New Montreal urban plan seeks to link transit, housing development

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With most of the habitable land already developed, the city has to get creative to realize its development goals.

That is the motivation behind the Plante administration’s new urban plan.

The city unveils its 2050 urban plan Tuesday morning, the first step before sending the 600-page document to the Office de consultation publique de Montréal for public hearings and then taking it to a vote at city council. Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante granted The Gazette an interview Monday ahead of the public announcement Tuesday.

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The 2050 scheme is the first update to the master planning document since Gérald Tremblay’s in 2004.

The new plan envisions the city’s housing units growing by roughly 200,000 by the year 2050. By that time, about 20 per cent of city housing will be what the Plante administration calls non speculative, which means non-profit housing co-operatives, social housing and affordable housing.

“It took us a while, but that’s because we it was important to add transport to it,” Plante said in a conference room at the newly renovated City Hall. “It’s an urban and transport plan.”

At the heart of her blueprint is a harmonious union between housing development and transit, Plante said. The hope is that the plan will help combat the housing crisis and reduce greenhouse gases by identifying areas of the city to densify based on how they are served by transit networks.

Three types of density models or “zones of intensification” will be identified. Areas where transit service is poor or are where only bus service is available will become lightly densified, with single-family homes and townhouses.

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Areas already well served by transit (with SRB buses or REV bike paths) will get medium density, with the height of buildings, like duplexes, permitted to double in some cases. Those areas served by heavy transit modes like métro stations would be targeted for high density like condo towers.

“We’re always going to be taking in consideration the built environment,” said Robert Beaudry, Plante’s point person on urban planning. “Abandoned shopping centres are another target for housing development.

“But the goal is to have a complete neighbourhood at a human scale,” Beaudry added. “The pedestrian experience has to be interesting and it has to have a better sharing of space for public transit and active transportation, with access to schools, shops and workplaces.”

Plante said it’s important to get the urban plan right because there are consequences to poor planning.

“We love Griffintown for many reasons, but one of the things we’re not so happy with is that even though a lot of housing units were built, there were no parks thought about, schools, infrastructure. And now we have to do it,” Plante said. “It’s not as easy to do afterward.”

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In addition to housing development, there is an ambitious transit target: Plante and Beaudry would like to see two-thirds of Montrealers taking transit as their main mode of transport by 2050.

To do that, a vast tramway network is being planned to span the island — spreading out over 184 kilometres.

Plante said while tramways are the preferred mode for now, she’s flexible on which mode of transit is finally built.

“It can be tramways, but it’s more about showing where we need to put transport, because we can no longer develop with the thinking that, ‘We’re going to be putting 20,0000 new people here, so we need 20,000 new cars,” Plante said.

The administration realizes that developing a vast network of tramways is a lofty goal, but the idea of the urban plan is to set such goals, and then work slowly toward achieving them.

“Henri-Bourassa is a good example. We’re developing a light SRB, but at the end of the road in 2050, maybe we’re hoping for a tramway,” Plante’s mobility point person, Sophie Mauzerolle, said.

Plante said for new developments, there is nothing stopping the city from using transit modes it can afford and then lobbying the province for upgrades, as it is the province that pays the lion’s share of any major transit project.

“We can still create express bus lines right at the beginning and then work with the government to make sure there is a tramway or something else,” Plante said, adding that if enough people move to a new development, the sheer density of people will create enough pressure to warrant a heavier mode of transit.

“I feel this is a great gift for the new agency Minister (Geneviève) Guilbault wants to create,” Plante said, referring to Mobilité Infra Québec, the new agency the province has in mind. “We did all the work for her. We can tell them exactly where to build — new lines, where the density will be and we can do it in a very intelligent way.”

This isn’t the first time a Montreal administration has proposed a tramway network. The Tremblay administration drew out a 20-kilometre network of tramways in 2008. There are no tramways currently serving any part of the island.

jmagder@postmedia.com

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