In the West Island’s case, similar to South Shore, I am actually in favour of parking, but only for it to be surface parking that allow it to be redeveloped over time and become a TOD (maybe most of it underground slowly removing spots over time essentially).
Building a massive structure is very expensive and likely wouldn’t be used that much, at least based on what I’ve seen with the silver line metro in Washington DC. This is the view when you exit “Innovation Center” station, each building a parking structure designed to look like a town, and there’s nothing nice about this, and most of the spots are empty:
In this case, the reason it’s empty is because people are already in their car, they might as well stay and drive directly to the city instead of driving up multiple levels, getting out and walking about 8 minutes over to the station.
Oh yeah that’s pretty much what I would go for as well. Surface lots with ezpz redevelopment potential would generally be the way to go.
That said, I think that parking structures make sense at the terminuses, though. Looking at anse for example, I wouldn’t be opposed to a parking structure there.
It’s all about balance.
DC is a good example of overdoing it in terms of parking.
Applying the DC treatment on the WI branch of the REM would basically be adding a 2-3k stall garage at every station.
The south shore branch has a relatively good and balanced formula with a good sized P&R at the regional terminal, no P&R at Du Quartier which is focused on nearby development, and a smaller terminal & P&R at Panama, still with some redevelopment potential.
In that sense, Anse should be the regional terminal, like Brossard as there is very little development potential (parc de l’ouest), Fairview has the biggest redevelopment potential of the bunch, it can even have 0 parking, Kirkland could be an hybrid like Panama.
The current plan for Sources is ok as it will be the last spot to be redevelopped, probably in a 10-20 year horizon.
Le stationnement a été enlevé suite a une demande de la ville de SADB qui craint d’avoir plus de trafic automobile sur ces rues
Notamment le boulevard Morgan. Aussi pour minimiser la pression automobile sur le pont de iles au tourtes.
In places like the West Island and the South Shore, parking is a necessary evil for the REM. I don’t like it either, but unless the STM/RTL provides more frequent/reliable bus services and bike paths to the REM stations I don’t see any other solutions.
I remember years ago at Concordia Eric Alan Caldwell (current board chair member of the STM) was part of this panel for TOD urbanism. I questioned on the choice of having not having parking around the stations. My point was that there is no viable alternative than to drive to the REM stations since the bus service was lacking (this was pre-pandemic by the way). He basically called me out on being lazy and to take a bike… I love to cycle, and I am a pro-bike lane advocate, yet you will never catch me on Sources Blvd biking with cars flying at 50km/h… nor do I expect non-cyclists to do so.
It’s one of those things where if you expect people to change their habits, you need to provide them the space for that, yet they never seem to do it. So parking it is.
If we’re worried about bus service bringing people to REM stations on the south shore and West Island forcing people to drive there, the north shore Exo bus service to Deux-Montagnes is saying: Hold my beer…
Parking there was already full at 6h30 and because of protected areas it couldn’t be enlarged and the entrances are acting as a bottleneck… not sure if it would have been possible to move that station north of 640 with better accesses and larger parking space. But it’s a different topic and obviously too late.
Same that darn overpass is a death wish for anything not in a car… Same with Saint jean… The 20 overpasses where dead wishes as well until the city built the pedestrian underpasses and made them UA… Decades ago…
I REALLY HOPE we get a transitway on sources be it an overpass or underpass
Ha! Current mayor of Pointe-Claire fights anything that will be built in the city. Dorval which is across the street runs the city like a business and will take every advantage of a weaker opponent, smart cities fight for business.
Boy, that escalated quickly
