You can probably contact the borough for more information about the next steps.

Given the height of some of the industrial buildings in the area (north and south of the railway), it is an area where housing can be built taller and denser, provided the design is well done.

Also remember that just a bit east along the railway line (it dips down a bit, so the northern side there is Rosemont) is an interesting new mixed development of social housing, condos, public buildings (a library and a swimming pool - yay!) and a little park.

Let's hope this time the revitalisation and development project gets things right.

I would like to invite you to visit our Web page at: ville.montreal.qc.ca/sitebellechasse and to leave your comments on our forum so they would have more chance to be take into consideration by the teams who will work on thje project.

Thanks!

Separate overhead crossings - little bridges which don't have to have the load-bearing capacity of an auto viaduct -for pedestrians and bikes (pedestrians could still cross on the Van Horne as well) would be less costly, I'd think, than tearing down the viaduct and building tunnel(s). It's true that if there were such bridges then then auto traffic only could be put in a tunnel. Then it would simply be a cost-benefit analysis of the remaining allocations whether to replace the viaduct with a tunnel; the important thing is to separate the foot and bike traffic from the auto without also putting them underground.

I suppose CN is going to have to have some say about where a tunnel would go, as well as mini-bridges?

Having walked across it numerous times as well as taking the 161 bus to Rosemont Metro frequently, I appreciate it as an example of what the architect/urban planner Chris Alexander, in his book A Pattern Language, calls "high places" - public spaces for vistas, for anyone to go to get an unordinary perspective on their city. I love the panoramic view from there - the sweep of the neighbourhoods in all directions, the various steeples, the view of that magnificent church at St. Viateur & St. Urbain, the view towards the Mountain, the ziggurat apartment buildings where Outremont meets Côte-des-Neiges, all of it.

A tunnel, besides being unsafe and unhealthy for pedestrians and bikes, can't perform this function. And bikes in particular are better served by an expansion of the existing path network near the tracks. And there's no reason that ground-level pedestrian pathways couldn't be formalized as well.

How does the city decide when to do a PPU? If ever there was an area that needs one, St Henri would be it... Given the Turcot reconstruction, MUHC, the CN tracks, brownfields, etc. um Hello ??!

Not very safe for cyclists either.

The wild greenery is pleasant, but we do need more social housing and it is an excellent location (obviously it has to be decontaminated, but so do most urban sites). Be interesting to see how all of this can be brought together.

What does the STM plan to do with the bus depot? I would think it would be sensible to keep one the central part of the city rather than putting out in an industrial park somewhere like Anjou or Lachine so as to allow buses to get where they're needed faster.

This project has caused me to dissect the viaduct a bit closer. I always thought it was smart of have it so as to allow cars to get across the tracks from the east/west but now that I really look at it, it seems like a useless extravagance. Why not just build a tunnel under the tracks at Bernard in Mile End to connect Marmier/Rosemont? I suppose it could be blamed on the 60 and 70s and thoses decades' love for over-doing things.