Mark May 12 on your calendar.
This will be the second anniversary of the City of Montreal’s “Worksite Charter”.
This document unveiled with great fanfare shimmered sunny paths towards “exemplary sites” and “respectful of the local community”.
Anyone who has put their nose in a street of the metropolis for two years knows the rest.
The great winds of change did not blow over Montreal.
Rather the opposite.
It is rather as if a tidal wave had dumped thousands of orange cones and traffic signs all over the territory, in a bewildering mess.
The Plante administration recognizes that its beautiful principles enacted on paper in 2021 have not produced the expected results. She will soon pull out the stick to force contractors of all kinds to keep their sites in order. And at the same time a much tighter discipline will be imposed.
The measures envisaged are numerous, strong and concrete, according to my sources. They will be implemented by the fall at the latest.
It was time.
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The Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal caused shock waves in mid-January by publishing a startling study on the state of construction sites in downtown Montreal1.
The report revealed that 94% of the streets have been obstructed by works, in whole or in part, during the last year. A brutal, but necessary observation, which seems to have provoked a collective awareness.
The City will unveil a series of measures on Thursday to restore order in the house, as part of its “Summit on the construction sites”. This event will bring together a hundred participants, including several major contractors who carry out work on the territory of the metropolis.
Montreal will tackle three main categories of irritants: orange cones and signs (overabundant and hideous), the disorderly occupation of the public domain and the deficient coordination between all construction sites (private, municipal and provincial).
The City has noticed that many contractors install their cones and other signs well before the official start of a construction site. Result: ends of streets, sidewalks and cycle paths are often blocked unnecessarily without anyone knowing why.
The Plante administration also noted that a large number of construction sites are launched and then stopped for days, even weeks, without any valid reason. “Ghost” construction sites.
Several dissuasive measures will be put in place to tackle this random occupation of the public domain.
Mobility Squad agents (yes, they exist) will be more numerous and equipped with new powers, I have learned. They will be able to impose stiff fines in case of inactivity. They will even have the ability to “demobilize” the sites after two notices of violation.
Another new feature: contractors will now only be able to install their signage 12 hours before the start of a construction site, according to the City’s current plans. Everything must be removed 12 hours at the latest after the end of the work.
This rule will target private promoters and their subcontractors as much as the Commission des services électriques, Hydro, Bell, Énergir, blue-collar workers… In short, all those who take out their cranes and jackhammers in Montreal.
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Montreal also wants to make construction sites less ugly and intrusive.
The size (huge) of the orange cones and their number are dictated by provincial regulations. Which explains why a small construction site on Monkland Avenue has the same size as a large one on Highway 15.
The City is in discussions with the Ministère des Transports to review the signage standards. The talks aim to adopt new rules better adapted to the reality and to the lower traffic speed of the streets of the metropolis. We can think of more discreet and more spaced cones.
The objective is to find the right balance between the protection of construction workers and the beautification (or rather the disfigurement) Construction sites. To aim for better fluidity, too.
According to my sources, the Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, is well aware of the problem and is working “at high speed” with the Ministry to find a solution, which could be announced at the end of April.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, ARCHIVES SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault
Whatever happens to these discussions, the City intends to be much stricter in the management of orange cones. It is a question of imposing the addition of a QR code or a microchip to each cone, to know which contractor installed it, and to crack down in the event of non-respect of the authorized deadlines.
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“The sinews of war” will affect the coordination between all the sites, which has been seriously lacking in the City for years.
Montreal is a quilt of boroughs endowed with great autonomy. It may seem unbelievable, but they almost automatically issue 98% of permits to occupy the public domain, without consulting each other.
The City will change its ways of doing things to centralize all the information in a single computer platform, called AGIR. A plan to maintain fluidity on the major axes must be presented for the boroughs to grant the permits.
What will be the next steps?
The first step will take place this Thursday, when the measures will be announced within the framework of the Summit. The administration intends to collect comments from participants to refine the application of certain aspects of its reform.
The objective is to get entrepreneurs on board, not to discourage them from coming to do work in Montreal. To work in collaboration with the private sector.
The City will then modify its regulations, both centrally and in the boroughs, to considerably tighten the rules for occupying the public domain, by next fall. A major emphasis will be placed on the main thoroughfares and the city centre.
Montreal will finally allocate new resources to its Mobility Squad, which has only 16 employees. They made 2,073 interventions for unauthorized obstructions last year, a number that is probably minimal compared to the real extent of the problem. Former inspectors from the Bureau du taxi, quietly abolished last December, will join the team.
This is all very promising.
But as is often the case with the huge bureaucratic machine that is the City of Montreal, it is far from certain that this desire will translate into concrete results on the ground. The administration will have to stay the course despite the many criticisms and obstacles that lie ahead.
Valérie Plante presented herself as the “mayoress of mobility”… in 2017. She and her troops will have a golden opportunity to (finally) keep this old electoral promise.