As if Montreal traffic weren't bad enough, downtown commuters had to deal with even more of it Monday.
Months of road work on Rene-Levesque Blvd. has begun, causing delays and detours.
In a year that involves major work on the Turcot Interchange, the covering of the Ville-Marie Expressway and the usual repairs to Montreal's water and sewer infrastructure, work to shore up Hydro Quebec's underground network caused long delays for commuters.
“It's only going to continue to get worse. Added to that are the summer festivals and the street closures,” said traffic consultant Rick Leckner.
What complicated matters for commuters was water and sewer work on St-Denis St., which forced the closure of Viger Ave. at Berri St., and more traffic being detoured.
Coupled with the annual closure of Ste-Catherine between St. Hubert St. and Papineau St., all that additional traffic ended up on Rene-Levesque.
Two-way traffic now runs on the north side of Rene-Levesque from roughly Amherst St. to Hotel-de-Ville Ave.
“I think what maybe governments need to get is it's not business as usual. You know, we need to make some compromises here. We tell people to take public transit, carpool and all this, but there are still cars on the road,” said Leckner.
Even though this latest project belongs to Hydro Quebec, Leckner said the city could do more to minimize the inconvenience to the public.
“There are so many little things that could be done, like synchronizing traffic lights, like trying to avoid deliveries during rush hour and trying to keep construction permits minimized during the key rush-hour periods,” he suggested.
The current work on Rene-Levesque continues through June before moving to another part of the boulevard.
Leckner says commuters will just have to grin and bear it.
