Street repairs surpassed city’s expectations in 2016

The city repaired more roads and sewers than it planned last year, a progress report from Mayor Denis Coderre’s administration revealed.

Executive committee member Lionel Perez said roadwork has come a long way in the last few years. The completion rate for infrastructure projects has increased from a low point of 35 per cent in 2011 to 109.5 per cent last year.

“We’re very happy with the results,” Perez said. “We obviously want to thank Montrealers for their understanding, and we want to let them know that we are starting to see some very concrete and encouraging results.”

Overall, the city spent $581 million — $50 million more than the projected total of $531 million — according to the document made public Wednesday. The reason it went over budget was that the city elected to do more work than it planned, not because construction costs were higher than expected, Perez said. In fact, the city is seeing a decrease in the costs submitted by construction companies bidding on public tenders. In 2015, the costs were 10 per cent lower than the city estimated, while in 2016, they were five per cent lower.

Perez said the administration has totally revised how contracts are awarded and supervised, with bonus clauses and penalties, a tender process that begins earlier, and stricter supervision of work on the ground. That has resulted in a reduction of the number of delayed projects. In the case of the project to remake St-Denis St. last year, the work was completed more than a month ahead of schedule.

Overall, the city repaved 181 kilometres of roads in 2016, compared with 156 planned. It also repaired or rebuilt 106 kilometres of sewers and aqueducts — two kilometres more than planned — and 58 kilometres of bike paths and lanes were built — one kilometre more than planned.

As for work not completed, only 63 out of 75 kilometres of projected bus lanes were built, while only 111 out of 150 planned traffic lights were modernized. Only 19 traffic lights with audible signals for the visually impaired were installed out of 70 that had been planned, while just 81 intersections were made safer for pedestrians, out of a planned 145. Perez said the reason for this is that the city installed 151 traffic lights with priority signals for buses that had not been foreseen. The lights have a white line on top of the red light that allows buses to go before the rest of traffic starts moving. He said the priority lights help alleviate delays for transit-users on major roads.

However, opposition councillor Sylvain Ouellet of Projet Montréal charged the city has neglected pedestrian safety because it is too focused on meeting its road-paving objectives. He also said the city has also not done enough to ensure quality. For example, he pointed to the alleyway between Drummond and De La Montagne Sts. that crumbled on Tuesday, after having been repaved late last year.

“Obviously we’re not supervising these projects closely enough,” Ouellet said. “If the work is cracking in less than five years, we have problems.”

Chantal Rouleau, the executive committee member in charge of water infrastructure, said it’s not clear what caused Tuesday’s collapse. “Where the road crumbled, there is no water conduit underneath, so we have to figure out if a leak was really the cause of this incident,” she said. “The issue is being investigated.”

Ouellet added that the city is also missing opportunities to improve the major arteries it is rebuilding, because most of the time the streets are remade exactly as they were, as was the case with St-Denis St., which was redone last year.

“We’re missing the opportunity to modernize these streets,” he said.

While the city is planning a future project for St-Denis, Ouellet said that is little solace to merchants and residents, who face the prospect of their street closing yet again for more construction.