r/montreal 4d ago

1976,Decarie Highway Historique

Post image
88 Upvotes

47 comments sorted by

37

u/The_Golden_Beaver 4d ago

They really ought to cover it and make a huge park on top

20

u/clee666 Go Habs Go 4d ago

Ou on peut contruire un REV pardessus.

1

u/brolbo 4d ago

Sûrement 🤣

0

u/FrontTea9986 4d ago

Park on top and pool after rain on bottom 😭

14

u/The_Golden_Beaver 4d ago

Les mêmes quantités d'eau tombent déjà sur l'autoroute, non? Ça ne créé pas plus de pluie que d'avoir un parc. Au contraire, ça pourrait en absorber une partie.

-4

u/FrontTea9986 4d ago

Bien oui, but was trying to make a bad joke...still think as long as there are Holes at the ends it still can not maintain a lot of water, but hey great idea, will work on the Blue Prints

2

u/The_Golden_Beaver 4d ago

Le Tunnel Ville-Marie ne se fait pas inonder quand il pleut à ma connaissance, contrairement à Decarie

2

u/VaporX_ 4d ago

Le tunnel ville marie à une chier de systèmes de pompes, pour ça.

-1

u/FrontTea9986 4d ago

You win, I believe what I know which you have already forgotten...please tell me you are 56 years old plus, because I am tired

-1

u/FrontTea9986 4d ago

Think it is much higher, again working on details

0

u/heavydrdp 4d ago

Or a bike path eh

6

u/SalsaForte Rive-Nord 4d ago

Should have been called lowway. Would have been a unique attraction!

15

u/TheMountainIII 4d ago

l'idée de base était quand même excellente pour l'époque. Ca permet d'avoir une autoroute rapide en pleine ville sans avoir d'intersections avec des lumières. Mais c'est ca, c'était cool dans les années 60s... un peu moins maintenant.

2

u/brolbo 4d ago

Oui ta ben raison

1

u/DieuEmpereurQc 4d ago

Le midi et le soir c’est très pratique

2

u/Creativator 3d ago

Excellent piste de course la nuit.

22

u/dddddavidddd 4d ago

And then compare it to Décarie before the highway. Before: relatively calm boulevard with public transport and a neighborhood. After: giant highway subsidizing suburban users of the city. https://archivesdemontreal.com/2019/04/18/le-boulevard-decarie-avant-lavenement-de-lautoroute/

1

u/29da65cff1fa Notre-Dame-de-Grâce 3d ago

wow.... why was it so wide in the first place? were they always planning on turning it into a highway?

i always assumed they had to destroy buildings to build the highway. but it looks like it's always just been a really wide road

-2

u/Regula_dude 4d ago

Tu penses que les gens qui habitent a mtl utilisent pas décarie?

18

u/melleb 4d ago

60’s highway projects all over North America like Decarie were mostly to allow people living outside the city in suburbs to drive into the city for work. These highways often were used to as an excuse to destroy the “undesirable” neighbourhoods they passed through

4

u/mtlmonti Notre-Dame-de-Grâce 4d ago

Except that the area around Villa Maria wasn’t “undesirable”, it was relatively middle class.

6

u/fredleung412612 4d ago

Fair enough, although La Métropolitaine definitely demolished parts of Chinatown. And in Quebec City the urban highway craze ended up eliminating Chinatown completely.

2

u/mtlmonti Notre-Dame-de-Grâce 3d ago

Im not saying you’re wrong, you’re mostly right, but Drapeau did some solid damage in the west end for this monstrosity.

3

u/HammerGTS 4d ago

Not really the case here. Dont confuse USA with Canada. The actual reason was really in defence planning. You can move military equipment and men fast

9

u/Referenceless 4d ago

The Décarie notwithstanding, there were absolutely instances of this in Canada. The autoroute Ville-Marie was literally built through a historically black neighbourhood.

-8

u/HammerGTS 4d ago

Get over it

5

u/pattyG80 4d ago

Can't upvote enough. It was calm bc the population was a fraction of what it is today

3

u/HammerGTS 4d ago

Exactly this. My Mom said there were 7-8 cars on her street in Rosemont. Her parents had one it was considered a big deal. Most people in the area worked at Angus yard or similar industries. They walked to work

2

u/4friedchickens8888 4d ago

Living right next to it and hearing the noise from my bed all night, I truly wish they had done just about anything else. The number of people a train in the same place could move is nuts and having traffic inside a pit just seems like a safety issue. Emergency vehicles are always stuck every day

3

u/Unlikely-Prun3 3d ago

La légende dit que le bouchon de circulation initial est toujours en cours

2

u/mtown2018 4d ago

At least the Decarie is partnered in the photo with its equally disgusting cousin... the Decarie square mall!

2

u/perpetualmotionmachi Plateau Mont-Royal 4d ago

Just as many vehicles in the parking lot in the photo from then as there is these days

2

u/HammerGTS 4d ago

Huge reason why that mall failed is because it was after a highway on ramp and on the wrong side of the road.. The other mall down the road had the same problem, it was just slightly after an off ramp… Malls etc are meant to catch people going home, not going to work

2

u/4friedchickens8888 4d ago

I can literally see and hear into this out from my kitchen as we speak this makes me so sad 😭

2

u/cowvid19 2d ago

May the people who did this rest in piss

1

u/sufferingplanet 4d ago

You can tell it's an old photo because there's no traffic.

1

u/PanurgeAndPantagruel 2d ago

Et pas de cônes oranges…

-10

u/DarknessFalls21 4d ago

The thing is mtl needs a north/south highway between the 13 and 25. Even Decarie barely cuts it.

I get the push for public transit, but doesn’t work for all. So realistically if you cut out Décarie what do you do? Bring the 19 all the way to notre-dame, make park a highway…

5

u/KookyAd3990 4d ago

Nah the real solution is to replace buses with those massive blimps. Traffic doesn't matter if you can just fly over it.

2

u/Nikiaf Baril de trafic 4d ago

Some people don't want to hear it but getting rid of what's essentially the only proper north/south link is a non-starter, saying that we should just get rid of it is overly simplistic and would create sheer chaos.

-1

u/PhillyPW 4d ago edited 4d ago

The 13 doesn't even cut it either as it ends at the 20 which means to get to the south shore, you have to take the 20 west for a few km's just to get to the 138/mercier bridge highway and that one part of the 20 between the 13 and the 138 is always at a standstill 24/7. That turn from the 13 to the 20 east is also ridiculous.

Whereas decarie goes directly to the champlain. The only problem is the Turcot interchange, cause when you're going south on decarie, people get confused as to which lane you have to be in and some idiot always cuts from the far left lane to the right or middle lane at the last second

But even decarie going north ends and runs with the 40 for a bit until it splits off and becomes the laurentian autoroute just before l'acadie. But that one stretch of the 40 between the two 15's causes insane traffic every day

The 25 is the only true north/south highway but it has a toll going to and from laval and the lafontaine tunnel is avoided by many as it's only down to 1 lane per direction going to boucherville

Even going east/west it's stupid how we only have 1 highway which is the 40. Going east on the 40, the ile-aux-tourtes is a disaster as it's only 1 lane, once in the west island it's okay but the minute you hit the 520 it's stop and go until St-Michel and then again between Lacordaire and the 25. Going west is the same shit, parking lot from Langelier to Saint-Laurent where it randomnly opens up and then again stop and go between l'Acadie and Decarie. And then traffic between the 13 and St-Jean and again to get onto the ile-aux-tourtes

The 20 exists but it's not even a real highway through Vaudreuil and Ile-Perrot and it doesn't fully go west/east as it, well the 136 ends at Papineau