I like it!
Mayor Tremblay announced his Transit Plan this past week and I was completely floored by how audacious and how environmentally progressive it is.
What is getting most of the chatter in the press is how Mayor Tremblay plans on financing his transport plan: with tolls.
Reading the various commentators and listening to the various ’streeters’ that Radio Canada and TVA have done and it appears some quite haven’t gotten it.
Who really hasn’t gotten it is the mayor of Brossard, Jean-Marc Pelletier. Upon hearing of Tremblay’s plans to put tolls on roads that lead into Montreal (not on the bridges or the autoroutes) proclaimed that he too will put tolls on the roads leading to the Eastern Townships so that Montrealers will have to pay on their way to the Eastern Townships.
Tremblay is proposing to put tolls on the roads leading into Montreal, not on the bridges or autoroutes. So if Mayor Pelletier wishes to do the same on the territory of Brossard, go for it. Personally, when driving to the Eastern Townships, I avoid having to stop in Brossard at all costs. The point of these tolls is not a 514 vs 450 plan.
The point of the tolls is two fold. The first is to help pay for alternative transit in Montreal, NOT to pay for autoroutes or bridges or the roads of Montreal. The tolls is a way of financing environmentally friendly methods of transport.
The second point of the tolls, and this is where many of the commentators get it wrong, is to force those living in the suburbs to think twice before driving into the city: There’s now an extra cost.
What so many refuse to state for fear of a backlash is that living in the burbs, is bad for the environment. It requires that you drive nearly everywhere to get anything. It requires more stuff to supply a house then an apartment in the city. Not just in terms of transport, but in terms of everything.
If it means less people from Laval drive in to La Marché Centrale, then consider this a plus. Read your Jane Jacobs. What needs to be developed are tight knitted communities, not towns with cookie cutter houses and a Brick, Brault et Martineau and East Side Mario with a large parking lot in front.
I doubt it will force Laval into actually becoming a city, but it might hopefully stop urban sprawl and encourage people to live on the island.
I tip my hat to Mayor Tremblay. It’s the kind of forward thinking and planning that is required in this city. The trick now will be to pull it off.
Suburbanites – especially since the demergers – basically get a free ride off of Montreal’s economic engine, but contribute very little back in terms of taxes to pay for ongoing infrastructure improvements. The tax burden is then shifted back onto residents of the City of Montreal proper. Is that fair? In a sense I think that’s what the provincial government was supposed to help equalize, by re-allocating some of those regionally collected taxes back to the city, but I’m not sure how well that worked.
That said, could Laval and the South Shore transition into functioning, local economies of their own, if forced to? I wonder if there’s enough time / energy to accomplish this. On a side note, When I was a kid there were still farms on the island of Laval; the legacy of low-density development out to the mountains means I wonder where we’re simply going to get our food in the near future.
There’s nothing progressive about taxes – they promote inefficent distant centralized government. The unintended consequence is probably more smog from traffic jams, road rage etc.
This proposal confirms two prejudices of mine (1) that there is no politician in Canada with a brain, since the solution to every problem is raise taxes (and that has worked so well) (2) that the green movement is a front for more taxes. The New Improved Ideology – this time it’s a crisis and you can trust us. Sure. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Suburban planning can be tweaked to be just as green and Jacob-ian. Developers in the US are doing this.
Look, people want to own property and live prosperously. And they move away from places that restrict it. Montreal is the case in point.
Green started with a nice hype about incentives and win-win and lookat how quickly it devolves into the sludge of taxation. It never works. A disgrace.
I agree with AJ – Montreal is getting screwed bigtime. It’s good to protect rural concerns, but we don’t have one man one vote here in Quebec. Rural constituencies contain 20% fewer voters than urban ones. And the amalgamation is a mess that added even more bureaucrats (Hey that’ll solve the problems). But tolls won’t fix the amalgamation mess.
Why don’t we fire 25% of our politicians and bureaucrats, and put the money into public transit – lower transit fees and increase the accessibility and frequency of public transit. That budget’s been attacked every year since Drapeau.
Sorry to say hi with an opposing voice, but I do like the blog.