Bloody Cars
Car still king, daddy-o
by MATT JONES
June 2, 2011
The 50s get a bad rap. Occasionally we remember the innovations that produced rock music, meat-and-Jell-O dishes and eerily un-self-conscious horror movies, but mostly the decade gets marched out as a metaphor for a naïve time when the sexes stuck to their own spheres, communists were intent on destroying our way of life and the automobile reigned supreme. Such is the criticism currently being levelled against the Quebec government and the Tremblay administration for their plans to reconstruct the Turcot interchange in St-Henri. “This whole project is based on principles that were maybe modern in the 1950s but are completely retro in 2011,” says Shannon Franssen, spokesperson for Mobilisation Turcot, a coalition of organizations that want to see a more environmentally friendly plan for the interchange.
“This whole project is based on
principles that were maybe modern in the 1950s, but are completely
retro in 2011,” says Shannon Franssen, spokesperson for
Mobilisation Turcot, a coalition of organizations that want to see a
more environmentally-friendly plan for the interchange.
The Turcot’s spirals of cement are a
memento of the days when concrete was the material of the future. But
like so many visions of the millennium seen from the fifties, they
have crumbled with the weight of time. For the past three years,
municipal and provincial governments have been arguing with residents
and environmentalists about how best to rebuild the highway. After
the initial plan met with criticism for being car-centric, including
a damning report from the Bureau d'audiences publiques sur
l'environnement (BAPE), the Province went back to the drawing board.
“They put a lot of money into a
public relations campaign to make it look as if they’d taken into
consideration the recommendations from the BAPE, but the new plan is
essentially the same project they originally proposed,” says
Franssen.
Opponents of the plan have demanded
that more focus be put on public transit. The new plan includes a bus
lane that runs the length of the new section, but doesn’t join up
with bus lanes before or after. “It’s basically a bus lane that
goes nowhere,” says Franssen. “They added that as a cosmetic nod
to the request for public transit but it’s pretty ineffective.”
Mobilisation Turcot is holding a demo
this Saturday to put pressure on both levels of government to adopt a
more public transit-friendly plan. Instead of their usual march
through St-Henri, near the interchange itself, they will be bringing
their protest to the Plateau.
Franssen insists that this is not just
an issue for the south-west. “The south-west has been very vocal
and active against the Turcot designs since the very beginning, but
this is a Montreal issue. The amount of pollution caused by bringing
more cars into the city will affect everyone.”
Still, going to the Plateau with its
abundance of Bixis and undersized one-speed bikes only scratches the
surface of the problem. Franssen acknowledges that tension with
suburban drivers won’t go away without serious investment in public
transit in the burbs.
“People in the suburbs need their
cars because there’s no public transit infrastructure. We need more
trains going to the suburbs. Most of the traffic on the Ville Marie
is people going from one neighbourhood to another in Montreal. If we
provide public transit infrastructure then many of those people will
not be on the highway. Being on the highway in traffic is not fun.”
The demo takes place this Saturday June
4 at 3 p.m. behind the faux-railcar that houses the Pizzaiolle by
Laurier metro (4801 St-Denis). To emphasize the backwardness of the
current plans, participants are encouraged to dress in their best
fifties garb. See mobilisation-turcot.info
for more information.
Montreal Mirror June 2, 2011 (this is the unedited text)
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