A small revolution is preparing in the metropolis. Montreal has just announced the creation of a “Smart City Office”. At last !
With its budget of 10 million dollars, this office could help solve the problems of site coordination within three years. A promising pilot project is already underway in the two most central districts.
These words, I wrote them in an article… in 2014.
All those who have frequented the city center since know the result: the great reform of the building sites has failed.
Miserably.
Worse: the situation has deteriorated to the point that many motorists now avoid approaching the heart of Montreal at all costs. They’re sure they’ll find themselves stuck in a maze of orange, mousetrap-like cones, and they’re not wrong.
A study unveiled Thursday by the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal (CCMM) finally puts words, statistics and clear images on this mess.
Some data mark the spirits, with good reason.
We learn that 94% of downtown streets have been totally or partially obstructed at one time or another in the past year. Not a perfect score yet, but we’re not far off!
We also note, with supporting graphics, the psychedelic sequencing of the work on several major arteries. Like rue Saint-Urbain, which was gutted nine times, often in the same places, between 2014 and 2022.
We can do things smartly in Montreal. This was already seen a quarter of a century ago, during the creation of the spectacular Quartier international, around Victoria Square, where the order of work was planned according to the rules of the art. At the Place des Festivals too.
But in recent years, we have felt a form of collective letting go in relation to the management of construction sites.
Condo builders encroaching on public roads with their equipment and delivery trucks? Not serious ! As long as they have paid their occupancy permit to the City, no one cares.
Orange cones and traffic signs remain abandoned for weeks after the end of a construction site? Why not ? More the merrier, the merrier !
Michel Leblanc, president of the CCMM, denounces the “defeatism” which seems to have taken hold of the authorities. A “dangerous” abdication for the reputation and image of Montreal.
I completely agree with him.
The Smart City Office launched by Denis Coderre in 2014 did not meet expectations in terms of site coordination. Valérie Plante also failed, she who presented herself as the “mayoress of mobility” at the start of her first term in 2017.
The situation remains deplorable and was the subject of a series of reprimands by the City’s Auditor General, as recently as May 2022.
The Plante administration defends itself by saying that the City only generates a third of the construction sites, most of which are of a private nature, especially in residential construction.
This is true. But it’s the City that issues the permits, and it granted them in 96% of cases last year.
There emerges an appearance of free for all harmful not only to motorists, but also to pedestrians and cyclists, who have to circumvent many obstacles on sidewalks and cycle paths.
What to do to raise the bar?
Montreal intends to organize a major “construction site summit” next spring, to which private contractors and all organizations likely to open streets will be invited. Most of the coordination problems cited by the CCMM will be addressed there, I was told Thursday at Valérie Plante’s office.
It won’t be too soon. It’s already very late, actually.
The City is also in the process of refining the bases of its next urban plan, which should be ready in 2024. It will make more room for pedestrians and green spaces. And less to motorized vehicles, at the same time.
These ecological goals are laudable, and the Plante administration was elected promising to achieve them. But cars won’t magically dematerialize until all these arrangements are in place, which could take 10 years. Taxis, buses and delivery trucks will have to continue to circulate.
We must not lose sight of the fact that the proliferation of construction sites is in fact good and great news. Private investment is high. Long-neglected public infrastructure is being upgraded. Montreal is renovating its bowels and climbing towards the sky.
But the heart of the metropolis will have major challenges to face in the coming years, with the desertion of its office towers. It would be a pity if the deficient management of the sites adds an additional layer of difficulty to its recovery.