Gibson caved to a single homeowner and started barricading the Kirkland—Pierrefonds pedestrian connection during the night, so it’s pretty unlikely they’d expropriate those two homes to build a full connection, never mind the ~15 required to go all the way to Jean-Yves.
He’s also expressed that he supports the status quo as far as the existing connection goes, so unfortunately it’s safe to say that the city would not want to upgrade it.
Ton exemple de trajet est parfait pour montrer que le combo vélo + REM sera le meilleur. La perméabilité est bien meilleure pour les piétons et cyclistes en banlieue grâce aux parcs et aux passages piétons.
Le trajet montré, ne prendrait que 7 minutes en vélo (1,8km), contre les 11 minutes en auto (4,7km).
Les banlieusards ne sont pas différents génetiquement, ils sont capable d’utiliser le vélo. Il faudra néanmoins pousser les aménagements et les mentalités et arrêter de donner autant de place à l’automobile. Ce chemin d’accès est donc un pas dans cette direction.
This is an interesting question so I looked into it. I live in the Petite-Patrie on a street that is actually a bit lower density than most of the streets nearby. 1km on my street = 1433 households. I live in a five-plex and there is an average of $125 monthly tax payment per unit in my building.
125 x 1433 = $179,125 per month
This is likely an underestimate because my street has many duplexes that have been converted into fancy single-family houses, so they’d be paying way more in taxes.
Now let’s look at 1km in Pierrefonds. 1km = 266 households. Looking at the rôle foncier, I see about $250 per month in taxes.
250 x 266 = $66,500 per month
So there you have it. The low density of the suburbs means less tax money, and therefore less money per capita for things like snow clearance.
Oui, mais il neige l’hiver. Et comment je vais faire pour transporter un canapé du IKEA une fois tous les 2 ans ???
I think you should look at this video which takes into account costs of running personal transit vehicles (i.e. cars) to transport people versus the costs of running an almost empty fixed bus route. It was found that the fixed bus route always wins out.
I also have pre-COVID ridership data of every STM route between 2012 and 2019.
Already lots of bus routes in the West Island exceed over a 1,000 riders per day. There are some exceptions such as the 220, which only offers 3 bus departures per day. But this proves is that even if the bus service was every 30 minutes, it would still bring more people in to the REM than a parking lot with 1,000 spaces. It also means that just having a bus that comes every 12-15 minutes could net the REM thousands of additional daily riders and would for sure easily out run the benefits if it was a parking lot. Because again, if you have a parking lot with X spaces, it isn’t guaranteed that those X spaces will be full. On top of that, it’s not like transit when ridership demand grows, the buses would surely have enough residual capacity to be able to take those people, while when a parking lot is full, well either people don’t park and just drive the whole way, or additional capital expenditure is needed to expand the parking lot.
There is also the express busses 4XX that are also packed during rush hour.
Plus building a TOD on that parking lot with high density, might bring more peoples to the REM than the actual parking lot people. Also housing close to the station means nice walking infrastructure, this will encourage people leaving at 10-20 minutes walk from the station to walk instead of driving.
This is not what’s happening in the West Island, whether the fault of hardheaded populist mayors and councils, or the developers themselves.
I am actually really impressed of the 212 ridership
Me the 206, would never had guess that
I’ve never seen this station in person until today. It is MASSIVE. Like to anyone that has not seen it IRL, it’s really really huge. It reminds me of a large university campus (specifically University of Toronto Mississauga)
It really is massive
Moreso because they went for side platforms instead of a central one.
This is pretty much a transit way, a transit infrastructure that already exists all over Canada and Québec. What’s so different about this one that all of the West Island’s political sphere is so opposed to a transit way in Montréal?
Mostly that for decades it was intended/expected to be an urban boulevard for cars, which is rubbing people the wrong way. That’s one thing that I could kinda tell people (the mayor particularly but also the residents) to just suck it up, quite honestly.
To me, the bigger problem (at least to me) is that this is at the literal edge of the suburbs, next to the giant agriculture/nature parks. There, bus service is, and likely always will be, the literal pits. I’d anticipate 30 min all day service on that transitway, possibly ending at 10pm or 12am (meaning you have to leave downtown around 9pm or 11pm respectively to catch it) with little-to-no rush hour boost. Unless there is some guarantee of usable bus service there, at that point it kinda becomes an “ok but what’s the point” kind of thing.
Lol told ya so
I thought people on the forum were exaggerating because it doen’t look that big on pictures, and then I had the same reaction when I saw it from the highway : “Damn it really is huge”
That’s what it boils down to. I’ve said before that I’d find the idea of a transitway more palatable if it extended all the way to boulevard de Pierrefonds, but even then, without adequate feeder bus services through the neighbourhoods to the transitway, or decent, safe walking and cycling infrastructure on residential streets to allow locals to get to the improved buses, it’s certainly “ok but what’s the point?” It’s just another half-assed idea by a central city administration that has no clue how to run a large metropolis.
