Critics attack ‘1950s-style’ car-focused approach

Will set back sustainable transportation in city by a century: Projet Montréal

If the government was really serious about fighting climate change, it would scrap its current plan to rebuild the Turcot Interchange rather than just tweak it, critics charged Friday.

“We’re wasting a marvellous opportunity,” Projet Montréal leader Richard Bergeron said in response to the latest version of the $3-billion project, announced Friday by Transports Québec.

Project manager Alain Dubé told a press conference the government has widened sidewalks, lengthened a sound-barrier wall, eliminated an access ramp and improved landscaping in response to criticism of the plans unveiled in November 2010.

But representatives of local residents, environmental groups and the municipal opposition said the Turcot plan still fails to offer viable public-transportation alternatives and will only increase automobile traffic and lower the quality of life in nearby neighbourhoods such as St. Henri and Côte St. Paul.

“It’s totally car-focused,” said Shannon Franssen, coordinator of Solidarité Saint-henri. “For the neighbourhood, it’s disastrous.”

Mayor Benoît Dorais and city councillor Véronique Fournier of the Sud-ouest borough said the changes are no more than windowdressing on a project they described as “worthy of the 1950s.”

“We need to send a clear signal that transportation in Montreal and in the Montreal region needs to change,” Fournier said.

“It’s certain the project in its final version has not re- sponded in any way to that concern.”

The project, slated for completion in 2018, will also have dire consequences for the Côte St. Paul district, where residents will be forced to use a 45-metre tunnel to be built under the new highway, Fournier charged.

“You are mortgaging the future of this whole area of Montreal,” she said.

Dubé said traffic is expected to rise by a little more than two per cent on the westend road junction, used by 300,000 vehicles daily.

But opponents predicted that, in fact, traffic will increase substantially on the new interchange.

Car ridership in the Montreal area has jumped by 350,000 vehicles in the past decade and the project offers no measures to halt that trend, Bergeron said.

He said the success of the métro to Laval proves that commuters will choose public transportation if an efficient option is available.

Turcot offers a golden opportunity to make that shift, he said.“the moment to make the change is now,” he said. Inducing commuters to leave their cars at home would require attractive alternatives like state-of-theart, frequent trains or trams – not just a few extra bus lanes, Bergeron said.

In its current form, the Turcot plan will set back sustainable transportation in Montreal by a century, Bergeron predicted.

“If we do this with Turcot, the message we’re sending is that we intend to do the same thing with Notre Dame St. E., we intend to do the same thing with the Bonaventure Autoroute, and that is going to take us to the end of the 21st century,” Bergeron said.

“Only then will we be able to move away from 1950s-style development.”