The city of Montreal says most of the important infrastructure projects going on in the city are on schedule.

It put out a progress report on 34 projects that have the greatest impact on traffic and businesses in the city Monday. Of those projects:

  • 30 projects received a green light, meaning they’re on schedule
  • 3 projects received a yellow light, indicating some delays
  • 1 project, the work on Peel St., received a red light meaning it’s behind schedule and needs urgent attention.

Lionel Perez, city councillor in charge of infrastructure, said the city has been putting more pressure on the entrepreneur responsible for the work on Peel St. and demanded he started working on the weekends, which they’ve been doing for the last three weekends. A second supervisor has also been added at the work site.

“With the delays we had encountered last month with the Peel work we went ahead and put more pressure on the entrepreneur to make sure he respects the deadlines, there was a delay. We demanded that the change certain personnel, he acquiesced,” he said.

Merchants recently complained the work, which includes replacing sewers, pipes and roads, is hurting their bottom line. The work is scheduled to be finished in December.

There are more than 400 infrastructure projects going on across the city.

Mayor Denis Coderre said citizens can check up on worksites on the city's website at Info-Travaux.

“It's important, it's totally transparent. You have the name of the entrepreneur, we have the date of when it starts and when it ends,” he said.

Despite a few delays, all projects are on budget, said Coderre.

The opposition at city hall said it also wants more analysis of completed projects.

“We want post-mortems and we want that the city finally use the power that the government of Quebec gives him to put some bad entrepreneurs on a blacklist,” said Projet montreal’s Sylvain Ouellette.

Engineer Hellen Christodoulou said she believes the city could improve at preserving all the new technical information they gathers during every construction project, so that mistakes would not be repeated.

“I know that in many particular cases documentation does not exist, period,” she said.

She cites last winter, when contractors had to dig up Cote St. Luc road twice, when they discovered a cement block that wasn't in the plans.

“It's not to anyone's fault, but it could be to someone's credit if in fact we assess this information now and we are able to avoid these difficulties, these hurdles in the future,” she said.



Update on 34 Montreal work sites