Criticized for the difficulty of navigating the numerous construction sites, Montreal will deploy this Monday a new interactive map allowing you to visualize all the work in real time, both those of the City and those of the private sector or individuals.
“We want people and business owners to know what is happening in front of their homes, who is doing the work and for how long, with what impacts. We do this in a desire for transparency, but also to bring more accountability to those who lead the project,” explained to The Press the head of infrastructure on the executive committee, Émilie Thuillier.
This new map will allow you to carry out a search with a precise address in order to see the obstacles at a very local level or even by neighborhood, or even by district. With more than 200 construction sites listed, the city center sector unsurprisingly appears to be the most affected by construction sites.
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PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE CITY OF MONTREAL
An idea of what the new digital platform looks like
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PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE CITY OF MONTREAL
Several obstacles are listed around the offices of The Pressdowntown.
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The tool will also make it possible to filter searches by “affected areas” – streets, bike paths, sidewalks, parks or alleys. Finally, we can categorize the sites by “responsible for the work”, including public organizations such as Hydro-Québec, real estate developers, private contractors or even individuals.
This map represents an important step forward. Until now, the Info-Travaux site only allowed you to see the City’s active construction sites, which represent between 25 and 40% of active construction sites in the metropolis.
All data will be taken from the AGIR platform through which Montreal essentially allocates permits to occupy public space. Around 20,000 permits are issued there each year. “This means that we will have quite a few construction sites in real time. And the main advantage is that the map will generate itself automatically as you go,” says Mme Thuillier.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Émilie Thuillier, mayor of Ahuntsic-Cartierville and responsible for infrastructure on the executive committee
When you understand why a construction site is there quickly, half of the frustration disappears. This is major for us, and we think it will really help everyone.
Émilie Thuillier, responsible for infrastructure on the executive committee
M for modernization
For the City’s administrative services, spokesperson Philippe Sabourin hopes above all that the new platform “will offer citizens more journeys where they will encounter no, or few, construction sites on their way”. “That’s also the objective, while reducing the number of poorly maintained or noisy construction sites,” he says on this subject.
“This is a major step forward in terms of modernization, but it is a first step. Afterwards, there are things that we could add later, like closures of pedestrian streets for festive events, for example. We have a lot of data on what’s happening in the streets,” continues Mr. Sabourin.
This all comes at a time when, since the Construction Site Summit last March, Montreal has been authorized by the Ministry of Transport to replace its cones with smaller bollards or other less disruptive elements.
The Plante administration also now requires the installation of signage 24 hours before a construction site, and its removal 24 hours later, in addition to demobilizing work zones inactive for more than five days.
Quebec, for its part, now collects the cones after 72 hours of inactivity on a construction site. Since December, the government has increasingly installed metal barriers rather than cones on its construction sites.
Another gain “obtained through a hard struggle with the government”, recalls Émilie Thuillier, was to reduce the length of the bevels in urban areas.
In recent months, Montreal has in fact obtained a modification of the Ministry’s rules on the length of the transition zone which indicates the obstruction on streets of 40 km/h and less. “This represents approximately 70% of local streets in Montreal where we can reduce the cones by half,” notes Mr. Sabourin.
In the immediate future, however, the situation does not really seem to be improving. Last March, the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal (CCMM) revealed, in an update of its diagnosis on construction sites, that nearly one orange cone in five is still “useless” in the city center. But above all, the organization insisted, approximately 93% of the arteries were partially or totally blocked in the last year, a portrait relatively similar to that of last year.