Hydro-Quebec has to lower its rates by 0.5% as of April 1, but the real poisson d’avril is that as of 2014 they get to increase rates 3.7% annually for four years (reminiscent of the tuition increase schedule).
Updates from March, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Student protests continue downtown – movements tweeted with the tag #manifencours.
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On an errand near Rosemont metro I saw lots of emergency guys going into the station and lots of irritated-looking passengers coming out, looking for buses. Service provisoire buses are running on Saint-Denis. Haven’t seen any news about this yet but a few folks said they had smelled smoke before being evacuated.
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Bert
This was due to a fire evacuation at Rosemont. No idea if there was an actual fire or what. i got out at Laurier just n time to find the last cab to Laval.
Doing some searching I found a list of common codes used in the metro, which was referenced here in 2011…. http://www.strob.net/archives/000442.html The listboriginates from a Metro forum site.
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Kate
Very odd. This was clearly a significant incident and the orange line was down during evening rush hour so a lot of people were inconvenienced – but nothing last night and no news item this morning.
The STM’s twitter account didn’t even mention the outage, which was long enough that the Service provisoire buses were running. (They told me this morning on Twitter that a “problème de diffusion” kept the downtime from being tweeted. How difficult can it be for someone to sit at a computer and rattle off 140 characters saying the orange line is down?)
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Bert
Before getting to Laurier and once stopped, there were announcements of “door problems causing slowdowns”. With the lights off on two trains (north and south bound) most people looked at each other and called B.S. About 3-4 minutes after arrival the code 900-05 at Rosemont was called, at which point my underground story ends.
On the ride home A couple of STM pretend-police cars rushed up towards Rosemont. The STM site did not even have a delay listed on the main page at that time. Going by Rosemont and Beaubien there were lots of people outside and hitching for a ride. My Cabbie did not want to stop and pick up other people.
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The STM is doing another PR exercise, seeking a single new name for the new metro trains after a first pass last year to gather possibilities. You can vote among Boomerang, Azur, Véga, Kronos and Zéphyr.
Actually, I think we’re going to end up just calling it “the metro” after the first flush of “hey look, a new train!” wears off.
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Tux
“BLTN” – Better late than never.
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walkerp
Awesome, that definitely gets my vote.
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Robert H
Non, Tux! On est au Québec: «MTQJ»- Mieux tard que jamais.
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Tux
haha, MTQJ is perfect, especially because it’s got “MTQ” in there, kind of a pun! Love it!
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Robert H
Thanks, Tux! I’ll admit that hadn’t even occurred to me until you pointed it out; puns are not my forte. Anyway, I think Kate is right about this. Montreal has a wonderful métro system, but familiarity, jammed trains, and too-frequent breakdowns inevitably dull our senses to this feat of design and engineering. However, on those occasions when I’m not in a rush, I’ll stop to look at some fascinating detail and realize I’m not completely jaded.
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Robert J
Kind of reminds of of the “Rocket” in Toronto. I’ve never heard of another city “naming” their Metro.
PS. do Toronto people actually call it “the Rocket” (chortle)
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Ant6n
Maybe, if the Toronto transit apps are any indication. They all seem to be rocket puns.
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JaneyB
The “Rocket” thing is the official nickname in Toronto. In reality, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is widely called Take The Car.
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TC
Re: “The Rocket” – I was just in Toronto and that is what they called the bus from the airport to the metro. It is quite a good deal, $3 for the ride and a free transfer onto the subway. It took us about one hour to get to the center of town, bus and metro. Only problem is you need exact change, cash only, and the bus is not designed for travelers with baggage. Return trip same price, but when you arrive at the airport, no announcement of terminal, airlines etc.
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The Plateau’s policy of not making heroic efforts to clear snow is causing some criticism and irking Michael Applebaum.
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Michel
It is pretty bad. I can understand not clearing the snow during the weekend to obstensibly save money on overtime. However, with all the snow that fell last week and weekend, because it wasn’t cleared but simply pushed to the side, the snow became compacted.
The space between sidewalk and car is a couple of feet, cars are parked haphazardly, etc.
This may seem like a minor complaint, but when you’re trying to get your baby or toddler into the car seat while at the same time trying to maintain your balance and not slip (with said child) on the ice, it becomes really difficult. My wife ended up with debilitating back problems last year because of this. Thankfully, it was temporary, but at the time it was scary. -
William
Last night, I spent an hour breaking ice with a pick and shovelling filthy, compacted snow. It was great exercise – I wore my heart rate monitor and got right up into the 190-200 bpm zone. Probably not much fun if you don’t happen to be a health nut, however.
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Chris
Life is full of tradeoffs. If money grew on trees, we could buy a zillion shovels, and hire a man for every street. But since that’s not the case, every dollar spent on snow clearing is a dollar not spent on something else. Personally, I think the Plateau has made a good tradeoff here. Warm weather was in the forecast when the last snow fell. So they save a million bucks in exchange for a week or two having to deal with a little extra snow. We live in a snowy city after all.
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walkerp
And there really wasn’t that much snow. Given the warm temperatures, it was a smart move to hold out on the snowclearing. It’s ugly right now, but no longer too hard to get around or park.
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Jack
Radio Canada lead its 6 o’clock news with a slanted J de M like attack on Fernandez for his temerity in attempting to save 1.8 million dollars by letting the snow melt. The nerve of that man. Michael Applebaum is responsible for administering the city’s $4.74-billion dollar budget with Sec.V and two CEGEP courses……..not bad.
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Bert
It is not only the plateau. Mayor Vaillancourt decided to save a few bucks also. Though my taxes still went up by 150$ or so.
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TC
Just an idea, but – perhaps when the Fernandistes of the Plateau decide to delay, limit or just forget about snow removal, it should be publicized. That way residents would know they need to shovel. Maybe it should be encouraged. I know the Montreal tradition is the city takes care of making snow disappear, but on a limited basis it might be the start of a change.
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Robert J
One older business owner on St-Laurent tells me that this was the case before, and street cleaning was also largely taken care of by businesses and residents as well.
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Michel
@TC, I think that’s a brilliant idea. I don’t know how they would broadcast it, but it could work.
Unfortunately, there’s a weird bylaw that says that you can’t shovel snow into the street, onto a sidewalk, nor on any city property.
As to saying that this non-action is supposed to save money, didn’t Kate post a link to a study that says the city isn’t saving that much money anyhow this winter with the lack of snow? The companies are already paid by contract, and any additional costs come from overtime and weekend work, and snow isn’t cleared on the weekends in the Plateau anyhow. -
Kate
Michel, that story was specifically about the major arteries through town which are paid for by the Quebec transport ministry, which signs off on big package contracts based on averages and has to pay them no matter what. The city itself has, I’m sure, saved some money this winter.
TC, I think that’s a great idea, for the borough to announce no clearing. Fresh snow isn’t hard to move, but once it half melts and half freezes a few times it’s impossible to shift, so people ought to be warned. Maybe you could email Ferrandez and suggest it, or someone here (who lives in the Plateau) could do so.
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Michel
Well that’s me with mud on my face. I should have read the article first.
I still like TC’s idea. -
Jack
My concern is that Fernandez is taking more media hits that the average murderer. I know why but after a while the volume is going to simply blow him away, and any chance of having a sane urban environment that would brand Montreal as part of the future, not Cleveland North.
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Richard Bergeron is turning his attention to the environs of the CHUM, saying the city is failing to plan for how it will be when a lot more people are working in the area, which he says is just a wasteland of parking lots and nothing much. City administration basically told Bergeron to go look after the boroughs where Projet dominates.
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Alanah Heffez has a nice piece today on how Café Santropol saved a neighbourhood by being on the leading edge of saving rather than razing older buildings.
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Discussions are afoot to crop the extent of the pedestrianized segment of Ste-Catherine that goes through the Village, effectively removing Berri square and its low-lifes from the ambit of the zone, although it sounds like the J’aime mon village guy thinks this is too simplistic a solution.
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qatzelok
I guess the “theory” is that by maintaining car traffic, the area will be less attractive to homeless people and marginal youth. News flash: it will be less attractive TO EVERYONE. You can’t just isolate your hate for one demographic and call it “urbanism.”
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Robert J
With the construction of the CHUM, Berri Square will become even more of a slum square. There is a concentration of monolithic institutional-type constructions in the area (UQAM, the old bus station and the Grande Bibliothèque as well as the government offices in Place Dupuis). Even though these are mostly positive institutions, they take up most of the space surrounding the square, having a negative effect on the variety of activities in the area. The UQAM construction in particularly is closed off and uninviting for passers-by (no obvious entrances oriented towards the square) and Place Dupuis doesn’t do much better).
A greater concentration of street level businesses on the North, West, and East, sides of the Square would bring a greater variety of people into the area. Note that I don’t think we should push out “low-lifes” out of public squares. In other major squares and parks (think Lafontaine, Mt-Royal, or Square St-Louis), families do not feel threatened by fairly high levels of “low-life” activity, because there are other kinds of activities concentrated in those areas (residences, street-level businesses). So we should work on installing businesses with street-level facades surrounding the square.
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William
I disagree with Robert J’s assertations that a concentration of insitutional services equals social problems. There is probably no neighbourhood with a greater concentration of social service institutions than Cote-des-Neiges, and yet this neighbourhood doesn’t have a quarter of the problems of the eastern part of Ville-Marie. There are many factors at play, of which the passive concentration of the drug trade in the neighbourhood is probably the most important.
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Robert J
A high concentration is not problematic as long as its accompanied with healthy commercial activity (and ideally some residential density). Côte-des-Neiges has a fantastic variety of small retail businesses, as well as restaurants, etc plus it is one of the denser central neighborhoods. Berri Square has hardly any commercial activity that is visible from the street level (they are mostly underground in Dupuis and the metro). Aside from Archambault (which is more of a big box store than a local business, it’s just big, single-use institutional complexes.
Just put some businesses with storefronts on the Square in some of those complexes and it would already be better off. But it’s not an easy problem to fix, because they’re there to stay…
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Habitat 67 was honoured by Lego but won’t necessarily be reproduced as a kit.
It may take a few weeks to clear up and repair the damage caused at the Olympic stadium, beginning by removing the dirt that caused the garage to collapse on Sunday.
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Bill Binns
Huh? They are building another stadium next to the Olympic stadium? For a soccer team? This is so confusing. If the Olympic stadium is not even good enough for a soccer team, why is money being spent to maintain it? I’m almost afraid to ask who is paying for the soccer stadium.
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Kevin
The Olympic stadium is too damn big
The Saputo stadium being built next to it will suffer from the same problem that doomed the Big O: It is too damn far away. -
Martin
Hum, the Saputo stadium is already build. It opened in 2008. They are expanding it because it’s too small.
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Kate
Bill Binns, it’s being funded by the Saputo cheese family. Kevin, it’s not too far away for the potential soccer fans who live in Saint-Léonard and Anjou. Martin, it had to be enlarged as part of the deal that got the Impact into Major League Soccer.
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Michel
@Bill, aren’t you worried that you spend so much time here that you’re missing clouds that you could yell at?
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walkerp
I saw a game at the Saputo stadium two years ago and it was a lot of fun. It’s a nice little stadium and outdoors. I hope they expand it in a good way.
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Taylor
It’s not too far away from anything. Take a gander at google or bing maps (love the isometric bird’s eye view, btw) and you’ll see that the Big O is very centrally located within the context of the metropolitan region and a general area of medium-high residential density.
Location isn’t the issue, poor planning within its immediate environment is.
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Josh
Kevin: Big difference between a baseball stadium and a soccer stadium. Pro baseball teams play 82 home games a season, sometimes as many as 9 out of 10 days/nights in a row before leaving on a roadtrip. And you need a consistent crowd of at least 25,000 or so for the economics of the sport to make sense.
Meanwhile, this season, the Impact have no more than four home games in a month on their schedule (that could increase depending on progression in other tournaments, but not significantly), and you can be quite viable, as an MLS franchise, with attendance in the 15K-20K range.
People are much more willing to travel for sports if it’s a once-in-a-while thing and not everyday, like baseball.
In short, baseball stadiums and hockey/basketball arenas almost have to be downtown. MLS and American/Canadian football stadiums can be quite viable even if they’re located in the suburbs.
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Bill Binns
@Michel Did my comment about the stadium come off as some kind of crazy lunatic rant to you?
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Faiz
The Big O is a pretty bad Stadium for Soccer generally, and its absolutely terrible when its not full.
Economically, it needs over 30k to break even, and anything less than that creates a negative ambiance that is part of the reason the expos failed in later years.
MLS attendance averages 17,800 so using the O full time is a bad idea all round.
All over north america cities are building Soccer Specific Stadiums (SSS) for MLS teams in the 15000-30000 seat range. They provide Infrastructure and a fan experience that is a central reason why professional soccer is rising in popularity all over the continent.
Saputo stadium cost $15 million for the initial 13,000 seat construction(entirely private funding) and another $23 million for the expansion to 20k(partially public funding, but the province partially owns the non-profit corporation behind the team). It is being widely praised for creating a very nice facility at extremely low cost.
The big O is currently profitable at its current level of use and the status-quo is expected to continue
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Robert J
They should construct a roof that doesn’t use the “mast”, either an independant structure that is entirely retractable, or a transparent one that can be open partially. Then, we can continue to use the Stadium for events, etc, and try to attract some permanent tenants in the event category (X games, for example). Certain kinds of events don’t need state-of-the art facilities.
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Jorge Messi
I believe that Montreal is making the same mistake that Philadelphia made, since in their first 3 games more than 25000 attended and they still built a PPL soccer stadium smaller than 25,000 seats. It is clear that Montreal has a great passion for soccer and if Saputo build a stadium with 30,000 seats it would be profitable and full most of the time.
Police used tear gas and stun grenades Wednesday to break up a student demonstration downtown; one young man may lose an eye after police threw these projectiles at point-blank range.
The students dispersed but some gathered again later at Berri square to denounce police repression.
Despite growing unrest, Jean Charest remains unmoved …so far.
Ian 23:38 on 2012/03/08 Permalink
Oh, but the best means of maintaining a world-class structure is to increase user payments! Didn’t you hear?
Kate 23:43 on 2012/03/08 Permalink
I know!! And as the Gazette says, people won’t value their education unless they pay a lot more for it.
jeather 09:35 on 2012/03/09 Permalink
No doubt this will make people keen on doing things like switching to a less polluting electric car.
Bill Binns 10:02 on 2012/03/09 Permalink
My electric bill here is 80% lower than the last place I lived in Florida for about the same size apartment. I’m a big fan of Hydro Quebec.
Kevin 10:34 on 2012/03/09 Permalink
@Kate
There’s a strong argument to be made that Quebecers *don’t* value higher education.
This province has one of the lowest number of people graduating high school, let alone trying to get a post-secondary degree.
You can also look at donations made to Universities. McGill, Concordia and Bishop’s get roughly as much money from alumni as the 14 French schools combined.
William 10:44 on 2012/03/09 Permalink
I would rather that Hydro keep the rates as they are and rather put the money into their various social development programmes (i.e., that the state enterprise use its profits to benefit those who need it rather than make across-the-board effective payouts to those who don’t need them), but voilà…
Darrell 22:30 on 2012/06/04 Permalink
I don’t think Hydro is lamenting this decrease as they boasted record profits in 2011, no doubt due to the widespread pilfering of their customers bank accounts through bill padding, illegal requests for security deposits, and reconnection fees. This is the corporate fatcats’s finest hour undoubtedly…