At the last Verdun borough council meeting, all eight elected reps voted to build a second bridge to Nun's Island.
It's a good idea because currently the only access is via the Champlain/Bonaventure, which is often crowded or under repairs.
The bridge (in green on the map) is going to cost something like $15 to $20 million. We're not sure who pays for this, but usually it's the feds that build bridges. 71 percent of mainland Verduners and 74 percent of Nuns Islanders supposedly want this bridge. However they won't be allowed to actually use it, as only buses, bikes, pedestrians and emergency vehicles will be allowed to cross. Borough Mayor Trudel fears that it could be overrun by people trying to get a shortcut to the south shore.
Seems that Trudel needs to rethink this.
The 60,000 residents of Verdun should get a special sticker for their car that would allow them to use the bridge. That would restrict traffic dramatically. It would offer incentive to live in Verdun. Or else the municipal authorities could further restrict it to Verdun residents willing to pay an annual fee to use it. Or thirdly they could charge a big toll on the bridge for anybody who wants to use it, thereby allowing the trickle of cars that go through to pay the at least part of the $20 million price tag.
It's fashionable to hate cars but in fact all sorts of good things happen when a car can get somewhere. The guy who fixes your fridge ain't takin' the bus, nor are those who stock the shelves of your grocery store with delicious grapefruit. There's a limit to the anti-car movement. The idea of a bridge linking Verdun and Nun's Island is absolutely great. Refusing to cars to drive over it is bad.
I am an old time leave the riverfront alone Verdunite! I think those condos where the stadium used to be are a disgrace, but building a bridge right there is astonishingly stupid. What the fuck are they thinking? Even if it were only used by city buses it would still be a colossal intrusion on the waterfront, with all kinds of negative traffic repercussions. If people choose to live over there, let em pay the price I say!
ReplyDeleteYehbut....people would appreciate the waterfront even more if they had a place to admire it from like this bridge would offer.
ReplyDeleteThere's also endless access to the waterfront to the west of this spot. It could be pretty spectacular.
When they built the first old folks home on the waterfront in the mid 60's there was the joke about the Verdun Waterfront becoming Montreal's Miami Beach which became a near prophecy with those stadium condos. We have a great little city here but Montreal seems to be determined to screw it. There is a lot of irony here because Nun's Island people don't exactly identify with us mainlanders. A pedestrian bridge has been talked about for decades. The problem is that Nun's Island has been ridiculously over developed. People who bought in in the 60's did get spectacular views of downtown and probably felt like they had "a piece of the country 5 minutes from downtown" as the pitch used to go. But a lot of them now have spectacular views of the towers built in front and around them.
ReplyDeleteAnd now it is just a suburb with tall buildings. Something like this just sets the stage for a massive restructuring in Verdun, especially in an area dominated by low income renters who will never have much of a say in all of this anyway. Not too hard to figure out who directly benefits from this sort of project and it's possibilities.
If Nun's Islanders need a new ramp to downtown then just build one along the Champlain bridge that integrates directly into the freeway system.
You can't justify cars because plumbers need to carry heavy wrenches everywhere, or firetrucks need quick access. Anything that encourages mass usage of personal vehicles is out of tune with reality.
And on it goes....
With due respect, I'm looking at this from another angle.
ReplyDeleteThe argument that poor people don't benefit from construction never made much sense to me. The more housing there is, the cheaper it gets. It's simple supply and demand. The poor need developers to go crazy and keep building here. It should be yes to everything if you're concerned about the poor and where they'll live.
And I have no trouble building another bridge allowing cars to drive over it. I mean, why not? Some worry that the pollution will ruin the planet but in a couple of years we'll be plugging in our cars anyway, so that argument doesn't hold up. People have to get places anyway, so why not make it convenient to do it, it'll only end up becoming more efficient.
I don't think the sticker system is very realistic. At best the stickers would pay off the cost of enforcing the plan. Make it any more expensive and it will become inaccessible to some residents--particularly on the mainland--and will cause even more frustration between residents.
ReplyDeleteOpening this proposed bridge to car traffic isn't the way to clear the roads for plumbers and delivery men. But encouraging those white-collar middle-class professionals to free up the traffic arteries by offering effective public transit (which is one of the objectives of this plan) will.
I believe that there are good reasons for this bridge for people on both side of the divide. Nuns' Island has some very nice parks and sporting installations, as well as bike paths and riverside trails, that are not very accessible to mainlanders. Nuns'-Islanders get a speedy connection to the public transit network, as well as the Monteal island shoreline.
Word! Living in Verdun, we have perhaps the shittiest grocery stores in Montreal (and that's saying a lot). So the hubby and I like to take a short drive over to Nun's Island for their super-swank Provigo... and when the bridge is fucked, well, that means we're stuck with the rotting meats at our local store. Narsty!
ReplyDeleteP.S. I like the sticker idea. This city also really needs to do something new and different like, say, build some tolls on those mega bridges and highways that're all falling down and scrape up the effing money to fix them instead of just pretending the problem is going to somehow fix itself.
ReplyDeleteWhat better example of the inefficiences of a car-based urban transportation system could you find than that an island that is crossed by a freeway requires construction of a secondary access because the primary access routes are too congested? If they allowed cars across that bridge, then there would simply be two congested accesses instead of one and the putative gains in emergency reponse times and access to the Metro (by bus) would be undercut. Might as well not build it if you're going to let cars on it.
ReplyDeleteThe aesthetic question is more ambiguous. That particular location is already the least interesting along the waterfront. If this was the first development to go in there or if they were proposing to put it in one of the unbuilt areas, I could see contesting it, but at that place, it's kind of a moot point. It's also not as if the bridge could make the view of Nun's Island any uglier than it's gotten in recent years, and like the iceboom does for Bassin des Prairies, it could provide a pleasant perspective on the river there (assuming of course one doesn't have the noise and smell from a constant stream of cars at one's back). Besides, neath, as someone who devotes an entire blog to the aesthetic possibilities of the Turcot Exchange, surely you can agree that the bridge could (though likely won't) prove attractive in itself.
Sure, there is an aesthetic possibility absolutely, all bridges have great potential. But where would this bridge run to? Lasalle boulevard? A freeway link cutting across Therrien park? There is also a hospital just right over there. I still say this is like building a fernicular from Saint Henri to Westmount, it doesn't make sense unless you are planning to demolish Saint Henri.
ReplyDeleteGalt already goes south of Lasalle Boulevard to a point very close to the water. There's some sort of big apartment building or something on your right as you approach the water. That road would simply be extended across the water.
ReplyDeleteA bridge would poshify the mainland Verdun area near the waterfront. It would blur the difference between the two places. Those properties near the waterfront on the mainland side could be "5 minutes walk to Nun's Island," that would be pretty sweet.
What it would connect to on Nun's Island is beyond me, I never go to Nun's Island, too hard to get there. There's no bridge, you see.
Well, if this bridge leads to an economic boom along old Church Avenue then maybe you will be able to make 2 million on your building instead of 1. Like I always say, the people most enthusiastic about these sort of urban projects are always the ones who stand to profit directly. Human nature is what's hard to fight.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm a bit far up the road to benefit much but it's a nice idea nonetheless, thanks for the kind thoughts.
ReplyDeleteThe area near Lasalle and Church might be a good investment though. Saw a natural sixplex converted into a 12 unit rooming house on Lafleur near the water go for about $560k just recently. I think that'd be the ideal spot.
There's still no timetable for the bridge construction though and knowing the way Verdun works, they'll spend the next 25 years saying that they have no money to do the bridge project.
I live near the proposed bridge and I really don't get the point. Nun's Island has been a boondoggle ever since the original swindle that opened it up for development. What would have been a real plus as a green space has been haphazardly over-developed as bribes and favours flowed to the city. Now people who live on the island, who buy knowing the access situation, complain how bad the access is. It is very reminiscent of the people who buy cheaper houses near the airport and immediately start complaining that planes land on the runways. Now the bridge, which has been discussed and vetoed since the 1960s, is back again. There is no discernible benefit to the mainland either aesthetically or economically. If you want to see what happens when bridges are built look at any of the short- throw Laval bridges. The approach areas are wastelands and traffic congestion drives away residents.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the new bridge at Galt will increase Nuns Island property values, which is what this is all about, of course, and at a $20 million cost to the rest of us.
This bridge would be pretty short, surely shorter than the bridges to Lasalle so perhaps the could be made picturesque.
ReplyDeleteAlso if land values go up, the city benefits through increased taxes and can then spend that revenue on building museums or parks, wealth distribution or whatever else. People getting rich is not a bad thing unless you have some emotionally-driven resentment at seeing others do well.
I appreciate green space as much as the next guy but at a certain point if you want green, move out to Vaudreuil, this is a city after all, I'm not here for the forests.
Curious, whatever happened to this? Is there an unspoken class thing ? Nuns Island posh people didn’t want Verdun riffraff ? 13 years later I bet hipster businesses of verdun would love to have walkable and cyclable clientele from the Nuns Island condos.
ReplyDelete