station sections also make a lot of sense to me. Aside from providing an expanded convenience, it further provides a safe and secure environment to walk around in, not to mention possibly provide new opportunities for small-scale commerce.

5. Turn the Faubourg into a public market. I may be wrong, but I think this is an excellent location for a public market, much in the same vein as the Atwater or Maisonneuve markets. At the very least the city would maintain the building to a higher sanitary standard than the current owners, and there’s a substantial urban population living within walking distance of the Faubourg work. I think much of its current woes stem from moving away from being a market to trying too hard to become just another shopping mall with a slightly more interesting food court.

In any event, just some oddball ideas – what do you think?

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Montreal’s Ugliest Building

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Hilton hotel atop Place Bonaventure, Montreal
Hilton hotel atop Place Bonaventure, Montreal

Came across an interesting conversation on Montreal City Weblog that started out about a bit of news that the Hilton Bonaventure is up for sale but ended up on the subject of some of our city’s ugliest buildings. The question was whether the entirety of Place Bonaventure was on the block or just the Hotel (and what the Hotel’s stake in the building was, by extension), and one commentator stated he’d prefer to see the building destroyed and replaced with a ‘proper European-styled train station, a worthy Southern Entrance to the city’ (I’m paraphrasing but that was the gist of it).

Ultimately it is just the hotel that is for sale. Of note, the Delta Centre-Ville (another building I have mixed feelings about) recently announced it is closing in October, putting some 350 people out of work. The University Street building, co-located with the Tour de la Bourse is to be converted into – get this – high-end student housing. I don’t know if the rotating restaurant on the upper floors is still operational, but I’m going to find out.

I can imagine a high-priced and slightly nauseating meal with a fantastic if intermittent view awaits…

The Hilton Bonaventure occupies the top floors of Place Bonaventure, a building designed from the inside-out that was originally conceived as an international trade centre and convention space. When opened in 1967 it boasted an immense convention hall, five floors of international wholesalers, two floors of retail shopping, a collection of international trade mission head offices and the aforementioned hotel. The building was heavily modified in 1998, losing its wholesale and retail shopping component as it was converted into office space. The exterior is in the brutalist style of poured, ribbed concrete, some of which has cracked and fallen off. Though an architecturally significant building, it’s far from a beauty. The rooftop hotel is perhaps the building’s best feature, involving a sumptuous interior aesthetic heavy on earth tones interacting with plenty of natural sunlight, bathing the hotel’s multiple levels while simultaneously exposing the well-cultivated rooftop garden and pool.

In any event, the discussion on Montreal City Weblog brought up general disinterest in Place Bonaventure’s looks, but commentators had other ideas about what they considered to be our city’s truly ugliest building.

Montreal Forum, circa 1996.
Montreal Forum, circa 1996.

Weblog curator Kate McDonnell’s pick is the Cineplex Pepsi AMC Forum Entertainment Complex Extravaganza (brought to you by Jonathan Wener at Canderel Realty). I won’t disgrace the pages of this blog by showing you what it looks like – just go take a waltz around Ste-Catherine’s and Atwater and when you start dry heaving you’ll know you’re looking at one of the worst architectural abominations to ever befall a self-respecting society. The above image is what the Forum looked like pre-conversion, probably shortly after the Habs moved to the Bell Centre (formerly the Molson Centre, formerly General Dynamics Land Systems Place). This would’ve been the Forum’s second or third makeover since it was first built in the 1920s, and as you can see, a strong local Modernist vibe with just a touch of the playful in the inter-lacing escalators deigned to look like crossed hockey sticks is pretty much all there is to it. Simple, straightforward, even a touch serious – a building that looked like the ‘most storied building in hockey history’.

But today – yea gods. Frankly I’m surprised we haven’t formed a mob to arson it all the way back to hell, where the current incarnation of the Montreal Forum aptly belongs.

From what I’ve heard Satan needs a multiplex on which to show nothing but Ishtar.

All that aside, I agree that the Forum is awfully ugly, but it’s not my choice for ugliest city-wide.

Other suggestions from the conversation included the Port Royal Apartments on Sherbrooke and the National Bank Building on Place d’Armes, though commentators seemed to agree this was mostly because they felt the building was out of place, and rendered ugly more by the context of its surroundings, or its imposition upon them, than anything else.

The Big O was mentioned, as was Concordia’s ice-cube tray styled Hall Building. La Cité was brought up as an ultimately failed project that disrupts a more cohesive human-scale neighbourhood, and so were some of McGill’s mid-1970s pavilions. Surprisingly, the Chateau Champlain wasn’t brought up, though I’ve heard many disparage it as nothing but a fanciful cheese-grater.

1200 McGill College - Centre Capitol
1200 McGill College – Centre Capitol

But after all that is said and done, I’m not convinced we’ve found Montreal’s ugliest building.

My personal choice is 1200 McGill College, the building above, a drab and dreary brown brick and smoked glass office tower of no particular architectural merit or patrimonial value that I personally believe is ugly by virtue of marring the beauty of the buildings around it, notably Place Ville Marie and just about everything else on McGill College. Worse still, it replaced what was once a grand theatre – the Capitol – with something that would ultimately become a large Roger’s call centre. Ick. However much corporate office real estate our city happens to have, we could all do without whatever this puny out-of-style building provides. Suffice it to say, I would gladly sell tickets to its implosion.

But in writing this article I remembered a building even more hideous and out of place than 1200 McGill College:

This monstrosity…

Avis Parking Garage on Dorchester Square - credit to Spacing Montreal
Avis Parking Garage on Dorchester Square – credit to Spacing Montreal

There is simply no excuse for a multi-level parking garage conceived in such ostentatiously poor taste to occupy such a prime piece of real estate as this, and so I can only infer that the proprietor is either making a killing in the parking game or, that the proprietor is waiting to try and get building height restrictions relaxed. It’d be a great spot for a tony condo complex, but given that it’s wedged between the iconic Sun Life and Dominion Square buildings it’s likely the lot has some significant zoning restrictions, making a tower – the only really viable residential model given the size of the plot – highly unlikely. I can’t imagine a tower on this spot would do anything but take away from the already hyper precise proportions of the square.

Personally, I think the spot would be ideal for a medium-sized venue, especially considering it’s adjacent to the preserved former Loews Theatre, currently occupied by the Mansfield Athletic Association. In better days the city might have the means to redevelop the former Loews into a new performance venue; a gym can go anywhere, an authentic turn of the century vaudeville-styled theatre is a precious commodity these days. Think about it – a medium-sized theatre and performance complex in the middle of a pre-existing entertainment and retail shopping district. I think that might work here.

Either way – boo on this parking lot.

And come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind seeing just about every single modernist apartment tower built in the McGill and Concordia ghettoes in the 1960s and 1970s removed from the skyline as well.

But I leave it to you – what do you think is the single ugliest building in Montreal?

Feel free to send pics if you have them.

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The Four Years We Fix Everything

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Turcot Interchange, aerial perspective shortly before completion

Call this an early campaign promise.

I figure we can fix more-or-less every major infrastructure problem in our city in a single concerted effort – a four year program of various projects all set into action simultaneously and inter-dependently. In other words, the mother of all public works projects.

A program designed with maximum operational efficiency at the forefront of all planning – nothing happens unless we can do it all at the same time. Consider the near-perpetual closures of Parc Avenue and St. Lawrence Boulevard over the past few years – how many times were the streets ripped open because no one had bothered to schedule all the maintenance at the same time? How is it that public utilities can operate complex networks yet can’t call some other large utility to try work out a mutually agreeable schedule for renovations? And why doesn’t our city have an infrastructure oversight committee do ensure our city gets repaired efficiently and effectively, and then move onto instituting best-practices solutions so we don’t have a re-cap of the infrastructure problems we’ve been dealing with over the last decade. You’d figure we’d have preventative maintenance policies already in place, so it really makes you wonder how holes can develop on regularly used bridges and concrete slabs just fall off buildings or (worse) over-passes.

It’ll doubtless be a gargantuan under-taking, involving multiple engineering and construction firms (hell, maybe all of them!) working hand in hand with transit agencies, public and private utilities and government agencies. It’ll be inconvenient, in some cases, and will require short-term solutions to cope with disruptions to traffic and transit. Our roads need to be thoroughly repaired, with new measures put in place so as to minimize corrosion and increase the relative lifespan of all road types. And then we’ll have to do the same with the bridges, tunnels, railways etc. Our parks, squares and plazas need a collective sprucing up. Almost all of our Métro stations could use aesthetic improvements and a solid coat of graffiti-resistant wall-treatment; the AMT stations need break-resistant glass to cover the station displays. Bus and train shelters need to be similarly upgraded, and it wouldn’t kill anyone if we installed solar-powered space-heaters within (it might even save a homeless fellow from freezing to death, so why not?) Finally, we should put one of those First World War helmets atop King Edward VII’s head in Phillip’s Square; I’m sick and tired of the accumulated pigeon poop up there, and cleaning it off is clearly too expensive.

Okay, I’m joking about that last part. That would be historically inaccurate.

In any event – what do you think? How are we going to fix these seemingly never-ending problems?

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Are there deer in Mount Royal Park?

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So a couple days ago I’m hanging out with my roommate and his buddy says to me, he says, “y’all wouldn’t believe this shit but I saw a deer up on the Mountain.”

Straight up hand to god he swears side to side he seen a living, breathing deer somewhere’s about the Mountain and I casually ask ‘wheres’?

He replies he doesn’t remember exactly, but it was ‘somewheres on the North Face up behind U-de-M’, and he was absolutely certain of what he saw. I protested this point vehemently, and the situation degenerated quickly into a Mexican stand-off of mutual incredulity. I, incredulous that there would be deer in a two-hundred hectare park. And he, incredulous that there wouldn’t. I find it highly suspicious given the extent of urbanization around the Mountain, the numerous roads, fences and trails that bisect the Mountain. Certainly the deer would get hit by cars, and how many could possibly survive on the Mountain without being seen? I’ve never heard of anyone spotting a live deer on the Mountain, and I’ve lived here my whole life.

Am I nuts?

I’ve tried to imagine what may have led my associate to believe there is at least one live deer on the Mountain. Perhaps the staff at the Biodome bring the deer out for a romp in the woods once in a while. Maybe the Biosphere has introduced the species covertly as part of some mis-guided ‘urban-reforestation plan’. There are endless possibilities really.

Did he see a horse? The SPVM has a stable up there and the police regularly patrol the Mountain on horseback in the summertime. I doubt he’d confuse one for the other though.

Maybe it was back during the strike at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery back a few Summers ago. The cemeteries take up about two thirds of the central and eastern parts of what we know as Mount Royal. This is a considerable amount of space that was almost entirely fenced off and completely unmaintained for several months. Perhaps the Eco-Musée at the Morgan Arboretum let their deer out for a stretch.

Or perhaps there is some small pocket of natural Montréal wilderness, largely inaccessible to most park visitors and away from major roads in which a small group of deer have been able to sustain themselves for multiple generations. Perhaps it is an isolated gully, or perhaps they have simply adapted to urban living, and stick to a very small territory. There are plenty of deer living in the region, indeed, I’ve seen a whole family feeding in a swamp in July of 2004 just off of Chemin Ste-Marie near the Anse-a-Lorme Trail. But I really can’t imagine them living inside the most densely populated city in Canada.

Unless someone caught a deer somehow and decided to introduce them to the park all by themselves. Why someone would do this I don’t know.

So many unanswered questions!

I’ll do my best to get to the bottom of it.

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On the Métro Impasse

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2009 AMT proposal for Métro extensions - not the work of the author

There’s been a fair bit of talk about extending the Montréal Métro of late in the English Press. Typical; now removed from the halls of power the English media spends its time twiddling their thumbs and dreaming about what could be, while Angryphones come out of the woodwork to demand Métro access to the West Island. I’ve said it before and I’ll say a million more times – no West Island residents should expect Métro extensions until there’s a West Island city, one with a tax-base as large as the cities of Laval or Longueuil. That or the West Island communities seek voluntary annexation from the City of Montréal. Then, and only then would the citizens out there be in a position to demand Métro access. I personally think a Highway 40 corridor Métro line from De la Savanne station to Fairview (and possibly as far as Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue) would be an excellent way to cut back significantly on vehicular traffic on our major highways. However, such a new line should be mirrored on the eastern side of the island, such as with the recommended Blue Line extension to Anjou. That said, residential development on the eastern side is oriented on a more North-South axis than on the West Island, and thus the proposed Pie-IX line (running from Laval or Montréal-North south to the Centre-Sud/HoMa district) would likely handle more passengers than any West Island extension (but only if it in turn were connected to East-West lines at multiple points).

While an unfortunate number of people have complained the 2009 MTQ proposal (above) is ‘too focused on the East End’, I look at it as focused primarily on where the population density seems to be high and increasing. There are more than 400,000 people living in Laval and another 700,000 people living on the South Shore (spread out over several municipalities, with an estimated 230,000 people living in Longueuil alone). Moreover, there are 85,000 people living in Saint-Laurent borough and another 125,000 people living in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough. In total, the proposed extensions as demonstrated above could potentially serve almost 1 million people directly and indirectly.

So while it is nice to dream about ideal systems that serve the entire metropolitan region, or at least serve the City better, we need to consider what the government is proposing seriously.

What’s unfortunate is that this plan now seems to be in jeopardy, given that the respective mayors of Longueuil, Laval and Montréal had to take out full page advertisements in the local press some months ago announcing why their city should benefit from expansion. I’ve said it before – sicking the mayors against each other isn’t going to achieve much. The entire system needs to be expanded until the whole region is eventually covered. In essence, we need to follow the same planning philosophy used to design the Paris, New York, London or Moscow subway systems, wherein the project is considered incomplete until near-total coverage is achieved. We won’t grow nearly as quickly unless the Métro develops in such a fashion so as to increase transit efficiency within the region. Montréal’s successful urban communities wouldn’t be nearly as successful as they are if it weren’t for the fact that they have Métro access. It is crucial for expansion and development.

In sum, we need to start planning as a unified metropolitan region wherein the interests of all citizens are considered simultaneously. Métro line development cannot be a reward for political loyalty. We’ve come a long way from the nepotism of the dark ages under Maurice Duplessis, so when the provincial government finks out and pits the suburbs of Montréal against the City for an individual line extension, the citizens of all communities must demand an end to such ridiculous partisanship. We can’t continue on like this. This is why our city is broken.

And just a reminder – completing the project illustrated above is pegged at 4 billion dollars. Cost of the new Champlain Bridge has been estimated at 5 billion dollars. Is it me or would it not be smarter to use that money to complete the proposed Métro expansion, and then spend a billion dollars renovating and improving the existing Champlain Bridge? A new Champlain Bridge will accommodate about 156,000 vehicle crossings per day. With this expansion, the Métro would be able to accommodate over 1.5 million passengers per day, which in turn will free up space on the highways, bridges, tunnels, buses and commuter trains, possibly even allowing some buses to be re-purposed to new routes, further improving the public transit system here in Montréal. To me it’s a no-brainer. What do you think?

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So apparently we’re getting a very expensive bridge…

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The Champlain Bridge, Montréal - not the work of the author.

…and as always, efficiency takes a back seat when it comes to stimulus spending and infrastructure development in the Montréal region.

The CBC announced a plan by the Conservative government of Stephen Harper (in case you were unaware) to build a $5 billion replacement for the Champlain Bridge over the course of a decade. The new bridge will feature ten traffic lanes and is designed to fully replace the existing Champlain Bridge, which is estimated by some to no longer be worth retrofitting or renovating after 2022 when it will turn sixty years old. Maintenance costs to keep the bridge operational until then will come up to about $25 million over the next ten years. Previous cost estimates for bridge replacement came to $1.3 billion for a replacement by a similar span, and $1.9 billion for a double-decker tunnel capable of handling a similar amount of traffic (roughly 156,000 cars and trucks use the bridge each day) on one level with buses and trains on a lower level. The projected construction time was five years for each project, which is in line with the amount of time it took to build just about every other bridge and tunnel connecting the Island to the Mainland. Moreover, adjusted for inflation alone, the cost of building the Champlain Bridge would only cost about a quarter billion of today’s dollars. Now while many argue the cost of construction has gone up, I’d still like to know just what it is about this replacement bridge that justifies a $5 billion expenditure? For additional details, see the Wikipedia entry.

Perhaps the cost was estimated based not on actual costs for materials, labour, design and construction, but instead based instead on trying to ensure everyone gets a slice of the stimuli pie. Given that Québec lost out on the Great Canadian Shipbuilding Sweepstakes, perhaps this expensive bridge project is some kind of a consolation prize. Do we not recognize that it is sounder to seek smaller amounts of tax revenue for stimulus spending than larger amounts? Is it not our responsibility to seek efficient infrastructure solutions?

Here’s the deal – in my opinion, replacing the Champlain Bridge with an enlarged replacement toll-bridge isn’t exactly helping reduce traffic congestion in Montréal, and its not entirely fair to use tax dollars to build it and then a toll to pay for it. Moreover, it may not even be necessary, and that is to say that there are many considerably wiser, more efficient ways to spend such a large sum (such as on public transit) which in turn may allow the Champlain Bridge a longer life-expectancy and a considerably smaller associated long-term maintenance costs, thus making bridge replacement a moot point.

But none of that seems to matter – once again, infrastructure redevelopment is narrowly focused, places an emphasis on the needs of the few as opposed to the many, and is more about securing large investments for an already corrupt construction industry instead of seeking to trim costs and ensure fiscal responsibility. Is it any wonder the rest of Canada thinks we get an unfair advantage?

Consider the 2009 Métro extension plan, which aimed to increase the network by a dozen stations on twenty kilometres of new track and tunnel, extending into Eastern Montreal and the South Shore in addition to closing the Orange Line loop, benefitting the residents of St-Laurent, Pierrefonds, Cartierville and Laval. That project is estimated to cost $4 billion and could potentially add several hundred thousand more individual uses per day in addition to further extending the operational reach of both the STM and AMT. Aside from the issue that the provincial plan benefits people throughout the metropolitan region, it further would lessen the strain on our bridges, meaning the Champlain’s life-expectancy (with additional preventative maintenance) could be extended beyond sixty years. All of the other bridges are considerably older than the Champlain and are still working fine, and it should be noted that other bridges and tunnels were often designed as part of larger transit schemes. This replacement bridge will carry no tram lines, no provision for commuter trains, and only a limited number of reserved bus lanes. It’s too little, too late, and designed for a bygone era. How typically Québecois.

Unfortunately, it now seems as though the STM is unable to secure funding to execute the entire plan, and so the Mayors of Montréal, Laval and Longueuil now have to petition the people and the provincial government for their own individual extensions. This is an awful situation to be in, yet here we are, bitching and banging heads against each other for a thin slice of the better idea. If the fed can justify spending $5 billion on a bridge replacement, why not spend $4 billion to help more people get around and then spend the billion left-over dollars to fully renovate and upgrade the existing bridge? How is that a sounder investment?

Consider other plans, such as the use of ferries, light-rail lines across the ice-bridges, new Métro and commuter train lines or running surface trams on reserved lanes on the existing bridges and tunnels. There are many ways to cut down on the number of people bringing their cars into the city and increase the number of people utilizing public transit as their primary means to get around. But if the City can’t reign in government and guarantee an efficient use of stimulus funding, then we’re bound to develop along someone else’s politics, someone else’s vision. And as long as we congratulate ourselves for taking unfairly large portions of the communal tax revenue (as some kind of sick justification for our opportunistic federalism, no doubt), then we get what we pay for, and have no reason to pout when things fall apart. We’ve been responsible for our own infrastructure problems for years because we develop said infrastructure as though it were a consumer item, and thus the bridges, tunnels and buildings we procure are designed to artificially stimulate the construction industry by requiring near constant maintenance. And so we are literally stuck in a rut. Why is it that every Summer major construction work is required throughout the City? Are we foolish designers or are we trying to keep a bloated industry well-financed with futile self-perpetuating renovation work? We must begin designing more durably and begin employing innovative technological solutions to finally solve our frequent problems with rapid infrastructure degeneration.

It’s becoming clear to me that we are not designing with problem-solving in mind, and this will be our undoing. Technological solutions for most of the infrastructure problems we encounter on a day to day basis could be saving us incredible amounts of money, but they mean some people in the construction industry won’t make as much money as they used to. The new Champlain Bridge project smells so bad of graft and nepotism you’d think the price tag was of the scratch-and-sniff variety.