The city of Montreal has announced some details of where it plans to spend $6.39 billion in a three-year capital works plan.
The plan will aim to improve the roads and water infrastructure, with a massive increase in spending, up $1.15 billion – or 22 per cent – compared to last year's budget of $5.24 billion.
The Three-Year Capital Works Program breaks down as follows:
- $1.831 billion in 2017
- $2.221 billion in 2018
- $2.334 billion in 2019
About 79 per cent of that money will be spent on protecting and repairing roads.
A sum of $415.4 million will go into road levelling and surfacing for quick fixes. The repair and maintenance of major arteries will cost $352 million, while local roads (work carried out by boroughs), will cost $210 million.
Some highlights:
- Redeveloping Ste-Catherine W: $72.3 million
- Replacing the Jacques-Bizard Bridge: $38.5 million
- Cavendish Blvd. extension: $24.5 million
- Redeveloping Plaza Saint-Hubert: $25.8 million
- Developing the bike path network, aimed at developing 50 kilometres of bike paths each year: $45 million
- Upgrading street lighting: $29 million
- Modernizing six drinking water production plants: $141 million
- Protecting the water supply at the Atwater plant: $73 million
Other significant projects include the creation of a municipally-run Animal Control Centre, meaning the city will no longer contract out services to the SPCA or Berger Blanc.
Playground baseball fields will also be renovated at a cost of $18 million.
The details of the plan came out Wednesday, a week after Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre announced that the city has a ten-year plan to conduct urgent repairs on sewers, aqueducts, and roads that have been left to rot or were poorly built.
Coderre said that 45 per cent of the 4050 kilometres of roads in Montreal need either urgent or immediate repair.
Opposition leader Luc Ferrandez worries the roadwork will be quickly and incompetently done.
"One other thing that we would have done is reinvesting in the structure and not just in the asphalt," said Ferrandez.
The Projet Montreal said his party would also prefer more money spent on green spaces and making roads safer for cyclists.
Coderre said the city can afford to pay for the infrastructure work without raising taxes beyond the rate of inflation.
