MTQ road network | Vegetation maintenance costs are exploding

The costs of maintaining vegetation along the roads under the responsibility of Transports Quebec have exploded last year, has learned. Press.

Jean-Thomas Léveillé
Press

From an average of 5.3 million dollars from 2010 to 2018, the bill reached 8.3 million in 2020, reveals a document from the Ministère des Transports du Québec (MTQ), unveiled under the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies and the protection of personal information.

Costs had started to increase in 2019, reaching $ 6.6 million province-wide that year.

The highest increase, last year, was observed on the “metropolitan network” of the greater Montreal area, mainly highway; costs have gone from 1.5 million in 2019 to 2.4 million in 2020.

But other regions, where costs are lower, have also recorded substantial increases, all things considered.

In Center-du-Québec, costs reached $ 760,000 in 2020, while they did not exceed $ 280,000 annually until 2017.

In Chaudière-Appalaches, the bill amounted to $ 484,000 in 2020, while it never exceeded $ 199,000 from 2010 to 2019.

Estrie and Montérégie also experienced significant increases.

Conversely, maintenance costs were abnormally low on the North Shore in 2020, at $ 10,400, while the average for the previous 10 years is $ 60,000.

Neglected ecological management

This increase in costs testifies to the gradual abandonment of the ecological management program of vegetation developed by the Ministry of Transport at the end of the 1990s, estimates the one who had set up and supervised it until his retirement in 2015. , the biologist Yves Bédard. “It’s very neglected,” he laments.

The biologist is particularly sorry to see the return of the clearing of trees and shrubs along the fences that delimit the land belonging to the MTQ on both sides of the highways.

“There is no reason to do this,” he says, explaining that it contributes to the spread of an invasive alien variety of the common reed, also called a warbler.

“In the shade, there is nothing to grow in the ditches, these plants need sun,” he continues, adding that an ecological approach saves money.

“It’s expensive, these operations are big machines that don’t go fast. ”

Recommendations not implemented

The management of vegetation by the MTQ “shocks” Professor Claude Lavoie, director of the Higher School of Land Use Planning and Regional Development at Laval University, who has contributed to studies on the subject commissioned by the Ministry. since the early 2000s.

He is also surprised by the clearing of ditches along roads and highways, explaining that the shrubs do not interfere with their drainage. “By removing the shrubs in the ditches, who settles?” Reed ! ”

Another recommendation not applied by the MTQ, according to Claude Lavoie: that of not leaving the soil bare, after work, to limit the spread of harmful species.

” What are they doing ? They dig drainage ditches and leave the ground bare, ”he says.

Pressure from municipalities

The maintenance of roads and the vegetation that surrounds them is the responsibility of the regional offices of Transports Québec, which must however apply provincial standards, explains Yves Bédard.

“They are like small kingdoms, there is no big central leadership to enforce [ces normes] », He regrets.

Some regional offices would find it difficult to resist pressure from municipalities, which demand “clean” roads and highways and which accuse the Ministry of neglecting the maintenance of green spaces, continues the biologist.

“But that’s not the reason, except that people [du Ministère] are not able to explain it, ”he said, emphasizing the absurdity of brush clearing in the era of climate change.

Claude Lavoie also notes that “in certain territorial departments, ecological management of vegetation is not their strong point”, and that all-out mowing is still “very popular”.

However, he does not know if this explains the explosion in maintenance costs.

Transports Québec did not respond to questions from Press at the time of this writing.

With the collaboration of William Leclerc, Press