Quebec Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault has ordered her troops to “clean up” the traffic cones that have been left in downtown Montreal for at least 16 years.

The Minister reacted to the revelations of La Presse regarding the presence of orange cones at the edge of three entrances to the Ville-Marie tunnel. Road markers are present on all the photos archived by Google Street View of these three accesses since 2007: via rue Cathédrale, via avenue Viger and via rue Saint-Antoine.

“We have to do better,” Geneviève Guilbault wrote on Twitter Thursday morning. “Before we report any more, I asked the management [of the Ministry of Transport] to identify all these storage places and clean them up. We all want more fluid and user-friendly mobility in Montreal. I work on it with Valérie Plante. »

The Ministry of Transport previously claimed that the cones were stored at the edge of the accesses to the tunnel throughout the summer season in order to facilitate their closures for light bulb changing operations.

On Wednesday, Valérie Plante criticized this working method.

“It’s obvious that a case like this, where cones are left there just in case, it’s not good practice. We must review this practice, ”she said on the sidelines of a speech. “I quite agree that they should be removed. […] It can be stored elsewhere and we can deploy them quickly. »