More Turcot In The News

Turcot reconstruction plan ‘ill-conceived’: FRAPRU

Alternate Turcot vision unveiled

Judge asked to delay hearings on Turcot work

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Worker Injured At Turcot

Strange timing as I had just posted about that area last night.

MONTREAL ­ A 41-year-old man working under the Turcot Interchange was taken to a hospital with serious head injuries after a piece of concrete fell on him about 10 a.m. Monday.

The man was doing jackhammer work under the elevated portion of the interchange, on a support pillar near the Gadbois recreation complex near the corner of St. Ambroise St. and Cote St. Paul Rd.

According to the Surete du Quebec, a piece of concrete measuring 30 cm by 10 cm fell and the man fell unconscious. The man was working for a private company hired by the Quebec Transport Department. His condition was not known, but the man was wearing his helmet at the time of the accident.

It was not known where the piece of concrete fell from. The Transport Department and the CSST, Quebec’s workplace safety board are investigating.

There have been no reported road closures because to the accident. Réal Grégoire, a spokesperson for Transport Quebec, said there is no danger for motorists who use the elevated portion of Highway 15 under which the man was working.

About 280,000 motorists drive through the Turcot Interchange daily, he said. Work at the site has been suspended while the CSST conducts its investigation, he said.

Julie Melançon, a spokesperson for the CSST, Quebec’s workplace safety board which is investigating the incident, said the man was in stable condition in a hospital.

The man is a specialized worker employed by the company DJL, which was hired by the Transport department as part of work being carried out on this section if the interchange since June 10.

Gazette story here.

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Government Backs Off Turcot PPP

The Quebec government announced Friday it will back away from plans to rebuild the Turcot interchange in Montreal through a public-private partnership.

From CBC.

Quebec’s Transport Ministry had originally hoped to save tens of millions of dollars by partnering with the private sector to rebuild the highway interchange. But in a statement released Friday morning, Transport Minister Julie Boulet said the government has crunched the numbers again and decided the public-private partnership (PPP) is no longer such a good idea.The economic situation has changed, Boulet said, and the $100 million in savings originally predicted under a PPP formula would not materialize. By going it alone, the government said, it would have the flexibility needed to carry out the massive project in an efficient and fiscally responsible way.

Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay had demanded the government abandon their PPP plans, saying it wouldn’t allow enough flexibility for the construction of the $1.5-billion project.

This is the second major project that was supposed to have been financed by the private and public sectors to be modified in the past few months. Premier Jean Charest has repeatedly stood behind the PPP formula but just last month, government officials decided to drop the PPP model for Laval University’s new sports complex construction project.

The Turcot, an aging, elevated interchange that links the Décarie Expressway, Highway 20 and the Ville-Marie Expressway west of downtown Montreal, will be torn down and replaced with a ground-level road system.

Each day about 300,000 drivers use the Turcot interchange.

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Secretary Of Art And Culture For USA?

Quincy Jones and others believe the time has come and there is already 76,000 names on the petition. Jones says he will “beg” Obama to create this position. Should be interesting to follow this.

(By Pablo Martinez Monsivais — Associated Press)

Story here.

Petition here.

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Record Snow In Las Vegas

Not even a “storm”  by our standards, of course, but it is pretty neat to see this!

Story here.

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City Asks Government To Rethink Turcot

WhoooHooo!!! Best news out of City Hall in a long time. Gazette article here.

You can read the  city hall press release here.

Will have more comments soon.

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Waterspout In Montreal

Wednesday afternoon a waterspout was seen here and no one can remember ever seeing one here before. Looks very cool but also scary. Story here.

(Barry Caine / MyNews.CTV.ca)

And this video from Jenniexotica.

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Rail Link Airport To Downtown

City Hall has announced that there will be a rapid transit rail line between Pierre Eliot Trudeau International Airport and downtown Montreal. This is a long overdue announcement but I have to question how relevant it might be at this stage of the ‘ol game. As I have said countless times before this wouldn’t be happening if Mirabel had worked. One of the bigger problems with Mirabel was that there was never a rapid train nor even a decent direct freeway for getting there from the city. But in terms of sustainability, expanding Trudeau may be a mistake. That is a lot of pollution, noise, and a heck of a huge chunk of land being used for a transportation method that may actually start to see a decline in the coming decades as fast train lines become more popular for same day destinations, heck, there may not even be a choice. Solar Airlines?

Kate over at Montreal City Weblog asks today if the city couldn’t do anything to improve the bus service between the airport and downtown. As it is you have to take the 211 to Dorval station and then transfer onto the 204, which is not a frequently running bus. It really is kind of bush league that there is not at least a direct “special” bus that does the job. Of course there are no bus lanes along highway 20, so the trip would not necessarily be much faster, but at least it would be one bus, one destination.

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Montreal Snowstorm, December 16, 2007

And another one! Was driving around in this one sans camera so I will depend on the foresight of others once again. It really is a throwback to an “old time December” and I haven’t seen this kind of snow fun in the city in at least 30 years.

From sh3phard

Flocaro,

Eldrauger,

And some stills from

Solange

Apexdv

Quan Nguyen

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Montreal ranked 14th!

Ridiculous,  and unthinkable 25 years ago, but there it is according to a recent Conference Board Study.

This paragraph caught my eye.

” The lone exception was Montreal, with the second-highest population but 14th on the list, because of its poor scores on economic factors and the environment, such things as usage of municipal drinking water, climate and clean air.”

But not really a surprise is it?

Story here.

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Public Consultation in NDG – November 19, 7pm

Finally, the MTQ people have agreed to hold a public consultation meeting for residents of NDG (for some completely unknown reason they did not originally see NDG as an area that would be directly affected by the new Turcot plan/construction hence the pressure to get a meeting there) on November 19 at 7pm at the Saint Raymond Centre, 5600 Upper Lachine Road.

Of course this leaves citizens with as little time to get organized as possible. Still, there is hope that some of the concerns raised by residents of NDG will be publicly heard.

Here is the blurb from The Green Party.

TRANSPORT QUEBEC HOLDS PUBLIC HEARINGS ON THE TURCOT INTERCHANGE

 IN NDG

   The NDG Green Party of Quebec is pleased to annouce that our
pressure campaign to force Transport Quebec to hold a public hear
-ing in NDG has payed off, and it is scheduled for Monday 
Nov 19th at 7pm at the St-Raymond  center at 5600 Upper 
Lachine road.

 Here are 3 specific important questions about the Turcot 
rebuild that the NDG Green Party would like answered:

1- Will the new electric tram-train link between downtown and 
Dorval  airport, using the CP tracks through Montreal West, NDG 
and Westmount, be  operational before highway 20 lane closings 
occur in 5 years, so that  there is an alternative way for more residents to get downtown or to  the airport before the big 
delays begin? 
 
2- The Turcot planners want to demolish the St-Jacques bridge 
over the  highway in 2010 for several years while they build 
the new highway 15  lanes below.  At the same time, the MUHC 
planners want to close the  deficient Decarie Street underpass 
under the CP tracks in 2010 to rebuild  it as the first, 
necessary step in their controversial traffic plan for  the 
Glen hospital site.  
 CLOSING BOTH THESE KEY ROUTES AT THE SAME TIME WILL ALLOW 
NO WAY FOR TRAFFIC FROM DOWNTOWN TO PROCEED WEST AND NORTH 
INTO NDG.  Please let  the residents of NDG know which will
be first and precisely what  alternative routes will be 
recommended to drivers. 

3- Transport Quebec wants to move Highway 20 and the CN-Via 
tracks  right up against the St-Jacques escarpment to free 
up land near Notre Dame  street for development or a park. 
 We feel that it would make more  sense to leave the highway 
where it is now:
  -if the St-Jacques escarpment eco-territory was fully 
upgraded  into a linear park with a nice bicycle-cross 
country ski trail running  along its length (just such a path 
was started by the RCM in 1994) and  also with several paths 
or stairs running up and down it (one such police  car 
accessible road already exists and comes out on St-Jacques 
near  Cavendish), the residents of NDG and St-Raymond 
(which the city plans to  densify) would have good access 
to this park,
 - at the same time, a new sustainable residential development
 could be encouraged in the Turcot yards because of pedestrian 
and bicycle  access to this park and through it to the retail
 stores that already  exist along St-Jacques at the top of the escarpment.
  -Transport Quebec's plan, on the other hand, would mean 
creating a hard to access from any side strip of park or 
development between heavy industrial Notre Dame St.(with 
the Lachine Canal behind it true, but with even heavier 
industry across the canal there in LaSalle) and the newly moved highway 20.
 

So please come out on Monday Nov 19th at 7pm to the St-Raymond 
center at 5600 Upper Lachine road to hear Transport Quebec's 
answers to these and also your important questions about 
this massive project and its effects on NDG in the years ahead.

Peter McQueen
President of the NDG riding association
Green Party of Quebec
514 678 5515

 

I urge everyone to attend this and see for yourself how democracy is served in this city so Be There!

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Poor Inspections – Overpasses In Trouble

13 of 20 overpasses in Quebec recently given the 3rd degree inspection test have been deemed in need to be replaced or heavily reinforced, announced Transport Quebec. It looks like routine inspections are too superficial and do not include interior inspections of the structures. The result of this is that the structures have possibly prematurely aged and even those that currently pass inspections may develop problems sooner than expected. There are still 115 overpasses on the provincial “endangered” list to be thoroughly inspected.

Story here.

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Stephen Truscott Acquited!

Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of all this is why it took so long. Truscott’s case had been superbly presented in the book, The Trial Of Stephen Truscott, by Isabel LeBourdais, published in 1966. Many Justice Ministers and the Supreme Court have always refused to see what was obvious to many – that Stephen Truscott was innocent of murder.

Congratulations, Mr. Truscott!

Story here.

And here.

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Keeping Up

Seems that Montreal City Weblob has commented here that she blogged about my blogging after Fagstein blogged that I blogged about the chain of reactions to  Fagstein writing an article in The Gazette about Coolopolis who blogged about that prompting Montreal City Weblog to blog about that while I turned and blogged about that.

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The Crumbling Bridges Of Quebec

The saga continues with a report in The Gazette today by Phil Couvrette.  A bridge in St.Lin-Laurentides, about 80 kilometers north of Montreal, will be  demolished and a  new one built in it’s place.

“Talk of replacing the bridge goes back about four years, said Mayor Andre Auger, and the seriousness of the situation became obvious last year when chunks of concrete started falling off.

But it was the death of a worker repairing the bridge earlier this year that prompted an investigation which led to the discovery of cracks below the water line and forced immediate large-scale work.”

Scary stuff! How many time bombs are ticking across the province?

Full Story Here.

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