City projects that never saw the light
Fascinating piece about various wacky projects narrowly dodged by the city over the years, most of them dating from the Drapeau era. There’s the campus that would’ve razed half the Plateau, the tower on Mount Royal, many more highways giving total primacy to car traffic everywhere, and a massive metro system built in expectation the city would have seven million inhabitants by the year 2000. (You can’t enlarge the metro map in the article, but you can see it on Marc Dufour’s metro site.)
There are some good quotes from Richard Bergeron and other urbanists, but this one from Dinu Bumbaru is still very relevant: Souvent, les administrations municipales pensent qu’un parc, c’est simplement un endroit qui attend d’être bâti. But it’s also worth pondering Bergeron’s thoughts on the shame we felt in the 1960s about our older neighbourhoods, an impulse that seems incomprehensible now.
ant6n 19:01 on 2011/07/16 Permalink
‘…Guy Legault, lui, défend aujourd’hui cette vision. «Une autoroute, ça fait partie d’un réseau, ce n’est pas isolé. Il faut que l’autoroute Ville-Marie se rende jusqu’à l’autoroute 25. Notre réseau est aujourd’hui infirme, il comporte des noeuds de congestion.»’
We still didn’t ‘dodge’ this one. Imagine the Ville-marie actually extended to the 25. Then people would use it like the 40 to across/through town – by literally driving through downtown. What a great network that would be, with less congestion for sure…
Kate 16:28 on 2011/07/17 Permalink
I’m not sure about this. It would help congestion, but wouldn’t air quality in Old Montreal, Chinatown and environs be much worse?
ant6n 19:13 on 2011/07/17 Permalink
I should use tags. I think extending the Ville-marie would be a bad idea – through-town traffic should go on the 40 or 30, rather than through downtown. And if you increase the ‘usefulness’ of the Ville-marie, you’d have more cars to the point where it would be frequently congested.
Kevin 07:34 on 2011/07/18 Permalink
Do you folks never drive? The Met is congested all day every day (no joke. 3 weeks ago at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Thursday I spent 60 minutes in a 3 km jam).
The Ville Marie/Notre Dame is not that bad, but traffic is always heavy.
The roads we have were not built to cope with the tens of thousands of people who use them every day: hence, constant idling cars generating smog.
At least once the 30 is finished 18-wheelers will no longer have to go through town, and will be able to use a ring road like every other decent city in the world. That one step will do loads to increase the efficiency of our roadways.
Kate 09:33 on 2011/07/18 Permalink
I never drive.
qatzelok 16:04 on 2011/07/18 Permalink
It’s hard to believe that government bureaucrats are still finding ways to destroy our city with more cars and pollution. Is it because car commercials have performed a lobotomy on boomers?
Kate 19:53 on 2011/07/18 Permalink
You can see even from comments on this blog that the view that it’s unrealistic to get people to stop using cars is still more credible than its opposite.
I was reading this Guardian UK piece on government efforts to persuade people to live in a healthier way and was struck by this comment from Baroness Neuberger: “if you really want to change people’s behaviour it takes a very long time … you have to look at a 20- to 25-year span before you get a full change of behaviour.”
I can remember when it was believed you could never get Quebecers to recycle. I can remember when it was believed Montrealers would never obey a law forbidding smoking in bars. Both of those seem laughable now.
I can even remember when saying, in a store, “No, I don’t need a bag, thanks” was a marginal and almost bizarre thing to do. Now the opposite is true: if you’ve got to buy some stuff and have to get a bag, you’re likely to feel a little sheepish. But the baroness is right – it takes time.
Kevin 10:00 on 2011/07/19 Permalink
I’m not arguing for or against cars: I’m just saying that for millions of people they are a crucial part of the equation, and it does not make sense to prevent people from using them unless you give them something else equally as useful.
An example: Years ago when I was in Cegep, I could drive from home to school in 8 minutes. That same commute took 25 minutes by bicycle (during the dry months) at least 90 minutes by bus. When I lost my car, I lost 15+ hours of my time each week.
The upshot? As an adult, I made sure I bought my home in a neighbourhood where I can walk to a metro station (when it isn’t closed for repairs) but I’m close enough to highways that I can use them too.