What slows down the “mayoress of mobility”

Let’s be honest, it’s not Valérie Plante’s fault that the city is paralyzed by orange cones and detours. Decades of maintenance deficit cannot be reduced with a snap of the fingers.

But by presenting herself as the “mayoress of mobility” during the last electoral campaign, Valérie Plante promised the moon to citizens who complain about the dismal state of infrastructure, but who also abhor the sites necessary to repair them. .

Pothole or orange cone? Faced with this choice, no one is happy. And four years later, Montrealers are right to say that Valérie Plante has not made their trips more fluid.

Instead, the mayor added a layer of frustration by putting the pedal to the bottom on the cycle paths. “It is sure that the changes, it upsets everyone,” admitted Valérie Plante in an editorial interview, to Press, Wednesday.

But it’s all in the way.

What Valérie Plante lacks is more sensitivity, pedagogy and communication to gain support for her projects.

Take the Réseau express Vélo (REV) in Saint-Denis Street. The work aroused the ire of motorists who felt that they were passing a cycle path through the gorge, but also traders who had just left a mega-construction site. Regardless, the mayoress went ahead, in full pandemic fed up.

She replied that she could not stand idly by in the face of some 300 collisions involving cyclists and pedestrians. “I can’t put safety aside while I wait,” she said.

That is. Today, cyclists have adopted the REV and around thirty merchants have settled in rue Saint-Denis, testifying to the success of the project. But the course will have been bumpy.

“The ecological transition is not something that we put off until later. It has to be done, ”insists the head of Projet Montréal.

She’s right. There is an urgent need to tackle global warming.

But on this subject like many others, Valérie Plante cannot act alone. It will not be able to build 60,000 affordable housing units to solve the housing crisis without the business community. It will not be able to negotiate a decent arrangement for the Eastern REM without listening to Quebec.

Valérie Plante must learn to better “sell” her vision, even to her own troops. Several of its elected officials left the ship, in particular Christine Gosselin, councilor in Rosemont – La Petite-Patrie, who denounced that the party no longer made so much room for debate and freedom of speech.

With the business community either, the current has never passed 100% with Valérie Plante, who admits that she will “never be part of this environment”.

Montreal’s economic recovery may be the envy of the big cities of North America, but Valérie Plante is criticized for being more interested in neighborhoods than in the metropolis.

As in fact, when we ask her about her plans for the city center, Valérie Plante’s eyes shine when she talks about pedestrian streets and terraces. It ensures that quality of life and mobility are crucial elements in attracting businesses to Montreal, such as the office of the new Council for International Sustainability Information Standards, we learned on Wednesday.

This is good news.

But Valérie Plante would benefit from surrounding herself with key players who could bridge the gap with the economic and political milieu. Otherwise, in the event of her re-election, the mayoress of mobility would find herself running out of membership to propel her projects.

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