Wrong road forward:

The new Turcot project fails to do much to accommodate trains and other public transit

Henry Aubin

Reprinted with permission from the Montreal Gazette, Saturday, March 28, 2009

The provincial government's plan to remake the Turcot Interchange is drawing criticism from a number of urban planners, environmentalists and nearby residents.

These critics don't contest the Department of Transport's argument that the existing aerial spaghetti of roads is in danger of collapsing and that quick corrective action is imperative. But they object to the ministry's plan to bring the roadways down to ground level where they could accommodate 310,000 cars a day, a 10-per-cent increase over the current level.

Which side is right?

An engineering report last year confirmed that the elevated roads are dangerously decrepit. The ministry's $1.5-billion plan to bring them to ground level by 2016 would be cheaper than rebuilding them in the air.

But the critics' points are also strong. They point out the plan ignores the fight against climate change. And although the plan calls for reserved bus lanes, its thrust would be to perpetuate the supremacy of commuting by car. Motor vehicles generate about a third of Quebec's greenhouse-gas emissions as well as much of the region's smog.

Another problem is that the grassy embankments on which the roads would be located would have broad shoulders and be about three times as wide as today's skinny aerial roads (call it the fettuccini effect). Today, cyclists and pedestrians can pass freely under the elevated roads; the embankments would prevent such coming and going, cutting off parts of the city from each other. (The occasional tunnels for cyclists and pedestrians would likely pose security problems).

As well, the new configuration would require the expropriation of 160 housing units. The roads' location at ground level would also increase the noise and air pollution for the remaining nearby residents.

Several urban planners have offered solutions to these neigbourhood issues. One scenario would be to build all or most of the interchange underground. Costs, however, would soar: The ministry says that tunnels would require pumping stations and ventilation. Trucks carrying dangerous goods could not enter.

Another scenario would be to prop the existing elevated structure with metal arches, but you have to wonder how permanent a solution that would be.

But let's get back to the climate-change problem. The Obama administration and many experts say that a future international treaty must aim for an 80-per-cent (at least) reduction in global greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. Oblivious, Quebec's transport department is building the wrong infrastructure for compliance.

Mayor Gérald Tremblay urged Transport Minister Julie Boulet last fall to make more room on the new interchange for public transit, but we haven't heard much from him since. In the case of the Highway 25 extension and the Notre Dame St. enlargement, Tremblay showed a flair for initially chiding the department, then caving.

Tremblay also asked Boulet that the new interchange be designed in such a way as to allow room for a future shuttle train between downtown and Trudeau International Airport. If such a frequently running rail line were to continue on to Ste. Anne de Bellevue, as many people hope, it could carry a great number of the West Island commuters who now drive through the interchange.

The problem is not in adapting the interchange to the train. It's in getting the train. The idea has been in the wind since the 1996 decision to transfer most flights from Mirabel to what is now Trudeau, but talks between Quebec and its partner in the concept, Ottawa, have produced nothing. Thirteen years of dithering.

If such a commuter train and other major public-transit schemes were in the works, the ministry might be able to scale down its interchange plan significantly.

The longer the provincial and federal governments delay in shifting transport policy away from cars and toward less environmentally harmful substitutes, the longer we'll be stuck with costly interim projects like the Turcot Interchange. It's a dumb project, but the public needs a safe alternative to the present ruin, and no other alternative is in sight.