The Eastern REM at Disney | The Press

I watched the video showing the REM de l’Est, in its downtown portion, at least a dozen times. Needless to say, it’s gorgeous!

Everything is white, clean, contemporary. The four lanes reserved for cars are on the north side of René-Lévesque Boulevard. To the south, there is a cycle path, wide spaces for pedestrians, green squares, benches, bicycle racks.

All the parking spaces have disappeared, which should appeal to the elected representatives of Projet Montréal. At the entrance to Chinatown, a beautiful public square has been created (on the hideous wasteland at the corner of Saint-Laurent which has been unoccupied since the Ming Dynasty era).

Suddenly, we see a train coming. It enters the underground part, the entrance to which is at rue Jeanne-Mance. Above that, we imagined a belvedere that makes you want to relax there while reading the most recent novel by Dany Laferrière.

The catenaries (whose ugliness I described near the Samuel-De Champlain bridge in another column) are superb white rings here. I swear to you, this is paradise. We even thought of showing a woman doing her tai-chi on the corner of De Bullion.

It’s beautiful, it’s incredible how beautiful it is. Looks like a Disney movie. Except… allow me to be a piss-vinegar a bit. It won’t look like that.

The pillars that support the hulls will be covered with graffiti, posters and stickers after a few months. And if CDPQ Infra deploys as much zeal as the Quebec Ministry of Transport puts into cleaning the new Turcot interchange, tell yourself that the beautiful design imagined will take the edge.

It is obvious that the domes that would form the hulls would become lairs for the itinerant. As for the beautiful surfaces in pale cobblestones (I don’t know why we persist in making cobblestone streets or sidewalks with winters like ours and our mania for tearing everything up), they will become dirty after the first summer.

My view is totally negative, I know that. But that’s the reality. It is our reality.

CDPQ Infra’s “proposal” is a monumental urban structure that will only accentuate the urban realities of Montreal. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the current administration has been fighting for almost five years to go against this. All his gestures aim to give soul and warmth to Montreal. However, this project symbolizes the complete opposite of that.

We should also talk about the huge “wall” that the base of the belvedere would create. Specialists already use the term “urban divide”. And we should mention what the video does not show: the part that will start to the east and the other to the northeast. It must be said, the appearance of the REM is good for following a highway, not for rubbing shoulders with neighborhoods where people live.

I wanted to know if the mayor of Montreal had read this video, excerpts of which we saw on March 9 at Patrice Roy’s, and which recently appeared on YouTube.

After promising me that an elected official would talk to me about this file, I was finally told that they preferred not to comment on the content of the project as it appears in these 3D images. The Plante administration is walking on eggshells at the moment. We don’t want to worsen the already very tense situation between the City and CDPQ Infra.

On March 17, CDPQ Infra indicated that the REM de l’Est project would not move forward without strong support from the City. Valérie Plante replied by asking CDPQ Infra to make a clear statement on the place to be given to the City of Montreal in the development of this project. The mayor then spoke with François Legault to resolve this impasse.

We can imagine that we are currently trying to make room for Valérie Plante on the committee of decision-makers. But we can also say that CDPQ Infra wants to have guarantees that the mayor will not demand that we start from scratch or impose an underground passage in the city center before welcoming it.

Remember that the mayor asked that we consider a system without catenaries. She also demanded that Chinatown be protected. Would she come to the table with dozens of such requests? This is what those in charge of this project do not want.

This is where we are after months of meetings, presentations, back to the drawing board and public relations operations. We end up with a video that vividly presents the CDPQ Infra project and the “suggestion” made to the City of Montreal to develop the urban space in return for the $1 billion that it will have to assume.

Not only do we not want the City to be too heavily involved in this project, but we are also telling it what it should do. It’s strong.

This brings us back to the issue of city autonomy and government interference. We have seen the same phenomenon in Quebec in recent months in the tramway project. Except that Mayor Bruno Marchand has shown skill and succeeded in creating a balance of power with the government, which is now favorable to him.

Valérie Plante finds herself in a completely different situation. It sees itself imposing the “vision” of a project of a subsidiary of the Caisse de depot which holds the combination of the safe and which behaves like a private promoter.

During an interview, Valérie Plante said she wanted this project to be a legacy from each of its artisans. But at the rate things are going, it could take the form of a dead end.

And you know what, I tell myself that this is probably the legacy that should be left to Montrealers.