The Promise & Peril of Transit-Oriented Development

Montreal is not a city you associate with transit-oriented development. The typical metro station is surrounded by medium-density walk-ups, and where higher density does exist it’s not necessarily correlated with transit. But while it’s no Vancouver or Washington, DC, Montreal has been building more density near transit over the past two decades than you probably realize. In this video we’re going to check in on some TOD around the city to explain the promising potential and the fundamental problem with transit-oriented development.

Keep Urbanity rolling:

References:

Density data came from the Canadian census, using 2021 numbers when possible/relevant.

[strongbad]

We really need to pay more attention to placemaking when considering TOD. People in older urban neighborhoods walk everywhere because it's convenient, and also because it's fulfilling. When your grocery store walk involves well-defined space, active facades, and natural materials, it's a rewarding experience. When your grocery store walk involved vast blank surfaces, giant glass surfaces, and nature band-aids slapped in front of buildings, it's less rewarding.

[AubreyBarnard]

Makes me want to coin a term. "bureaucratic walkability": things made to appear walkable solely to satisfy some requirement, rubric, metric, etc.; often subverting the intention of the requirement.

[ruisen]

Imo, the issue isn't TOD, its that new NA neighbourhoods are usually designed as standalone islands of walkability.

[rileynicholson]

The problem with transit oriented development is that it's basically come to mean reasonable density around suburban rapid transit nodes instead of reasonable density around all mass transit, which would include urban bus lines that cover basically the entire urban core of any city with decent transit.

[binoutech]

Ironically, the places in Montréal that works best as ‘TODs’ aren’t proper TODs. They’re just regular neighbourhoods that had the luck of not getting cut in half by a car sewer.

[JulienRoyal]

Le Triangle is fucking horrible. There is no social life, it's what I call high density suburbia. There is no 3rd place there.

[proposmontreal]

Boston Pizza.
A canadian restaurant chain, founded by a Greek immigrant, selling Italian food with an American name.

[famitory]

i happen to know someone who lives in a faux-TOD island similar to this and they described it as "getting on the subway is part of walking out my door" where they've kind of accepted that they need to go downtown to do basically anything and consider their actual local area as sort of a write-off. it's like a less terrible version of people living in exurbs and having to drive to acomplish anything.

[TheReactorLore]

Cities like Toronto definitely need more mixed-use and walkable transit-oriented development, especially if we want to replace insanely loud stroads and seas of asphalt.

[isimerias]

My next door neighbours recently got T boned by a taxi driver’s dangerous driving on Décarie Boulevard. 10 weeks of surgery, hospital, rehab and they’ve only just made it back home a couple days ago. You’re not even safe in a car on Décarie. It’s Montreal’s tumour.

[lakrids-pibe]

Hello from Copenhagen.

I have nothing on my mind. I just like your videos.

[alaingadbois]

It’s crazy to realize that Décarie used to be a boulevard with tram lines in the center.

[pmason]

I think the problem with a lot of "transit oriented" development is that it's generally still more convenient to access by car than by any other mode. Calling that sort of development "transit oriented" is disingenuous. To be worth the name, a transit oriented development ought to be a place where transit is unquestionably the best option. Otherwise, it's just a car oriented development with a nearby metro stop.

[Basta]

The best transportation is the one not needed. TOD still operates under that assumption that transportation is critical for daily activity.

The station is just one component in a walkable neighborhood.

[f.jasperischebeck]

As a German currently in Montréal, I'm surprised at the unused potential of the railroads directly running through Montréal. The bad access of Westbury is also because it seems impossible to change anything about the railroad. This would be the perfect place for a suburbain train station, with an underpass nicely connecting Westbury with the Triangle and the metro. Now, they are forced to used the existing unwelcoming underpass of Décarie.

[JesusChrist-qssx]

The biggest issue it seems is that cities allowing TOD tend to only allow the TOD, and not allow even small scale urbanism outside of that zone. Density near transit is good, but density has to be allowed everywhere to make our cities not livable

[markbernero]

It seems that the cities of US and Canada have been designed to maximize car company profits! We definitely need to take our cities back!

[skboard]

I attended i hockey camp in Montreal when i was about 15 years old. The family i stayed at didn't pick me up after practise so i had to walk. I had to cross a 6 lane road that didn't have any lights for pedestrians. Took me a while to figure out i had to follow the car lights. I'm from Europe btw...

[aoeuable]

Speaking of covering highways: Have a look at Hamburg, they're building close to 4km of tunnels. They'll be topped with parks and garden allotments, allowing previous spaces for allotments to be converted to housing. That particular section of the A7 is notorious: There's the Elbe tunnel, recently expanded to 4 lanes each direction, then multiple tight exits in Hamburg followed by an interchange and more A7, carrying basically all rubber-wheeled traffic between Denmark and Europe west and south of Poland. Up to 120k vehicles per day and that doesn't even include harbour traffic as unlike the federal transportation ministry the Danes don't hate cargo rail and Schleswig-Holstein was happy to upgrade the tracks to allow for longer Danish-spec trains.

[Jessie-vmkq]

While the Rosslyn Ballston corridor in Arlington was very neighborhood, and an existing residential area, newer places like Tysons in Fairfax (silver line in VA) see a lot of the same struggles. Built around a major mall, and what was once a cross roads turned into freeway interchange. They’ve been building a lot of new developments around the metro, and the walkability inside them is nice, but leave their small footprint and it almost becomes a death trap along the main roads (Route 7 & 123). The county has been s, ow to fix the major arterials, and instead Vdot has actually widened Route 7 north of Tyson’s. Really a mixed bag still 10 years after the silver line opened there in 2014.