“Traffic maintenance” requirements, maximum time limit of 24 hours to install and dismantle signage, increase in tickets: Montreal wants to “change the era” in the management of work zones. Ready to “collaborate”, however, the construction industry calls for caution. Six-point overview.
“It’s not so much the construction sites as such, the problem, but everything that surrounds them: the cones, the obstacles, the communication”, launched the mayor Valérie Plante, raising the curtain of the Summit on the construction sites. His administration will now require a “traffic maintenance plan as a condition of obtaining a permit on priority arteries”. This plan should “clearly identify where traffic is blocked, and detours”. About 55,000 permits were granted in 2022, of which 42% came from the City of Montreal, 34% from the private sector and 20% from “public utility companies” such as Hydro-Québec.
Montreal also wants to find solutions to fight against the “significant number of ghost construction sites”. The City intends to set in motion a “maximum delay of 24 hours” – this figure was first 12 hours at the start of the day, but was later increased – for the installation and dismantling of construction site signage. The City also proposes “to grant additional powers to its Mobility Squad”. The organization could now “demobilize inactive sites and withdraw occupancy permits from the public domain after two unjustified notices of inactivity”, with the help of new staff who will come in particular from the Taxi Office, dismantled in December. Montreal also suggests “increasing the value of the statements of offense issued by the Mobility Squad”, without however going any further.
For the director of the Association québécoise des entrepreneurs en infrastructure (AQEI), which represents most of the companies carrying out work given by the City, everything is a question of balance. “If there are too many unfair or restrictive clauses, the market will lose interest and we will go elsewhere. “, she argues. According to a recent study by the group, 78% of contractors choose to go private first for their contracts, “since they know that there are fewer penalties”. “With the surge in prices in the last few months, the estimates have to follow. We want to bid with the real prices,” she insists.
At the Société de développement commercial Montréal centre-ville, CEO Glenn Castanheira speaks instead of an “era of collaboration” to begin. “The industry is ready for the bar to be raised. There are builders who are ready to be exemplary in their layout. Having such low standards penalizes those who are exemplary,” he mused. Tourisme Montréal calls on the authorities to act quickly. “It is hoped that these solutions will be implemented quickly. Summer is upon us and there are going to be millions of visitors. These visitors must be able to see a city that is clean, “illustrates the organization’s spokesperson, Aurélie de Blois. The group’s CEO, Yves Lalumière, spoke at the end of the day of a “visual trauma” to be deconstructed.
The City also intends to replace its cones on the local network “with smaller bollards or any other safety signaling device”. However, the Ministère des Transports (MTMD) will first have to modify its signage rules in this area. Several discussions have already been initiated in this direction, confirms the spokesperson for the Ministry of Transport, Sarah Bensadoun. “That said, I can’t tell you yet if there will be any changes. We’re still having conversations right now,” she said. Montreal also intends to “reduce the number of cones required during obstructions in urban areas”. The City also plans to “identify signaling equipment by a chip or a QR code”.
A monitoring committee will be set up “in the coming weeks” to ensure that all the measures identified on Thursday are properly implemented. Several of them should be “as of this summer”, supports the head of infrastructures, Émilie Thuillier. In the Official Opposition, Councilor Alan DeSousa for his part denounced at the end of the Summit that the municipal administration “comes late to the party”. “These measures should have been in place long before. […] You cannot manage cities with peaks, but by acting quickly when situations arise,” he concluded.
