Fortunately there are very good people indeed on the team, and whatever happens, it will be an important push for public transport and the much-needed trams on clogged arteries. Trams will get people out of their cars, even posh people who won't take a bus. They will remember the sleek modern tram in Bordeaux or Amsterdam and not see it as slumming and leave the frigging car at home.

Kyle, Bergeron is certainly not charismatic, but in the current mess perhaps people will look beyond charisma.

From here i go north across the street to the little park beside city hall and watch the sunset. Go down the stairs and you can see the old walls that were part of the fortifications of Montreal in the old, old days.

All this is part of my downtown-mtl urban adventure bike ride.

A bike ride to the Olympic Stadium is a bit more involved, but is a uniquely montreal adventure to ride around that gigantic monstrosity of the Olympic Stadium.

My conclusion:
The best way to make things happen in our fair city that I agree with would be with a Drapeau-esque make-it-happen mayor who brings about all of Richard Bergeron's ideas.

Hey Richie, I love your ideas, but I saw you on Tout le Monde en Parle last Sunday....and, well, your vision just doesn't come across with conviction on TV. Make no mistake, we may love your ideas, but we're not afraid to admit you look like a crazed left-field professor incapable of making a decision, next to your locked-in-stone rivals.

If you can't effectively communicate your ideas to the public with conviction, you're not going to get the votes, and we'll be stuck with Tremblay status-quo-ism or Harel visionary-less scare-the-pants-off-everybody-with-your-creepy-politico-vibe-ism. Both of which are the established "isms" in this city and offer no real exciting vision of the future.

Okay, here's the obligatory youth-movement political reference poster: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2589/4035469314_e045450e4f_o.png

Ça résume l'époque assez bien, n'est-ce pas?

Aussi, remarquez à 13:00 environ le "proposed bridge" du "Boul. Persillier"... c'est l'autoroute 15! Un petit projet même pas digne de mention. :-)

J'ai vu les 2 parties de ce film à la Cinérobothèque. (J'ignore pourquoi seule la partie 1 est disponible en-ligne).

Le reportage mentionne le transport en commun du bout des lèvres une seule fois en 30 minutes... mais on questionne (sérieusement!) un expert à la fin de la partie 2 sur la possibilité d'utiliser l'hélicoptère pour soulager la congestion.

En passant, je sais pas qui faisait les maquettes pour la ville à cette époque, mais il était fier du Mont-Royal... on dirait l'Everest! :-)

-- X

Feeding ideas to the people in power is the whole point of a political opposition party or of a public consultation. Whether or not he gets elected, Bergeron has already been effective at raising the bar on transit and sustainable development issues. But I don't have much patience for bickering about where credit is due.

One one hand you’ve got the glory days of the metro and Expo-67.

The Metro and Expo were not Drapeau's ideas. He just took credit for them.

It's funny how people in Montreal long for a mayor who is a visionary, but (regardless of a PhD in urban planning) are quick to dismiss Richard Bergeron as an unrealistic dreamer .

Montreal is indeed at a crossroads; Bergeron is holding the map of a sustainable future. I wonder if Montrealers are smart enough to know a good thing when they see it?

What might have changed since the 1960s?

For one thing, Québec has asserted more authority, having since created a number of financial institutions to circumvent the Anglophone banks' control of the bond markets and disciplining of public powers. The public financing of the métro led to criticisms of Québec being the "Cuba of the north", I believe.

Also, that was an era much more conducive to large, state-funded projects. Since then, mitigation measures and environmental concerns, as well as the anti-state tropes of "overspending", "over-taxation", etc. that Henry Aubin peppers his articles with in the Gazette have limited the state's ability to act.

There are reasons why there are pre-feasibility studies, feasibility studies, environmental hearings, etc etc.

Everyone wants to borrow from the symbolism of Drapeau as a "doer". But saying you could do things faster if you were in power is easy when you are condemned to the opposition benches.