Updates from April, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • 19:47 on 2011/04/30 Permalink | Reply  


    As Montrealers, we should hope for a big NDP win on Monday, because the party’s up for a lot of Montreal’s wishes: a new Champlain bridge, money for transit, public housing, infrastructure guarantees.

    I was walking around today and thought I heard an ebullient wedding party honking its way along Jean-Talon, but then I realized no wedding party would have that many orange balloons. In fact it was a Laytoncade. I only grabbed my camera in time to snap one of the cars, but there were more than a dozen, and people were waving at them and walking over to chat at the lights.

     

    • Adam 21:12 on 2011/04/30 Permalink

      Which reminds me of H.L. Mencken’s line, “Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

      Gimme, gimme, gimme.

    • Erydan 03:01 on 2011/05/01 Permalink

      Thank you Adam, I could mot have said better myself without calling “bullshit”

    • Shawn 08:21 on 2011/05/01 Permalink

      Oh, you’re so right. Goverments are just… awful. Looking forward to hearing your alternatives.

    • Kate 08:45 on 2011/05/01 Permalink

      It’s our money. We’re not asking for prezzies. There’s no more basic way to describe democracy than this: we elect a party to choose, if not a full platform (which is a sort of ideal-world exercise, and everybody knows it) at least a general sense of the priorities on which our taxes will be spent, and – in a wider sense – in which direction those choices are pushing the country. This isn’t grabbiness, it’s responsible citizenship.

    • Adam 19:55 on 2011/05/01 Permalink

      “It’s our money.”

      Oh, good. Then there’s no need to take it from us through taxation just to give it right back to us (minus an administration fee).

    • Adam 19:56 on 2011/05/01 Permalink

      Shawn, one thing I will never understand is why it is that when politicians pay us to vote for them with their own money, it’s called bribery, but when they pay us to vote for them with our own money, it’s called democracy.

  • 08:51 on 2011/04/30 Permalink | Reply  

    The Toronto Sun has a rather gloating piece drawn from Wikileaks diplomatic cable material, quoting Americans saying harsh words about Montreal as a pit of iniquity, sex trade activity, telemarketing fraud and crime generally. Curious that our crime stats are still so light, isn’t it?

     

    • qatzelok 14:13 on 2011/04/30 Permalink

      This “story” is based on the gossip of Americans working at the consulate that gets sprayed with red dye every time the USA bombs another resource colony. The source of “information” is as important as the ‘statistics’ they bark out.

    • Carlos 15:45 on 2011/04/30 Permalink

      “Montreal is a favourite for such scams, the diplomat wrote, because of cheap call centre labour and hydro-power and “lax regulations.”…
      Cheap hydro-power is a factor in fraud schemes?

    • qatzelok 18:28 on 2011/04/30 Permalink

      Cheap hydro power must be like WMDs.

    • Grego 18:40 on 2011/04/30 Permalink

      You can tell it’s going to be a good article when in the second paragraph you see “Montreal has literally become a ‘Bangkok of the West.’” It seems this “journalist” does not know what the word “literally” actually means. That’s some stellar writing there Andrew McIntosh!

  • 08:48 on 2011/04/30 Permalink | Reply  

    The STM is finally caving in to reality and will trim the confusing and under-used 515 bus route in June, maintaining it as a U-shaped route along rue de la Commune between Peel metro and Berri-UQÀM. The bus was supposed to test the waters for a tram along that circular route, and has demonstrated that if we do start installing tramways, this is not the route to start with.

     

    • David Tighe 09:02 on 2011/05/01 Permalink

      It is remarkable how they seem to have thrown away millions of dollars to demonstrate the obvious. That route respected none of the criteria for a viable tramway with its high fixed costs. A tram provides high quality rapid service but requires high traffic volumes throughout the year. Otherwise it will simply join the existing herd of white elephants ( or do elephants herd?)

    • Kate 09:15 on 2011/05/01 Permalink

      Elephants herd.

      I suspect the STM knew perfectly well the 515 wouldn’t do much business, but had to try it because Mayor Tremblay was so keen on having a tram on that route. Somebody said “All right already, let’s do a study and show him” and it’s been running nearly empty ever since.

      You’re right, the tram needs to be on a busy route. Some obvious ideas for the first tram experiment would be to replace the Pie-IX bus, the Saint-Michel bus (which I read somewhere last year is the busiest in the city, but they’ve already added an express version of the route) or the 105, which is chronically overloaded. However, I suspect there’s a desire to try to make the tram a showpiece, even if having it running along de la Commune would be a hell of a lot less useful (especially in winter) to commuters in the city.

    • David Tighe 09:41 on 2011/05/01 Permalink

      A tramway requires a reasonably constant demand throughout the day. I would fear that the routes you mention are rather peaky. It would be better to serve the centre on a dense, long route. To me, Côte-de -neiges (1) or Park Avenue (2) seem to be the best choices. I would love to see a tramway along Sherbrooke (East-West), but its attraction would be diminished by the metro and by the lack of space.

    • Stefan 12:21 on 2011/05/01 Permalink

      i also think park avenue would be a good choice, due to demand. also, with restructuring it, automobile traffic could be reduced – at the moment it cuts the calm quarters of the mile end and outremont in halves and makes the mountainside less attractive.

      having arteries cutting every few streets through densely populated quarters (i.e. north-south: parc, st. urbain, st. laurent, st. denis, st. hubert) is encouraging usage of the automobile and especially people passing through who have no business there. so why not reduce their number?

    • Kate 14:08 on 2011/05/01 Permalink

      Park Avenue would work, I admit. A tram from Old Montreal straight up to Parc metro would be great. The only reason I think of Pie-IX or St-Michel first is that they’re further from the orange line than Park is.

  • 08:36 on 2011/04/30 Permalink | Reply  

    It ain’t over till it’s over: some expect Bloc ridings to turn NDP orange on Monday, but traditional Liberal ridings may switch as well. Will ridings with NDP candidates nobody knows dump MPs they’ve had for years for unknowns? Maybe there really is an urge to turn the page, maybe people feel it’s better the devil they don’t know, for a change.

    Marco Fortier in Rue Frontenac compares the shift to a tsunami and other geological terms like earthshaking and plates tectoniques keep cropping up.

     

    • walkerp 11:12 on 2011/04/30 Permalink

      I suspect there is a great deal of media distortion going on right now, though there is possibly enough actual change going on underneath that that it will be hard to know which is which until after the election is over. At least it hasn’t been totally boring from an audience perspective!

    • Kate 11:35 on 2011/04/30 Permalink

      I am hoping for change, but not a change that involves a Conservative majority.

  • 08:20 on 2011/04/30 Permalink | Reply  

    There was some talk last year about changing bylaws so people could raise chickens in urban back yards, but nothing’s happened on this file lately. Openfile is also reporting on the rooftop greenhouse farm and looking at urban agriculture generally.

     

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