Here's why Montreal is still idling in construction traffic — despite the city's promise to improve

Driving in Montreal is no easy feat whenever it's warm enough for construction projects to tear up, block or narrow roadways.

"It's frustrating for regular drivers, taxi drivers and clientele," said George Boussios, president of Taxi Champlain. "It's just take a left, take a right, take a right. It's just constant detours."

After a rough back-to-school week, Montreal's Official Opposition is putting the blame on Mayor Valérie Plante administration.

Alan DeSousa, Ensemble Montréal's road infrastructure critic, said it's been nearly a year-and-a-half since the city held a summit on road construction.

Traffic cones were supposed to be slimmer, ghost construction sites shut down and all sites taking up less space, but "clearly this has not been done," DeSousa said. 

The Plante administration argues it takes time to see the full effects of everything being done to improve project co-ordination and communication.

City spokesperson Philippe Sabourin said the city has been working on a new database, developed in-house, to help reduce conflicts between construction projects. 

"It's a game-changer in the sense that we are going to be able to better plan all the construction in a specific area," said Sabourin.

The system, known as AGIR, is designed to provide real-time information about ongoing construction work, which is shared with all relevant partners as soon as boroughs issue permits. Citizens can also access information to see construction plans, and who is responsible for each project, Sabourin said.

New platform allows for collaboration

The system marks a significant improvement over the previous method, which relied on manually entering construction data into spreadsheets.

With AGIR, any updates are reflected within minutes. Sabourin noted that the platform, much like Google Docs, allows multiple teams to collaborate on the same project at the same time.

Sabourin explained that up to 30 teams could be involved in a single project, with an additional 20 to 30 external organizations, such as Hydro-Québec or private companies also implicated.

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The return to work and school, major road construction and a new mega-mall combine to spell traffic headaches for Montrealers, but the city says it's taken some steps to ease congestion.

"We now have the tools to share the work with all the partners," he said, emphasizing that better communication will lead to fewer situations where roads are dug up multiple times within a few years.

That's because, for example, Hydro-Québec will see a street is going to be torn up on a certain date. It can then add itself to the project, sending a team in to do much-needed underground infrastructure work before the road is repaved, he said.

Contracts signed before technology, policies introduced

However, the full effects of the new technology won't be seen for a couple more years because contracts are signed up to five years in advance, and the software is only two years old.

When it comes to ghost sites, construction companies are now required to remove cones and equipment if no work has occurred for five consecutive days, he said. 

Sabourin said this new rule will help clear roads faster and reduce unnecessary congestion. But he pointed out this clause was not included in contracts signed several years ago.

Slimmer cones will eventually become the norm, he explained, and construction sites will be reduced in size thanks to new provincial regulations that allow less of the street to be blocked off in areas where the speed limit is 40 km/h.

But despite all these efforts to reduce bottlenecks, sometimes emergency work, such as repairing a water main break, must be carried out regardless of its proximity to other construction sites, he said.

In the end, it's not just technology and policy changes that will solve the traffic problem, he said.

"It's a collective effort that needs to be done," Sabourin said, citing improved public transit and the expansion of the bike paths.

Expert says more public transit needed

The Plante administration has been promising for years to improve communication between construction sites and reduce congestion, implementing a number of new measures over her two terms — including a construction mobility squad launched in 2019 that checks to ensure sites are compliant with municipal regulations.

It's clear the city is now doing more than it used to, according to Pierre Barrieau, a Université de Montréal lecturer in transportation planning and the president of Gris Orange, a public transit consulting service.

He said the city's new software is providing information to the public in real time through Montreal's website, but it still could be better at providing future construction plans. And he said there are still "way too many detour signs that are pointing the wrong way or detours that don't work."

Toronto will warn citizens of upcoming road or parking closures with signs that state start and end dates of planned construction, Barrieau said. Whereas in Montreal, signs and cones might be mysteriously in place for weeks without any clear sign of work being done.

"That haphazard way has to stop," he said, but the biggest issue is the lack of investment in public transportation in order to reduce automobile dependency.

While extending the Blue Line is good, and the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) will also help, he said there need to be alternatives for the west end, Laval, the North Shore and eastern South Shore, too.

"The state has failed in providing its citizens a true alternative to the automobile," said Barrieau. "So the state cannot punish its citizens because it failed at its task."