A short guide to surviving construction sites

There will be 1,000 construction sites in Montreal this summer. 1000! We are talking about 85 major road works in the greater metropolitan area, 25 more than last year. The patience of motorists, and to a lesser extent that of cyclists and pedestrians, will be put to the test.

Experts say traffic this summer will be worse than last year when the situation was already quite trying thank you, and this, “with almost no tourists”. Now that vehicles registered in the United States and in other Canadian provinces are invading our streets, we will have to bite our cheeks to hold back our oaths.

Among the biggest projects: the city center, with the avenue des Pins as a piece of resistance, which is being redone from top to bottom. We have no doubt that one day it will be very beautiful, but until then, we will have to bite the brakes. The construction site in the Laurentien-Lachapelle sector is also causing headaches. There is also Saint-Laurent Boulevard from Fairmount, which has been under construction for several months, which slows traffic to the north.

And that’s not counting the many obstacles that put a spoke in the wheels of motorists trying to enter or leave the island. Whether it’s the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel, the Victoria bridge, the 15, the 30, the 40, the Île-aux-Tourtes bridge or the Souligny interchange… impossible to escape, unless you travel by helicopter.

We do not question the usefulness of this work. As we know, our infrastructures date from the 1960s and 1970s and they are falling apart. This work is necessary and sometimes even urgent.

The problem is their coordination. As if we couldn’t get an overview to better harmonize, when possible, the deployment of the orange cones.

Should we ask Minister Christian Dubé to make us a beautiful big picture like the one he imagined for Health, in order to see at a glance what is happening on the road network? Certainly, we can do better. We must do better.

The Auditor General of the City of Montreal is of the same opinion. In a report tabled a little over a month ago, she wrote: “The approach deployed by the City, namely through the establishment of planning and project coordination processes, is not fully effective in enable it to proactively have an overview of the work sites that may impact its road network and to minimize the impacts for users. »

When the VG made its verifications, the system put in place by the City, the Assistant for the management of interventions in the street (AGIR), was not doing much. The boroughs concerned were not even aware of its existence.

Have there been any improvements? Yes, assures us a spokesperson for the City who is however unable to give us a concrete example of what has been done since. But we are sworn that information circulates better.

We are also reminded that there are digital tools to help motorists better plan their trips.

Like the Mobility Montreal site, which redirects you to Quebec 511, the site of the Ministry of Transport. Or Google Maps, which allows you to see the traffic situation in real time.

Too bad we have to rely on a Californian application when we are the world capital of artificial intelligence.

Finally there is the mobility squad which can intervene on a construction site if necessary.

Of course, we cannot encourage Montrealers enough to choose public and active transportation when possible. A decrease in the number of cars on the roads would greatly improve fluidity.

But we should be able to encourage people to reduce their car use without driving them crazy.