Riding Portland's LRT is a breeze with your bike - Image from Thomas Le Ngo's Flickr page As North American urban planners grapple with the challenge of moving away from an auto-centric vision of urban mobility, new attention is being given to ways to integrate cycling with public transport. This marriage may hold the key to expanding the reach of existing transit service and encouraging "spillover" mode share gains, and is being successfully implemented in cities like Portland, Oregon, and all over  Europe. Montreal is aiming to capitalize on this synergy, ...

The City of Montreal invokes a more tranquil future next to the Turcot While summer may be the peak of construction season here in Quebec, it appears that spring is the height of the planning season. This is the inevitable conclusion one reaches after the recent flurry of plans and counter-plans concerning the future of the Turcot Interchange. In this post, I’ll compare some of the details from these plans and discuss the what all means as we near the end of a process that has pitted dozens of citizens’ groups, regional environmental groups, the Cities of Montreal and Westmount and opposition parties against Charest’s government, at a time when ongoing allegations of corruption have seriously undermined the Ministry of Transport’s legitimacy. In case you’re already dizzy from the many alternatives flying around, I’ll recap the three that are currently on the table, providing as much detail as is currently available. A revised plan by your friendly neighbourhood MTQ Tired of looking like a bully that wants to throw people out of their homes so they could play with their toy cars, the Ministry of Transport revised their plan by reducing the number of expropriations required on rue Cazelais from 160 to only 100. While Minister of Transport, Julie Boulet, warned this would result in higher costs, the MTQ believed this gesture would subdue the most vocal opponents of the project. Given ongoing critiques that vehicle capacity should be reduced in favour of better public transportation options, and that the whole project be reconceived to reflect its urban context, it is comical to imagine that the MTQ believed that by simply addressing the question of expropriations would win them any public favour. Nonetheless, this “Turcot-lite” remains the official plan on the table.

This is the beginning of a short photo series around Copenhagen (aka Hopenhagen) and some of their neat bike/ped/vehicle road design they employ . Since my infrastructure fetish was not satisfied in my summer visit to the Danish capital, I've returned via Google Streetview to take the screenshots I missed on the past visit. As many know, Copenhagen's got some great bike paths--and an enviable 37% of all trips to work on made by bicycle. Thanks to Google's lovely high-resolution Streetview shots, we can explore some of their tricks to making streets work for all road users. ***...

Modified based on an MTQ image - additions not to scale This past weekend, the MTQ quietly broke the news to Radio-Canada and CBC News that the plan for the Turcot Interchange would be modified in response to some of the complaints made during the province’s environmental hearings (BAPE) last spring. The winners of this announcement are the residents of rue Cazelais in the part of St. Henri known as ‘les Tanneries’, where 60 dwellings will be saved from the ...

A screenshot from the Government's website on Quebec's position at the Copenhagen climate talks Premier Jean Charest is spreading the gospel about Quebec's 'avant garde' approach to reducing climate change-causing emissions. The Premier's message on 'Quebec vers Copenhague' speaks of  Quebec's achievements in developing a 'modern economy' that will allow for Quebec to become a 'world power' in the domain of 'green energy'. Notably, the Premier has announced that emissions will be reduced 20% as of 1990 levels, which is the most ...