TRANSIT, URBAN PLANNING INTERTWINED
To discourage commute from suburbs challenges of city living must be addressed
Quebec’s new sustainable mobility plan, unveiled by Premier Philippe Couillard last week, is at once visionary and obvious.
With a goal of turning Quebec into a world leader in the transportation of people and goods, the new policy framework sets ambitious targets for reducing commute times, giving people more options for getting around besides their cars, reducing the use of fossil fuels and cutting greenhouse gas emissions. One of the main cruxes of the strategy, besides vowing a significant government investment in public transit and road infrastructure over the next 12 years, is a better coordination of transportation planning and urban planning to ensure people can actually get where they need to go.
If adhered to and acted upon, the sustainable mobility plan has the potential to be transformative for Quebec — and for Quebecers. It promises to attack one of the central issues of modern life, a problem that affects each and every one of us, in one way or another. And smarter planning of transit and development are key to achieving these objectives, along with improving productivity, bolstering economic development and cutting pollution. But it is so necessary and such a no-brainer that it brings up the question: why wasn’t such an overarching policy been developed before now?
Why wasn’t such a vision implemented before various levels of government poured $4 billion into the Turcot Interchange, $5 billion into a new Champlain Bridge and $6.3 billion (and counting) on the new Réseau express métropolitain, to name a few major transportation projects? And how might these crucial pieces of infrastructure have been better or different had a big-picture approach to reducing congestion, saving commuters time, ensuring they have better public transit options and providing opportunities for active transport been applied to begin with? Might we have seen a bike highway included in the Turcot or would the Dalle Parc have been so easily scrapped, to raise just a couple of questions that spring to mind?
Positive as the new sustainable mobility plan is, it is going to have to play catch-up with some major problems that might have been avoided altogether had it been conceived earlier.
For instance, on Monday, mayors of 18 North Shore municipalities from Laval to Lorraine, attended a mobility forum to highlight the chronic congestion, loss of productivity, drag on quality of life and financial strain of the hellish traffic separating their cities from Montreal. Many of these suburbs and exurbs (like St-Placide or Mascouche) have experienced rampant development and explosive population growth over the last decade or so.
Their concerns — representing the needs of the residents of their municipalities — are pressing. And their study, showing how the difficulties will worsen, is far from the first to lament the toll congestion takes on people. But on the other hand, if so much car-centric development far from existing public transit lines hadn’t transformed so many previously small towns into bedroom communities, traffic might not be such a nightmare.
It’s the kind of conundrum that will challenge the new sustainable mobility policy going forward.
Well-intentioned guidelines to rein in sprawl that are ignored or implemented unevenly in practice are as common as potholes in the spring. Since the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal, comprised of 82 municipalities, adopted its regional development plan in 2012, the population in the furthest flung corners of the greater Montreal area has continued to grow, according to the 2016 census figures.
The PMAD (Plan métropolitain d’aménagement ET développement) was the product of wide-ranging public consultation and aimed to conserve valuable farmland, preserve precious pockets of nature and bring a new focus on transit-oriented new development. While a CMM report card shows some of its objectives have been reached, a trip between Montreal and the North Shore at rush hour would certainly suggest otherwise.
Try as policy-makers might to adopt zoning laws that limit sprawl, it’s no match for the appetite of (mainly) families to move greater distances from the centre and the zeal of developers to build their dream homes. The lure of affordability, the size of brand new houses, the appeal of a patch of lawn and a driveway to park their car (even in exchange for an unpleasant commute) will continue to draw people further afield as long as the challenges of life in the city are not fully addressed.
More families might be willing to accept the cramped quarters of an apartment (if they can find and afford one that’s big enough) in exchange for a more sane commute — but only if parks are plentiful and their child’s school isn’t crumbling. These things don’t sound like they fall into the category of transportation, but they are major drivers of where Quebecers are choosing to live, regardless of where they work.
Keeping families in the city is among Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante’s top priorities. But it can’t be her job alone when there is so much competition from other CMM municipalities.
The quest to make Quebec a leader in sustainable mobility must consider the fundamentals of a sustainable life.