Richard Bergeron, city executive committee member responsible for urban planning, has indicated the results of those talks will remain secret for several weeks.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Mayor Gérald Tremblay would say only he hopes to meet with Transport Minister Julie Boulet “as soon as possible” about Turcot.
His comments came after the Conseil régional de l’environnement de Montréal, an environmental coalition, and 30 other groups and individuals called on Montreal to lift the veil. Among those calling for transparency was Sophie Thiébaut, a councillor from Bergeron’s Projet Montréal party and founder of a coalition against the Turcot plan.
“The city of Montreal should not be proceeding on the sly,” said Coralie Deny, head of CRÉ-Montréal, noting the city itself has complained that Quebec was too secretive when it originally drew up its Turcot plan.
The opponents accused Transport Quebec of bypassing discussions with Montreal by submitting its final Turcot plan to the environment department before talks with the city are concluded.
But Quebec denies it has finalized its plan.
On March 24, Transport Quebec submitted its detailed response to the 39 recommendations made by the the Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement in November, said Stéphanie Langelier, a Transport Quebec spokesperson.
The environment department, which must OK the plan before construction can begin, is studying that response. Dave Leclerc, a spokesperson for Environment Minister Line Beauchamp, said it’s unclear when the department will complete that analysis.
Langelier said her department’s responses to BAPE don’t constitute the transport department’s final Turcot plan, Langelier said. She said Transport Quebec is working closely with the city to make changes to it. She said there is no deadline for those talks.
Quebec unveiled its Turcot plan in 2007. Construction was to have started last fall.
Built in the mid-1960s, the Turcot – a tangle of highways and access ramps west of downtown Montreal – is close to the end of its useful life. Highways 15 and 20 and the Ville Marie Expressway converge at the Turcot, used by 290,000 vehicles daily.
Critics say Quebec's plan, which had a $1.5-billion price tag, would increase capacity to 320,000 cars, encourage urban sprawl and do nothing to discourage car use.
Among other things, the BAPE said Quebec should scrap plans to expropriate the homes of several hundred St. Henri residents and develop a regional network of reserved transit lanes on highways. It said pollution produced by the road vehicles using Turcot are “of concern.”
2 comments:
This photo was taken back in the 60's by Alan Leishman, a photographer for the Montreal Star,in those days & a friend of a few us,...this was an engineering marvel in it's day.
Cheers! HF&RV
Turcot Interchange
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Built between October 1965 and April 1967, the Turcot Interchange is a freeway interchange within the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, that links Autoroutes 15, 20, and 720. It takes its name from the currently-abandoned Turcot rail yards over which it is built.
At this stack interchange west of downtown, the Ville-Marie Expressway, the Décarie Expressway, the Champlain Bridge, and Autoroute 20 all come together.
When originally constructed the interchange was built high above the ground as a dramatic demonstration of Montreal's status as a modern global metropolis and to accommodate ships passing through the Lachine Canal.
More than 300,000 vehicles use the interchange every day, making it busier than the busiest bridge in the world, the George Washington Bridge, in New York City.
Reconstruction plans
In June 2007, the Quebec government announced the demolition and reconstruction of the structure, projected to be complete in 2016. The announcement came four years after a study on the interchange showed the Turcot structure was crumbling, with reports of concrete slabs up to one square metre falling from the overpasses.[1] In addition to a new interchange built lower to the ground, a large segment of Autoroute 20 would be rebuilt more to the north. Reconstruction of the interchange is expected to cost between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion.[2]
Controversy
Around the time of its announcement, the project created controversy as to how Turcot should be rebuilt. Local residents and community groups have come out against the project as proposed by the government, claiming that it will worsen pollution, increase automobile traffic downtown, and require the demolition of housing including a significant portion of the Village des Tanneries neighborhood.[3][4]
The project's environmental hearings ended June 19, 2009.[5] They revealed new plans for the area by CN,[6] as well as strong public desire to protect existing communities, rethink the modal balance of Montreal's urban transportation, and plan realistically for a future of energy shortages and environmental crisis.
The project itself is currently frozen in the pre-production phase. After conducting several environmental and technical impact researches by MDDEP in early Summer of 2009, construction plans have been furthermore halted because of the 2009 financial crisis, which led Transports Québec to delay the project at least until September 2010, without further notice.
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