City hopes to ease congestion with message boards
Traffic expert says system can be better used to communicate with motorists
Passersby might have missed the new electronic message boards the city installed on a pole on downtown Sherbrooke St. W. this week, given that they were installed behind a tree.
But the city promises that once they become operational in the spring, the boards will help alleviate traffic congestion on the busy artery. The boards — which are part of what the city calls a “dynamic parking guidance system” — will indicate to motorists how many off-street parking spots are available at any moment in lots in the area. The city already has them in Old Montreal and in eastern downtown since last year.
The city expects the boards will help reduce congestion because they’ll reduce the number of motorists circling around looking for parking, city spokesperson Marilyne Laroche Corbeil said in an email this week.
The first phase saw 73 boards installed between June 2016 and June 2017 at a cost of $6.5 million. Now, 45 boards are being installed around western downtown as part of the second phase, which began in May, she added. The cost of the second phase is $4.7 million.
A board will display an arrow and distance to parking lots that outfit themselves with a system to communicate the number of spaces available. The number of available spaces remaining in the lot will appear in real time.
A board will indicate other lots that don’t communicate the number of spaces available as either open or closed or their distance from the message board.
Displaying information in real time is a good idea, traffic expert Rick Leckner said. But he said he’s scratching his head about the placement of the two boards on Sherbrooke St. W., between Crescent and de la Montagne Sts. — they were installed permanently several inches behind a tree at the level of the branches.
However, Laroche Corbeil said any necessary adjustments will be made once they’re turned on. “The boards need to be turned on to determine the optimal final position and whether tree branch cutting is necessary to ensure good visibility of the messages,” she wrote.
“So is there somebody at city hall who doesn’t believe in doing it right the first time?” Leckner asked, sarcastically, when told the city’s response. “Why don’t you put them up so you don’t have to go back?”
Nevertheless, Leckner said the electronic message boards are a positive step forward for the city, which is deprived in the technology department when it comes to traffic control. “It is a good initiative,” Leckner said.
Still, an even better use of the boards, he said, would be to use them to warn the public where construction is happening.
“That’s the biggest problem,” Leckner said. “They (the city) minimally tell you where there’s a lane blocked, how long it will be blocked for (and) suggest a different route.”
The city doesn’t have enough mobile message boards in construction zones, he said.
Moreover, the message on them is sometimes useless, Leckner said.
The boards are all the more important because the city’s InfoTravaux website and the provincial Québec 511 website aren’t userfriendly and contain inaccurate and incomplete information, he said. Info-Travaux, for example, only displays blockages caused by the city’s road construction work and not those caused by private or provincial projects.
The provincial transportation department could also make better use of technology on expressways, Leckner said.
For example, he revealed that the messages on the MTQ’s electronic boards on expressways, which display information about obstructions and offer such messages as “fluid circulation,” are actually typed manually by MTQ personnel who sit in an office watching traffic cameras on the arteries and judge the traffic situation.
“I’ll be kind. I would say that 30 per cent of the time, the information is wrong,” Leckner said. “It’s what the person thinks they’re seeing. They tell you ‘fluid’ and it’s not.”
In other cities, message boards are linked to electronic detectors in the road that can accurately assess how long the drive is from one exit to the next — known as “metering.”
“These things have existed for years everywhere else, except here,” Leckner said, adding the province also hasn’t increased the number of cameras on highways or greatly increased the number of message boards even though it should have planned such measures already five years ago.
“We’re spending $10 billion between Champlain Bridge, Turcot Interchange and the Bonaventure Autoroute,” he said. “So don’t tell me you can’t spend another $1 million on proper communication.”