Great news! There is harmony at city hall. All three recent competitors for the mayoral position have agreed to agree on a new and more costly circular Turcot Interchange. It has a lot of sexy elements, including a new village down in the old Turcot Yards and a cute little Thomas the Train Engine thing to Lasalle from downtown. But one little weird thing: it'll be jammed with cars all the time because they plan to drastically reduce the amount of vehicular traffic the road system can handle. There will only be two lanes apparently so West Islanders can sit on the road wasting their time and spewing pollutants into the air. We at Coolopolis don't like to sit in traffic, so while it's nice that they agree, we've got places to get, so hit the drawing board and add some lanes baby.
Now if you want a really cool ultra-trendy eco-friendly idea for green roads, we far prefer the Solar Roadway, basically you use solar panels rather than concrete to build the roads, a system that can actually feed the city with electricity. Explained here.
Doesn't Marois live on Ile Bizard?
ReplyDeleteHer electoral base is solidly east end though.
ReplyDeleteI think you've confused Pauline Marois with Louise Harel. I don't recall Marois being the candidate to Vision Montreal.
ReplyDeleteYup. Thanks Marc. I get those two confused.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, more lanes? Just take a look at the infrastructural history of NYC to see how more lanes to accommodate more traffic just produces more traffic. No matter how many lanes of highway you build eventually you'll be stuck in traffic, probably pretty soon down the line. Every highway Robert Moses built to ease traffic congestion was almost immediately being used beyond it's intended capacity while also not relieving congestion on the roads it was supposed to relieve the congestion on. We should be encouraging West Islanders, East Islanders, South Shorers and Lavaliers to work where they live and to have to spend most of their time in cars on highways coming into Montreal. Not only would that make those places better places to live but nicer places to visit.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that over 'n over that if you build more roads they just fill up. I don't really think that's true. The 20 eastbound is almost never full, I know because I take it all the time (never in rush hour though, I admit). I've never seen much traffic on the Bonaventure expressway either. The Decarie, on the other hand, is pretty hellish, they really should extend Cavendish.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if there was a long line of people outside a bakery you'd know that it was a pretty good product. Same thing with cars, there's a lot of people lining up cuz they're a darn good way to get around and getting around is pretty important.
Taking a bus is crazy slow, you stop all the time and bikes are impractical.
I guess that's a nice idea to have everybody on trolleycars but people have complex schedules, especially if you have kids, there's always some place to take them and stuff to get. I'd be curious to see how many kids that the average car activist has. Are you really gonna tell a parent that they can't send their kid to ballet school because there's too many cars on the road? C'mon there is such thing as reality.
People will always use cars and they'll keep having more and more and they'll be environmentally friendly and all that. Even a 25 percent increase in road space won't be enough. Besides, one day there might be some kinda catastrophe and people might have to get away from danger and it might not be so easy taking a trolleycar out of town and people might then realize that limiting car use in some circumstances can actually be criminal by impairing the mobility of the masses.
I can't help but wonder about the demographics of the "ban cars from the island for good" group.
ReplyDeleteI'll go out on a limb here and guess that for the most part they live in the central portion of the island, are single with no kids, and seldom have a need to leave their or an adjacent neighborhood. I also imagine the subscribers to that belief haven't thought of the insane repercussions such a move would have - sky high unemployment would be one.
I ride the 2-20 every day, on the bus. And yes, it’s hellish. There should be reserved bus lanes.
ReplyDeleteIt is totally insane that the packed buses should slow to a crawl because there are 340,403,343 cars (each with a single occupant) in front of them. In the Land Of Liberty that is the United States of America, where the car is worshipped like an idol, there are places where cars with a single occupants are prohibited from driving on. Why not here?
Reducing lane capacity makes a lot of sense, because that would reduce traffic. Since adding lane attracts cars, removing some should repel them.
The automobile is one of the worst economic catastrophes ever to hit mankind. It renders people dependent on unreliable foreign ressources (that have to be secured by the use of various dictatorships that always eventually blow up in the face of the instigagor), it destroys arable land by needlessly spreading cities around and, worst of all, it prices manpower out of the market.
For the last 30 years or so, jobs have been fleeing to the third world ostensibly because of the cheaper manpower there. Over here, manpower costs are artificially inflated in order to subsidize the car that is required to live a comfortable life. Chinese slaves do not need to have a car (because they sleep in dormitories in “their” factories), so they can be paid 25¢ per day to make cheap crap for Dull-O-rama.
There is a limit to what Society is able to pay for such luxurious lifestyle, and we are reaching the point that the automotive lifestyle is clearly unsustainable.
With proper public transportation (definitely not the kind that’s available in the Waste Island), the middle class will not need cars, thus removing from the Economy a huge drain.
Québec does not get any benefit from road transport; in fact, 20% of the Québec gross domestic product is sucked-out for good because of road transport. We do not make automobiles; all the jobs in the road transport sector are crappy jobs (driver, mechanic, pothole filler, car salesman).
(For more information, click on my name for a link to Begeron’s study on road transport in Québec).
On the other hand, Québec hosts the world’s largest maker of public transportation equipment, yet it grossly underspends in public transportation (the Métro car renewal saga is an utter disgrace).
What good would it do to rebuild Turcot as is, when in 20 years, there will be few people that will be able to afford a car?
In any case, when the highway 30 bypass of Montréal will be completed (you would be surprised at how the new bridge crossing the St-Lawrence at Cedars is advanced!), there will be much less traffic crossing Montréal, so a smaller Turcot makes much more sense.
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As of extending Cavendish, you can thank the West-Islander NIMBYEs of Côte-St-Luc for their long opposition to that project. That obstruction alone was one of the most powerful arguments possible for the forced mergers; a little bunch of overprivileged, socially-handicapped people banding up together against the common good.
If the Waste-Island was not divided in little fiefdoms jealously guarded by their kinglets, transit service would be much better, as there would be no little fiefdoms not pushing some bus line because it would benefit other fiefdoms — case in point, the 209 bus on Montée des Sources, which is the first north-south bus line west of Cavendish thanks to the big blotch of land occupied by the Aéropet. That bus was rush-hour only until about 2 years ago, and it still doesn’t run on week-ends.
Since that bus both serves Dorval, Pointe-Claire, Dollard-des-Ormeaux and Montréal, there was no way in hell that those suburbs would demand good service that would also benefit people who do not vote for them.
So if you want to go from north to south on a week-end, you have to go all the way to Fairview.
Mankind has survived without cars for a million years. So there is absolutely no justification for that destructive luxury.
You make some good points, a bus lane would be a good idea, and so surely building an extra lane on the new Turcot thing would make this possible.
ReplyDeleteAlso, sure it's easy to imagine that all of those cars with one person in them are misguided souls who don't have to take their cars but many are involved in serial apointments offering goods and services that improve the quality of life that we all enjoy.
I think you argued some strong points but to say that we survived a million years without cars was a bit counterproductive, we don't want to be oppressed by distance anymore, that's entirely reasonable.
People work a lot and need to be able to hustle back home to be with their kids. Children already spend too little time with their parents, so cars help families stick together, pro-car pragmatists can also play the motherhood-issue card as well.
well, you don't really need a car if you live in a village and suburbs are a vast waste of space. your kid could walk herself to ballet class if we built cities now like we used to. i'm not saying abolish the car, it's just the we're overdependent on them, needlessly so. really, the only reason cars are in such widespread use now is because of how we freaked out when we got them. they're really awesome! and we took their benefits to their logical extremes thereby making the use of automobiles necessary for the way of life automobiles made possible. at this point, we're trapped in a feedbacking loop of perpetual growing auto-dependence. i grew up near a small town in eastern ontario. if i got a ride into town the world was my oyster. but it was a village. i walked to school, i walked to the candy store and i walked to soccer practice. there's no reason why todays suburbs and exurbs can't adopt this type of layout. wouldn't you want to have 20 awesome villages in the montreal area than one giant metropolis? a magnet that draws everything in? when everything leaves, though, the place is a ghost town. take tysons corners in virginia. pop. like 18,000. number of people who work there and leave at the end of the day? 120,000! that's seriously some f***ed-up corbusier s**t. extreme example, sure but a logical outgrowth of the suburban way of life. give me those 20 villages any day.
ReplyDeleteby the way, i am childless but married and i know plenty of parents who've decided to bring up their kids in urban villages, which is really what a good neighborhood is in essence. and they don't have cars. who the hell can afford a car, anyway? not me. or my wife and certainly not if we had kids. the price of oil keeps going up, folks, we can't live like this forever. personal transport is pretty kick-ass, though.
in conclusion, it's time for suburbs to actually offer their residents something more than a caricature of a house in the country. they need substance. so, give it up, 'burbs!
Interesting comments and I believe it's a useful debate. Pardon if I come across spouting polemics, I'm writing this fast but here's my views:
ReplyDeleteI mentioned to Bergeron that- according to a plan first laid out by Le Corbusier if you massively increased density, for example by putting up a tower in the city where tens of thousands would live, you could then concentrate services and expand green space. Instead of considering this he just started saying that Le Corbusier was out of fashion while Jane Jacobs was more popular. I was a bit irked by his lame answer.
So theoretically yeah that could work but forget about demolishing suburbia, it's there for good.
The argument against cars is that they waste energy and create pollution but that will one day be solved.
It sends money overseas but we gain in productivity because people are getting around more efficiently. I don't care how much you put into public transit, the darn buses stop 100 times before they get downtown. A 26 minute car drive from St. Annes takes 52 minutes on the train.
Cars are also really cheap. I bought mine for like $3,600 and have barely paid anything for maintenance. They are also an asset because if you consider that your time has monetary value, and you're saving a lot of time, then it pays itself really. And to discourage them by making them more expensive only punishes the poor.
About your comment on ballet school and children's sports teams, yes it's easy to say that you could have various village teams. I like that but the critical mass of kids isn't high enough, thanks largely to lefty dipsticks who don't have it together to have children. So they shouldn't be limiting the mobility of people who actually take the pains to have children. Even if you had a hockey rink at every park you'd still have to drive kids for the away games. There's a ton of driving involved in these children's activities and they're really worth it for the kid.
I didn't have a car when I had one single small child but how long can you tell your kid that they can't go to the beach? When I had more than one child, it was out of the question, a car was 100% necessary, you should see the amount of groceries alone for a house with 7 people.
Once my kids grow up and move out I'd be happy to move downtown and use my car once a week, but until then an attack on cars is basically an attack on families. If they really want to encourage people to have children there should be a reserved lane for people with kids.
A car is not an asset, but a big liability.
ReplyDeleteThe CAA says it costs $10,000 per annum to entertain one.
So picture two couples, one who buys a $350,000 house in the city and one who buys a $200,000 house in the ’burbs.
Let’s assume that the city couple will own one less car than the ’burban couple. So, when they retire after, oh, 30 years of toil, one of those two couple will not have spent $300,000 on a car (I'm ignoring inflation and compound interest here).
So, come retirement time, which of those two couples will have more equity???
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I do not have a car (heck, I don’t even have a license).
I can therefore afford to have a less-paying job, a job that’s more interesting than one that pays better. Or I can afford to work only 3 or 4 days a week.
I can also afford to tell my boss to go fuck himself if he’s too much of a jerk, since I don’t have a car payment to make.
And I don’t have a license, so the government can’t blackmail me for not paying my parking… hey, wait, I don’t have parking tickets (but you see my drift; driver’s licences are increasingly used as a blackmailing chip against “rogue” citizens).
Not having a car means freedom.
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What? You can’t get to such-and-such place with transit?
Oh, well, too bad. It just means it’s not worth going to. And if they really badly want me there, well, they gonna drive me there.
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The reasons ’burbs are moronically laid-out to force people to have cars is the “segregation by activity” oxdung. The nimbyes don’t want anything but the joneses by their backyard, even if this means taking the car to go buy $STAPLE_AT_DÉPANNEUR.
I live in a village. An old village that got borged by Montréal more than a century ago. A village with two Métro stations, yet with cute little farmhouses (click on my name). Because if you look carefully, you can still see the old villages in the City.
I lived 17 years out of the last 20 years in that village, and for 10 of those years, I had the pleasure of walking to work (and not crappy jobs, no, good jobs at two design studios and at one paper mill). I could do most of my routines without leaving the village (and if I wanted to, downtown was a 20 minute walk away).
On my city block, there are, aside from the houses, a few bars, a garage, a plumber's shop, a woodworking shop and a movie studio. If one goes one city block further, you can add some shops, a chemical warehouse, a lot of shops, banks, restaurants and some construction companies. And within a 1 km radius, about the only thing you don’t find is an aircraft factory.
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People have been brainwashed to have cars. Open the TV at any given time, and half the ads are car ads. Shall I venture in how ads are subliminally screwing with our brains???
Think outside of the box. Having cars is a luxury that is bringing the planet and the economies down.
(Heck, no, it’s not a luxury, it’s a friggin’ NUISANCE).
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ReplyDeleteThanks for the interesting thoughts. I have written a replique with my a number sign before and after my comments, as I don't really know how to format italics in this box.
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A car is not an asset, but a big liability.
The CAA says it costs $10,000 per annum to entertain one.
#Well, firstly people pay that much for cars because they value them. It's an attestation of their utility.
Personally I don't pay anywhere near as much as that for my car, it's maybe one third of that maximum.
It's good value because consider your time to have the value of say $20 an hour. If you take the bus it will cost you about an hour or so more every day. So that's like $5,000 a year.
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So picture two couples, one who buys a $350,000 house in the city and one who buys a $200,000 house in the ’burbs.
So, come retirement time, which of those two couples will have more equity???
#Considering that the car family will likely have paid $100,000 or-so less for their home in Laval or the South Shore, it might very well be the car folks.
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I do not have a car (heck, I don’t even have a license).
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If you don't have a car or never had a car, then your knowledge of both sides is limited. I've been both a non-car person and a car person. Having a car is, alas, much, much better.
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I can therefore afford to have a less-paying job, a job that’s more interesting than one that pays better. Or I can afford to work only 3 or 4 days a week.
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Conversely you're vulnerable because you're not really able to get a job that's very far away in Vaudreuil or Lavaltrie. So your job prospects are therefore limited.
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And I don’t have a license, so the government can’t blackmail me for not paying my parking… hey, wait, I don’t have parking tickets (but you see my drift; driver’s licences are increasingly used as a blackmailing chip against “rogue” citizens).
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It's fairly easy to never get a parking ticket. A license might theroetically be a blackmail against you (although I don't really understand how) but it's also a useful identification and will allow you to rent a car in case of emergency and so forth.
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Not having a car means freedom.
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What? You can’t get to such-and-such place with transit?
Oh, well, too bad. It just means it’s not worth going to. And if they really badly want me there, well, they gonna drive me there.
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That's an exagerration. Let's say your girlfriend invited you to her parents home in St. Leonard at 6 but you finish your work that day at 5:30 and the route takes one hour to get to by bus. You're going to have to show up late without a car. You're simply losing a lot of moments of your valuable life by not simply driving.
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Think outside of the box. Having cars is a luxury that is bringing the planet and the economies down.
(Heck, no, it’s not a luxury, it’s a friggin’ NUISANCE).
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I would say that having a car would get you out of your village once in a while. It would literally expand your life, your possibilities, it would become a major convenience for those around you. As I mentioned, it's an essential instrument if you have children. If you want your kid to participate in interesting activities, or visit their friends, it's entirely necessary.
Nonetheless I admire your spirit and believe that in an ideal world it would be great to have fewer cars.
One thing I never get answered is this: if cars were non-polluting and not noisy and used almost no energy, would people still be so keen on eliminating them? Is there some sort of mobility resentment component to this anti-car movement?
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Cars are “valued” because it’s impossible to live properly without them (I know, I don’t live properly). But people are generally weak-willed and numb-minded and don’t pause to consider all the consequences. Hence all the sheeple scooting about in smelly cars.
ReplyDeleteIf someone sets up shop in Vaudreuil (that’s where my mother comes from, btw — lotsa fond childhood memories) or Lavaltrie, it means that it’s a cheapskate boss it won’t be worthy to work for.
And when I have to show-up to Saint-Léonard-de-Port-Maurice 30 minutes after 5 (like a car will do that on 30 minutes in traffic… Ha!), I tell my boss that I am leaving earlier and that’s not negociable. Oh, and I don’t care if you fire me, I can afford it. You just plan the work in consequence; after all, you’re the boss, it’s your job.
You do realize that the more you spend on your house, the more equity you have? The house grows in value over your life, it's an investment, unlike a car, which is a huge waste of money.
ReplyDeletesorry to comment on such an old post buut i just wanted to throw this in here:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
induced demand is what i was too lazy to research and link to oh so long ago.