Read the comments on Facebook on this article… People are complaining that it will be hard to park at Fairview with this development, and that Fairview needs more parking!
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It’s the hypocrisy of people not wanting residential development next to retail and rapid transit because it will “create more traffic” while also being okay with more elusively-retail development that will require 100% of their customers to drive to the store from places further afield. It was never about traffic, it was always about keeping their city an expensive exclusionary enclave. The demerger continues to haunt us 15 years later.
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I’ve had these discussion with people, a fair number of people who live in SFH have negative opinions of people who live in apartments. “A certain kind of people” is a phrase I’ve heard a few times.
If people live in a place with so few apartments, they may automatically assume all apartments bring problems because “That’s where the crime is!” This is a generalization of course.
It was only a matter of time, next legal action will be from Brivia group for the rejection of 575, Saint-Jean
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FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!
I have no knowledge on the subject, but what are the legal arguments? How does the “we already submitted the docs” argument fit in?
Usually these types of things are argued as covert expropriations (“expropriatons déguisées” in French media). A municipal government causes financial damage to a land owner by preventing its use as previously legally outlined. Of course, this is true in most instances of recognized municipal rights being exercised over land owners (including historical building preservation, more restrictive height/density limits, natural preservation, …) so in order for this type of argument to be accepted in court it has to be pretty egregious and targeted towards specific land owners IIRC.
Edit: This type of legal argumentation and legal threats is what mostly stopped the city of Laval from being able to undo “greenfield towers” and other micro-zoning issues inherited from the Vaillancourt era. This is why Laval has a lot of new towers in incoherent places that have sprung up in the last decade or so. AquaBlu comes to mind:
One of the projects that was actually challenged immediately post Vaillancourt was the Marina Commodore, which was a very lengthy and costly affair for the city.
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So if I understand correctly, the “because traffic” argument probably is sufficient because it was a blanket ban and not directly targeted at CF?
If that’s the case, I would start to pray that the provincial governments just make it law that anything within, say 500m of rapid transit can’t be zoned exclusively commercial or SFH residential to prevent these types of things in the future. (Probably an over simplification)
The ‘‘because traffic’’ is not an argument, by blocking TOD high density projects you create more traffic, developers are pushed outwards and make high density near highways where there is no public transit (ie: Laval, North Shore) adding hundreds of thousands of cars going through thru these same neighborhoods where projects are blocked. This is fact as the West Island has decreased in population in last 10 years (Census 2016 & 2021) but car commute times have almost doubled because of the addition of cars coming in from Laval, North and South Shore and Vaudreuil.
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Just to be clear, I’m not against these projects moving forward, nor am I saying that “because traffic” is a good argument. If anything, more traffic is not an argument for less development, but rather more transit.
However, we need to be honest when talking about this. Sure we’re creating housing that reduces VMT for those who live there and probably for the surrounding residents as well as more services become available locally, but even if the residents have a low VMT, they will still be contributing some number of miles travelled and thus contributing to some additional traffic. It is still less so than the SFH in the surrounding area and would have less of an impact than if the development were pushed off island, but that’s not technically their concern.
So the Mayor can claim traffic as being affected by the development, and without any investments in the bus and cycle infra, he will probably be correct and as such has a case. I’m not saying its a good one, or that it is a rational one, but he technically has one.
If you build a 2000 unit project that has all services at walkable distance (grocery stores, gym, public transport etc…), you will barely add any cars on the road, and the cars added will not be commuters going downtown at rush hour, they will use a service like the REM as it is cheaper and fasters.) the cars added on the road will be those that cant use public transport because the public transport doesn’t go to there workplace , for example , someone living in this specific project in pointe claire who works in Pierrefonds, they will need a car but they will also be going AGAINST traffic. Simply adding cars on the road doesn’t equate to more traffic, it depends on time and destination.
Now taking this same project and putting it Blainville by the highway , you will be adding thousands of cars to which the majority will be passing through inner city neighborhoods and inner suburbs.
I live in Pierrefonds, I drive to work, same destination for the past 12 years. My commuting time has almost tripled in 12 years but my neighborhood hasn’t grown in population. The bottleneck on the 13 from Laval keeps getting worse, this is the single reason for the increase in traffic in my neighborhood specifically and you see it on all the major highways, its all off island commuters who work in the city.
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And what about on weekends? Evenings? There’s plenty of traffic on St-Jean all the time on weekends. I worked at the McDonald’s nearby for a long time while in school and the traffic even before they re did the boulevard gets bad pretty frequently. Leaving Fairview can be a mess as it is sometimes, especially at 17h.
What about people who don’t fit the criteria you mentioned? What about someone like me who might want to live there but work in LaSalle, but want to live near transit for my girlfriend who works downtown? I would contribute to that traffic and I surely wouldn’t be alone in a project that probably have around 1 car per unit.
The point is that we don’t know in advance where these people are going. I don’t dispute that their impact in a walkable community is less to the road network than a two car household in Blainville or Vaudreuil, but it’s not négligeable either, especially if the area is further developed to a few thousand units.
My point isn’t to argue to what extent traffic is made worse, my point is that there will be cars added to the road, and some number will be in the peak direction at rush hour. As such, Thomas would not be lying if he said traffic would be made worse, even if only a little. I don’t think that is a reason to block it, but saying there won’t be many cars added isn’t necessarily true, and is probably going to be used to fight this lawsuit.
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But we do know how traffic patterns work, I’m not saying that projects like this REDUCE traffic, but this form of development stops the hemorrhaging and changes it to minor bleeding. That’s why its called SUSTAINABLE development. Traffic will never get better, somethings will make it worse and other things make it REALLY worse , Thomas’s reasoning falls in line with the latter.
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I never have been in gridlock traffick on any boulevard in the west island outside of rush hour at any point in my life unless there was some form of construction or lane closed. Our roads can handle alot more off peak volume of cars without issue. The traffic issue in the West is a rush hour issue due the grid lock coming onto the 40, that backs up cars and creates congestion on sources, saint john and saint charles.
So building 2000 units in Pointe claire next to a REM station makes alot more sense than making 2000 units in sainte dorothée, chateauguay or vaudreuil
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Je ne suis pas d’accord avec cette information. J’ai souvent été bloqué sur Saint-Charles (particulièrement entre la 40 et Oakwood) des samedis à 14h.
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Si tu étais pris dans un bumper a bumper c’est qu’il avait une raison, peut-être des voies fermés sur la 40 ou bien construction des poutres du REM…un accident etc…mais ce n’etait pas pour rien, le West island n’a pas la densité de population pou remplir des boulevard a 3 voies durant les heures hors pointe , il faudrait que toute la population soit sorti en meme temps. Saint Charles c’est pas le boulevard saint Laurent ou toute la metropole l’utilise.
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I agree with you! I know he’s blowing this out of proportion, but he’s trying to be a NIMBY and use traffic as a reason. While his logic is flawed and will probably only make things worse, he’s not technically wrong.
I really disagree on this one I worked for many years at the St-Charles, St-Jean and Sources McDonald’s and had a view on the boulevards for 8hrs a shift. Each of those boulevards had bumper to bumper traffic at some occasions, but suffered from slowdowns reasonably often. Both on the boulevards and the side streets.
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ehhh I work at the st Charles Mcdo. I can confirm that the traffic is definitely getting really really bad. Its still not reason to halt residential development
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Half the traffic at Tony Hawk (Antoine-Faucon) is caused by the awful location of the Tim’s on the other side (as well as the terrible traffic light sequencing between Oakwood/Metro/Antoine-Faucon and at every strip mall entrance).
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yeah but the cloverleaf at the 40 and Saint Charles is backed up often too. As is st Charles and the 20, and basically all of st johns north of Hymus. same with sources. We still need residential development like this one, but that doesn’t change the fact that traffic is getting really bad, and its becoming an issue.
I’m a firm believer in the theory of induced demand (Jevons Paradox), but the same way the metro needs a “relief line” to ease the burden on the Orange, so too do the three north-south boulevards from Pierrefonds to the 20. It’s not adding lanes, it’s load-shedding.