Hi Mary, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. I’m fascinated by the debate for/against the tramway. I’m a big fan of trams and streetcars because I lived in a city that had them, and I found them more pleasant than buses. I think we should also take into account future running costs and environmental costs, not simply the cost of setting up the infrastructure. As far as I can tell, buses in Montreal currently run on petrol; I haven’t seen any movement or advertisement of ethanol buses, as has been done in Melbourne, Australia for at least the last 5 years. How is this going to be cheaper to maintain when the price of oil isn’t going to drop, but is more likely to rise? If we were going to re-engineer our buses to be more environmentally friendly, wouldn’t we be looking at extra costs too?

I’m unclear about the perception of why tramways are “less flexible”, so I’m happy to hear some thoughts on that. I have to say, I love trams, they have personality So I’m still trying to understand the other side of the story.

Now were the tramway to be integrated into a light rail that went to the southshore, we might have something.

Because I’m working on a book about walkable cities, I’ve been poking around Griffintown and also the Dix30 shopping centre in Brossard which is a Devimco project. Two things seem clear to me: Griffintown is being slowing redeveloped much as the industrial area in northern Mile End has been over the last 10 years, and Devimco has a lot of money that it wants to invest (as do other big investment funds) and don’t know what to do with it.

Mary

Also, was it just me or did Mr Hanna seems completely defeated. ‘Nothing we can do to stop this’ ‘Maybe we can make minor changes…’ His claim that this project will be intrinsically ‘good’ for Montreal left me gaping. In what way exactly? No school, no community center, 1 Million sqft of shopping?? With a recession looming in the USA for 2008 and most likely a global cool down to follow, what are we going to do with another ‘Rockland Center’ sized mall?

(Hell, even without the recession on the horizon, I see absolutely no need for another massive shopping center on the island)

So. Seeing all the press for this project and being handed a glitzy Project Devimco (err Griffintown) brochure as if it’s all a done deal just makes me think that we need to put the brakes on this thing fast. Else we risk being shoveled under the concrete during the upcoming ‘consultations’.

Modern tramways are very very narrow and light — Strasbourg and other European cities have these ones that can snake down even narrow medieval city streets, so there’s no reason why De Maisonneuve couldn’t theoretically have both. Alternately, it could loop up to Sherbrooke and run along there…creating a downtown figure-8 tram loop along Sherbrooke, Guy, the canal/Griffintown, then up/down Peel, over to Berri, down Berri, back along De La Commune and then back to Peel/Wellington as the central tramway hub.

Yea, Devimcoville. Sounds like something out of a 60’s science fiction novel where The Corporation builds some massive housing project and no one ever leaves, or wants to.

In fact, I never knew about Griffintown…

But now, people will know.