The message was greeted with a smirk by those who, all year round and even in “normal” times, care about making the city more convivial, but here we are: the president of the Chamber of Commerce of metropolitan Montreal, Michel Leblanc, suggested on Wednesday that solo cars be banned in the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel during rush hour. “A difficult solution to limit the damage”, he said.
On the airwaves of LCN, Michel Leblanc stressed that the other solutions would not be sufficient to lighten traffic in the bridge-tunnel during the work. “The solo car has no place on the bridge-tunnel at rush hour in the coming weeks, months,” he declared bluntly, specifying all the same that there would be no question of blocking the passage to trucks, which he considers “essential to the life of a metropolis”.
Above all, do not impede the circulation of goods: we understand the base of values on which Leblanc’s proposal is based. But as the messenger often makes the message, especially when he comes in a suit and speaks the language of money, the proposal was greeted with astonishing openness by the Prime Minister, who said he was open to the idea. Yesterday, after visiting the site, the new Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, however, closed the door to such a measure, citing the panoply of existing options. Above all, we should not create a dangerous precedent by doing something so radical.
To hear it, one would think that the right to wait alone in one’s car is part of a core of inalienable fundamental freedoms, which must be approached with great deference. The president of the Chamber of Commerce has at least the merit of breaking this taboo: if one is worried about the fluidity of road traffic at the gates of the metropolis, the private car is the first problem that must be named. The multiplication of access routes will never be sufficient; the sinews of war is the volume that must be squeezed through the neck of the bottle every day.
We admit it lip service now that we are about to plunge into chaos, but it is no less true the rest of the time. The panic surrounding the partial closure of the bridge-tunnel is a stark demonstration of the failure of land-use planning policies that continually expand the outskirts of the city without creating new centers of gravity. From the crowns of the metropolis, we talk about Montreal’s traffic congestion with disdain and frustration, without ever saying that it is the dependence on the automobile and the model of “life-in-transit” that make everyday life unbearable.
Unexpected revealers of the untenable nature of this way of life, the road flaggers are speaking these days to express their fears as the start of work in the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel approaches. Earlier in October, in Carignan, Marc Séguin, a 58-year-old flagman, died after being hit by a vehicle near a construction site. Last year, 161 flaggers were injured in an accident at work, a number that has been increasing for five years. And these are only accidents recognized by the CNESST. However, the mega-construction site that is beginning makes workers fear the worst, says Jean-François Dionne, president of the Association of Road Signage Workers of Quebec (ATSRQ).
Listening to the interviews given everywhere by Mr. Dionne, we are left speechless. The president of the ATSRQ speaks of constant aggressiveness, of a contempt for the speed limits as well as for the workers who risk their lives by standing near construction sites (all this for a salary between $18 and $23 a day). hour, note). “Motorists, it’s a weapon in your hands! he said in an interview with Radio-Canada. On Nathalie Normandeau’s radio show, he said he estimated that about half of motorists actually slow down when approaching a construction site. Half. We must take the measure of this madness. No wonder that, according to the SAAQ, in 2021, 836 people were injured and 9 died in a work zone.
Road flaggers are right to be concerned, as we are about to experience a singular discord on the metropolitan road network: these workers are at the forefront of the hostility that permeates the culture of the automobile. A culture which produces geographical remoteness, which organizes life on an inhuman scale and which – I am firmly convinced of this – promotes anti-social behavior.
This story also illustrates the precarious balance on which rests the way of life based on perpetual transit. And yet, nothing indicates that we are moving in the right direction. The traffic on the roads, and on the bridges surrounding the metropolis, is already more intense than before the pandemic and, at the same time, the use of public transport has still not returned to its pre-pandemic level.
Without a clear plan for freeing up the solo car, the necessary change in culture will not happen by itself, through the multiplication of “options” and “palliative measures”. It may be time to raise the stick.