The city of Montreal is gearing up for another summer of road, water and sewer repairs – but the downtown core is being spared this summer.
In total, 290 kilometres of roads and about 120 kilometres of water and sewer pipes will be fixed or replaced.
The city is spending $684-million on the program,an unprecedented amount of money on the work, and up from the $581 million it spent on 198 kilometres in 2016.
The city will avoid the downtown area, however, because it wants to ensure its 375th anniversary goes off without a hitch and without the area littered with construction zones and orange zones.
City officials said they are prioritizing the work and nothing urgent needed to be done downtown this summer.
"There was a decision that was made to ensure that as much as possible we're going to minimize the work that needs to be done in the downtown core where there are going to be those celebrations," said city councillor Lionel Perez.
Montrealers should get used to the construction, though – it will maintain this pace of repairs for the next 10 years.
“We’re going to maintain this cadence until 2021, 2022” said Perez. “After that it will taper off, but will still be a substantial amount of money.”
Perez said 125 streets should be under repair every year, but that past administrations only repaired half that number of streets.
As a result Montreal is now playing catchup as it deals with what it calls a "maintenance deficit."
Over next four years, the city intends to spend about $700 million on road repairs each year and after 2026, about half that.
Some of the major work includes:
- Transforming the Bonaventure Expressway into an urban boulevard
- Mountain-to-river walkway
- Repaving part of Papineau Ave. and Laurier Ave. W.
- 12 intersections redone at Laurentien Blvd. and Lachapelle St. in Ahuntsic-Cartierville
- Work to improve part of St-Michel Blvd.
- Building an underground tunnel to create a new water source for the Atwater plant
