As a summer of traffic discontent draws to a close, Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay assured the population Friday that the misery will not extend into fall.
With the beginning of the school year and the extra traffic that accompanies it fast approaching, Tremblay announced measures to keep cars flowing through the city at a faster rate than we saw all summer.
"We know exactly what we have to do to make sure that we reduce gridlock," Tremblay said.
The multi-faceted approach includes delaying certain road works projects planned for the autumn and improving the synchronization of traffic lights.
"We know exactly what we have to do to make sure that we reduce gridlock," Tremblay said.
The city has targeted five key zones where road work can be delayed in some cases in order to alleviate congestion.
Downtown
Work on the de Maisonneuve bike path near the Jacques Cartier Bridge and also near Rachel St. will be postponed. Sewer and water main work on Parc Ave. will be lightened. Parking will continue to be prohibited on the southbound side of St-Denis St.
Ville St-Laurent
Water main work on Lachapelle Blvd will be pushed to 2012 to accommodate Transport Quebec work on Laurentien Blvd.
Turcot Interchange
The St-Jacques St. exit is scheduled to open on Sept. 6. Road work on St-Patrick street between Thomas Keefer St. and the railroad tracks will be postponed to the end of September. In the same area, road work on Thomas Keefer between St-Patrick and Centre St. will be done on weekends.
Ville St-Pierre
Road work on Dollard Ave. will be postponed indefinitely, and work on bike paths will be done in October.
Sherbrooke St. East
Re-paving between Honoré Beaugrand and Baldwin postponed to later this fall, though sidewalk construction work in the area will continue as planned. Re-paving between St-Jean-Baptiste and Tricentenaire is postponed to 2012.
Furthermore, other areas will have traffic lights managed by a centralized system that will adjust their cadence according to real-time traffic conditions: Pie IX (already in place), Henri-Bourassa West (already in place), Sherbrooke St. (already in place), René-Levesque (December, 2012), Crémazie (2012) and Sherbrooke East (2012).
The final two sets of lights on the approach to the Jacques Cartier Bridge will also be adjusted, while those in both directions of Papineau St. are already synchronized.
Finally, the city wants to encourage the use of public transport by maintaining the additional service implemented this summer on major east-west bus routes and also on the orange metro line. Overcrowding on bus lines coming from the Sud-Ouest, LaSalle and Cote-des-Neiges/NDG boroughs will also be monitored, Tremblay says.
