We are mayors and mayors of Quebec. Every day, we are concerned about the safety and quality of life of the citizens for whom we are responsible. As a local government, we can attest to the fact that road safety issues are a major concern of the population. In fact, during the last municipal election campaign, many of the citizens we met expressed the need to reduce traffic speed in their street and to make walking safer.
Posted yesterday at 11:00 a.m.
As mayors, we are aware of our responsibility to respond to these concerns. We will have to devote significant efforts to promoting safe walking on municipal infrastructures. The vast majority of the population travels on foot at least occasionally and this is even more true since the pandemic. In the context of the ecological transition and our desire as a local government to promote healthy lifestyles, we are taking action to improve the safety of our fellow citizens during their active travel.
The Ministère des Transports (MTQ) should be an essential partner in achieving this objective.
However, we observe the opposite: major obstacles are slowing down actions aimed at securing the roads under the management of the MTQ that cross our municipalities.
These roads, which in many cases constitute our main street or a major traffic artery, receive a lot of traffic, often fast, including trucking. They are thus real barriers to safe pedestrian paths and affect the quality of life of the population. Moreover, year after year, if we exclude the Montreal area, on average one third of the too many pedestrians who died in Quebec were on numbered roads at the time of the collision.
Despite the fact that we are well placed as a local government to assert that these sections and intersections are problematic, the requests for intervention that we address to the MTQ to secure them are still too often refused or remain unanswered. Calming traffic on a provincial road seems as difficult as obtaining the A38 pass from the famous Asterix comic strip in the episode of The house that drives you crazy ! The energies of the MTQ unfortunately seem to be more invested in justifying the refusal than in participating in the search for solutions, as demonstrated by the terrible tragedy of the death of Marion Lagacé which occurred in Joliette last November.
The MTQ has the power and the duty to save human lives
This tragedy demonstrated one thing: everyone agrees that it was preventable. Now is the time to take action. The MTQ can no longer wait for media coverage that sheds light on the issue, or worse, for a person to be fatally injured, to finally secure a road under its management.
The Department’s territorial branches must demonstrate greater openness, work proactively with municipalities and act to prevent these tragedies. To instil this change in culture, we believe that two actions must be taken. First, it is essential that the government follow in the footsteps of the Sûreté du Québec and the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec and adopt a new paradigm in road safety: the zero serious and fatal injury vision approach. Then, the MTQ should agree with the municipalities concerned to decentralize the management of the roads under its responsibility that are part of the municipal urban fabric, with the necessary financial support.
We unite our voices since we consider the status quo unacceptable: the safety and well-being of Quebecers are at stake.
* Co-signatories: Pierre-Luc Bellerose, Mayor of Joliette; Caroline Gagnon, Mayor of Marieville; Robert Benoît, Mayor of Sutton; Serge Bergeron, Mayor of Roberval; Lucie Dagenais, Mayor of Frelighsburg; Paul Germain, Mayor of Prévost; Guillaume Lamoureux, Mayor of La Pêche; Philippe Pagé, Mayor of the Canton of Saint-Camille; Michaël Pilote, Mayor of Baie-Saint-Paul; Daniel Tétreault, Mayor of Notre-Dame-de-Stanbridge