The "oh we can't do what they do elsewhere because things are just different here" responses are so frustrating. It's a thought-terminating cliche par excellence. And yet we keep getting it here. Such a shame.
It's such a terrible argument, when I hear it I feel insulted frankly. There is nothing fundamentally different here besides the fact that Montreal will now get less transit!
Not Invented Here seems very endemic to the transportation/infrastructure people on this continent from what I've noticed. I don't even know how to begin addressing it, because we see it despite how evident it is we've been behind for years, and with the cost disease that is also uniquely bad here that very few people seem to care about.
The way I think about things is that the more you are convinced that you are facing a truly unique technical environment, the more likely it is that it's not actually unique at all and a bunch of other people have already solved it, you just haven't looked very far.
Good analysis Reece, , thank you.I might have not read the report fully, but I was looking for a breakdown of what exactly is included in this 36 billion dollar price tag. My understanding is that it's a worst-case scenario covering very volatile factors such as inflation and the rise in construction costs, but how exactly was this quantified?
In your previous article you made a very good point that the CDPQ's mistake was to start talking about the REM B before REM A was rolling and in service. The news has been questioning REM A at every opportunity, and while criticism has been deserved in some instances (the airport branch/Dorval station question, although not fully CDPQ's responsibility is a joke), overall they're delivering 67 km of light rail pretty quickly. It looks like the launch date will be before the end of summer which is not on time, but we're also not talking about Metro blue line "let's talk about this for 40 years" kind of delays here.
It should have been obvious to the CDPQ that NIMBYism was going to be a problem when people in the West Island complained about REM A's guideway in the middle of highway 40. Really? What are were disfiguring here, the visual marvel that is the PC Fairview mall or the Canadian Tire's parking lot next to St-Charles boulevard? Give me a break.
I will leave two ideas, one optimistic and the other pessimistic: optimistically, this was the government's way to proving that the ARTM can't be trusted and that the CDPQ's original idea was much more feasible - perhaps give them back the project? Pessimistically, this was a way to come up with an idea so ludicrous that the whole thing will be shelved promptly and never talked about again.
My honest thought is that the debate around elevated or tunnelled in this case is irrelevant. The REM B feels like a project designed to give construction companies super lucrative, billion dollar contracts, as opposed to any kind of a serious transit project. The whole exercise has been a massive waste of public money and there should be investigative journalism and a public inquiry done into the whole affair. The vibes remind of Brightline and I mean that in the worst way.
As far as the elevated vs tunnelled debate I think criticism against elevated are often fair. Even some parts of the SkyTrain look like shit, and the best sections are the ones that are well hidden behind trees and vegetation not running down the centre of the road. Some parts of the REM A look terrible and hinder the urban environment. And in Montreal, a city that is green for at most 4 months of the year, grey concrete is not an appealing feature.
And given that Montreal is only just recently starting to fix some of its worst highway mistakes of the 60s through 80s I totally get why people are hyper vigilant about throwing up a new era of elevated structures. Yes they may be less bulky, and some people might like them because they are transit and not cars. But count me as one of the people who thinks they are fine when hidden but are overall kind of ugly and really don’t belong front and centre in urban, or urbanizing areas (except for very rare and specific cases). And at the end of the day it’s up to the public to decide what they want done with their money. If people in Vancouver are okay with them, cool. But if people in Montreal are not keen on them in certain parts of the city, they need to respect the public’s opinion (because if they don’t people are just going to squash the project, which is totally their right).
I don't know, having spent time in a lot of cities with elevated rail even when it's noisy I find it adds character! And modern systems are rarely that noisy.
Ultimately IIRC the surveys done suggested majority support - this just seems like the results of classic nimbyism to me, not democracy in action.
The "oh we can't do what they do elsewhere because things are just different here" responses are so frustrating. It's a thought-terminating cliche par excellence. And yet we keep getting it here. Such a shame.
It's such a terrible argument, when I hear it I feel insulted frankly. There is nothing fundamentally different here besides the fact that Montreal will now get less transit!
Not Invented Here seems very endemic to the transportation/infrastructure people on this continent from what I've noticed. I don't even know how to begin addressing it, because we see it despite how evident it is we've been behind for years, and with the cost disease that is also uniquely bad here that very few people seem to care about.
The way I think about things is that the more you are convinced that you are facing a truly unique technical environment, the more likely it is that it's not actually unique at all and a bunch of other people have already solved it, you just haven't looked very far.
Good analysis Reece, , thank you.I might have not read the report fully, but I was looking for a breakdown of what exactly is included in this 36 billion dollar price tag. My understanding is that it's a worst-case scenario covering very volatile factors such as inflation and the rise in construction costs, but how exactly was this quantified?
In your previous article you made a very good point that the CDPQ's mistake was to start talking about the REM B before REM A was rolling and in service. The news has been questioning REM A at every opportunity, and while criticism has been deserved in some instances (the airport branch/Dorval station question, although not fully CDPQ's responsibility is a joke), overall they're delivering 67 km of light rail pretty quickly. It looks like the launch date will be before the end of summer which is not on time, but we're also not talking about Metro blue line "let's talk about this for 40 years" kind of delays here.
It should have been obvious to the CDPQ that NIMBYism was going to be a problem when people in the West Island complained about REM A's guideway in the middle of highway 40. Really? What are were disfiguring here, the visual marvel that is the PC Fairview mall or the Canadian Tire's parking lot next to St-Charles boulevard? Give me a break.
I will leave two ideas, one optimistic and the other pessimistic: optimistically, this was the government's way to proving that the ARTM can't be trusted and that the CDPQ's original idea was much more feasible - perhaps give them back the project? Pessimistically, this was a way to come up with an idea so ludicrous that the whole thing will be shelved promptly and never talked about again.
I think it will be interesting to see which of your ideas pans out, I want to see more built so that the entire island has good coverage!
The thing is, they can't start again, they've come so far.
We will have to see
My honest thought is that the debate around elevated or tunnelled in this case is irrelevant. The REM B feels like a project designed to give construction companies super lucrative, billion dollar contracts, as opposed to any kind of a serious transit project. The whole exercise has been a massive waste of public money and there should be investigative journalism and a public inquiry done into the whole affair. The vibes remind of Brightline and I mean that in the worst way.
As far as the elevated vs tunnelled debate I think criticism against elevated are often fair. Even some parts of the SkyTrain look like shit, and the best sections are the ones that are well hidden behind trees and vegetation not running down the centre of the road. Some parts of the REM A look terrible and hinder the urban environment. And in Montreal, a city that is green for at most 4 months of the year, grey concrete is not an appealing feature.
And given that Montreal is only just recently starting to fix some of its worst highway mistakes of the 60s through 80s I totally get why people are hyper vigilant about throwing up a new era of elevated structures. Yes they may be less bulky, and some people might like them because they are transit and not cars. But count me as one of the people who thinks they are fine when hidden but are overall kind of ugly and really don’t belong front and centre in urban, or urbanizing areas (except for very rare and specific cases). And at the end of the day it’s up to the public to decide what they want done with their money. If people in Vancouver are okay with them, cool. But if people in Montreal are not keen on them in certain parts of the city, they need to respect the public’s opinion (because if they don’t people are just going to squash the project, which is totally their right).
I don't know, having spent time in a lot of cities with elevated rail even when it's noisy I find it adds character! And modern systems are rarely that noisy.
Ultimately IIRC the surveys done suggested majority support - this just seems like the results of classic nimbyism to me, not democracy in action.
Was there historic sandbagging of the Blue Line extension?