Potential Highway 20 improvements on the table

Plans to upgrade a bottlenecked stretch of Highway 20 between ÎlePerrot and Vaudreuil-Dorion are inching forward with the creation of a new working group by the provincial government to study transportation needs in the sector.

The roundtable will include representatives from municipal, regional, provincial and federal authorities and will focus on creating a shared vision to improve the seven-kilometre section of Highway 20 between the Galipeault Bridge east of L’Île-Perrot and Route 342 (Harwood Rd.) in Vaudreuil-Dorion, which is travelled by an estimated 25,000 to 53,000 vehicles every day.

Representatives from the Vaudreuil-Soulanges Municipalité régionale de comté (MRC) and the towns of Vaudreuil-Dorion, Terrasse-Vaudreuil, Pincourt, L’Île-Perrot and Notre-Damede-l’Île-Perrot, as well as regional transportation authorities and representatives from the provincial and federal governments will be tasked with defining a vision to improve mobility along the Highway 20 corridor. Other objectives will include specifying mobility needs in relation to land-use planning, and identifying solutions to current transportation issues.

Notre-Dame-de-l’Île-Perrot Mayor Danie Deschênes said upgrades to Highway 20 have been discussed for decades but the objectives have changed in recent years to incorporate alternative ways of getting around.

“We need to plan based on future development to make sure there’s enough roads, as well as cycling paths and room for buses,” she said. “It’s a bunch of solutions we need to work on. Mobility is more complex than just driving.”

Pincourt Mayor Yvan Cardinal said he hopes the creation of the working group will allow the four municipalities on the island of Île-Perrot to collaborate with Vaudreuil-Dorion to fast-track improvements in public transportation as well as the highway.

“We don’t want to work on the table for three or four years,” Cardinal said. “We hope to have everything worked out within one year. We have to make decisions fast in the first year.”

But Deschênes said once the round table has done its work, it could take another decade of planning, budgeting and construction before improvements are completed. She said the highway upgrades should have been done years ago, but conceded it is worth taking time to get it right.

“At the end of the day if it is well thought out and well done, hopefully this will be the project that we need,” she said.

A date has not yet been set for the first working meeting but, according to the Ministry of Transportation, it will be held soon.

Highway 20 is governed by traffic lights at a few key intersections. In Vaudreuil-Dorion, a five-kilometre stretch of Harwood Blvd. handles Highway 20 traffic.