The present pandemic and the resignation of Dr Horacio Arruda, national director of public health, highlighted the serious shortcomings of the Quebec health system. The crisis at the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) and the resignation of the director general of the STM, Mr. Luc Tremblay, also bring to light the cul-de-sac into which the blindness of our rulers has led us sprawl, metropolitan management and transportation planning in the greater Montreal area (and perhaps also in the Quebec City area).
For many decades, university researchers have been alerting our authorities to the unavoidable need to systematically align private and public transport planning, urban planning and metropolitan management structures. Our political leaders, however, have shown themselves dramatically unable to act accordingly.
We have to go back to the Drapeau-Saulnier and Drapeau-Lamarre administrations to find Montreal officials determined to take up the challenge of ensuring both the consolidation of the center through the construction of the metro, the construction of Place des Arts and the rebirth of Old Montreal, and the fight against urban sprawl through Operation 20,000 housing units, which was the greatest success of the 20and century in this matter.
Since then, the center of the Montreal agglomeration has continued to give way to “suburbanization”, to urban sprawl, to the triumph of automobile transport, to the marginalization of public transport, to the balkanization of the metropolitan space. .
We have witnessed the dramatic weakening of metropolitan governance through the proliferation and debilitating intertwining of administrative structures: municipalities, boroughs, agglomeration, RCMs, Montreal Metropolitan Community, local transport companies and the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM) .
We are even witnessing the use of a paragovernmental structure stemming from the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, CDPQ Infra, for the construction of the most structuring transport infrastructure of the moment, the REM.
The result of this administrative mess: more and more Montrealers are fleeing the city centre. A third crown is being formed, much to the chagrin of the mayors of Varennes, Repentigny, Terrebonne and Mascouche, who sounded the alarm on January 9, 2019. And the demerged cities on the island of Montreal are trying to reduce their contribution financial support to the central city, which is overwhelmed by the problems of crime, homelessness, poverty, maintenance of infrastructures and financing of municipal services.
A single and unique body can finally put some order in this mess it has caused, and that is the government, the government of Quebec.
Only he can, if he wants to, put a brake on urban sprawl: by taking responsibility for the delivery of building permits, by stopping motorway construction projects, by making the existing motorway network more efficient by improving existing motorway junctions, simplifying current administrative structures, merging what needs to be, taxing traffic congestion and pollution, discouraging car use and creating a green belt around the metropolitan area of Montreal. All of this is obvious.
How can common sense finally prevail with the current political parties? That’s the question.