Last year, the provincial government announced that the Turcot Interchange, at the junction of highways 20 and 15, will be completely rebuilt at a cost of $1.5 billion. Between 2009 and 2015, the current elevated structure will be replaced with a new surface interchange surrounded by berms and embankments.
Nearby residents are worried about the impact of the new interchange, not to mention the six years of continuous construction that will lead up to it. As you might remember from last fall, NDGers are particularly concerned about access to the Falaise St. Jacques, while hundreds of people in St. Henri fear losing their homes if a loft building and triplexes are expropriated for the new interchange. In this week’s edition of the Mirror, I explore some of these concerns. Here’s an excerpt from my story:
“What drew me to the Turcot originally was the size of it,” recalls Ken McLaughlin. The Verdun artist maintains Walking Turcot Yards, a blog dedicated to the area around the giant interchange at the junction of highways 15 and 20, built in 1966 in a feat of Modernist ambition. “It’s pretty incredible to look up there and see it all. It’s very sculptural, all the lines and shapes, very smooth,” he says.
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Quebec’s transport minister promises that the new interchange will be safer for motorists and quieter for nearby residents. But people in both NDG and St-Henri are worried that the impact on their neighbourhoods will be severe.
In western St-Henri, residents of the Village des Tanneries, who live right next to the interchange, fear nothing less than the complete disruption of their lives. Jody Negley, leader of the Citizens’ Committee of the Village des Tanneries, worries about having to live with six years of constant construction.
“Years of community effort on the part of residents and non-profit groups to improve quality of life in the area will be for naught,” she says. “Nobody will want to spend any time outside as the noise levels will be deafening, the air quality will be toxic, the newly built community gardens will be covered in grime [and] it will be unsafe for children to play outside, given the traffic and pollution.”
The general feeling I get is that people in St. Henri and NDG aren’t completely satisfied with the MTQ’s handling of the Turcot dossier. While MTQ spokesman Mario St-Pierre told me that no new consultations are planned in the near future, the Sud-Ouest borough recent appointed an official to serve as a liason between community members, the city and the province.
One thing that was left out of the Mirror story are the alternative visions for the Turcot interchange. Ken McLaughlin and Peter McQueen, an NDG community activist and former Green Party candidate, both wonder whether the existing structure needs to be torn down in the first place, especially considering the amount of open space underneath that could be put to better use. Jody Negley, meanwhile, wants to see more ground-level investment in her community. Here’s what she wrote to me in an email:
We’ve been working towards creating a more cohesive community by adding little elements that foster neighbour interaction: Community bulletin boards throughout the neighborhood, benches, Bikers’ Garden in the empty lots, community gardens, as well as communal activities like planting flowers around all the trees on the street, street parties, activities for kids, a newsletter.
What I’d like to see more of? Community composters on every corner, composting program run by local youth as a summer project (door pick up), monthly communal soup night, garbage and recycling bins n every corner, a bit more local business such as café, bakery, etc. I’d like to see the alleys turned into garden/gathering spaces with benches and decent lighting. There is so little green space that we need to make full use of what we do have.
So far, though, neither the city nor the province has indicated that it will invest in new community infrastructure, greenspace or streetscape improvements in the neighbourhoods adjacent the Turcot.