51 road construction sites this summer
The city will see 51 major road construction sites this summer. Of these, 21 were ordained by the transport ministry, whose minister said Thursday that it could do a better job coordinating this stuff.
TVA says that roadwork started in 2021 on Ste‑Catherine East is still not finished and this is annoying people.
Shawn Goldwater 09:15 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
Hate to say this but the section of Sainte-Catherine that has been redone downtown is not wearing well.
Those flagstones that they use are already chipping and broken in places and what I notice is that they show every stain that they have ever had. It’s weird. Every spilled beverage or whatever seems to be absorbed into the whiteish material, permanently. It’s ugly.
Kate 09:31 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
We need some balance added to the law that mandates the city always has to take the lowest bid. As individuals we know that in some situations buying cheap is good, but often it leads to getting inferior products that don’t last and soon have to be replaced. It’s common sense, but we’re forced to accept that the city will do it, leading to messed‑up roads and, as Shawn says here, work that doesn’t wear well.
Spi 09:35 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
@Shawn that’s a feature of new stone though, they eventually dirty/wear down to an even shade of gray given enough time. I do agree about the durability of the material, especially given how carelessly snow clearing operation are conducted.
Meezly 09:38 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
You see media reports about politicians visiting other cities to study their public transport systems, why can’t our transport ministers visit other cities who have similar winters to see if how their pavement and roads handle harsh winters? Are Winnipeg, Inuvik or Yakutsk riddled with potholes with never ending road construction like ours?
DeWolf 10:00 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
It’s not harsh winters that damage the pavement and street furniture, it’s snow clearance. Yes, the freeze-thaw cycle is rough on asphalt in particular, which is why roads in other cold cities are horrible (ever driven down a side street in Burlington, VT? RIP your car). But the chipped granite curbs and damaged flagstones are the result of being scraped clear of snow by countless machines.
Kate 10:01 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
Meezly, seriously. City needs to get together a posse of engineers and send them to those cities, and to cities in Asia and Europe too, and see what they do. How does Reykjavik manage? Or Harbin?
It isn’t really the time to inquire into how they do things in Russia, though…
jeather 10:06 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
“She promised to improve transparency by offering more comprehensive updates to residents about ongoing work.”
Well they could hardly offer LESS comprehensive updates.
shawn 10:13 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
Spi, that’s interesting. I was wondering about that, if eventually it will just all get stained to a new shade. Be pretty long process. It does seem like regular ciment sidewalks absorb less. These flagstones (if that’s the right word) do seem more porous.
And yes, re the damage, it’s the scraping. Shawn Micallef of Toronto recently travelled to Brazil and shared all these marvellous photos of cities… and everywhere the sidewalks had these stunning mosaics. It made me sad that we can never have that, ever. Oh well.
thomas 10:21 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
Accepting the lowest bid isn’t inherently problematic. However, it necessitates that the city carefully crafts detailed and accurate project specifications for the bidding process. Rigorous, ongoing inspections of the work progress are also essential. Additionally, the financial stability of the bidding company should be confirmed to guarantee its capacity to accommodate potential cost overruns.
shawn 10:24 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
BTW I just got this from the borough. Did anyone else know that that little stub of greenspace above Leo Pariseau at the foothills of Mount Royal Park has a name? It’s parc Lucia-Kowaluk and it’s being refurbished, again, and properly this time, I hope. There was work done to it during the Coderre admin. and it always seemed like a missed opportunity. Here’s some info: https://montreal.ca/articles/reamenagement-du-parc-lucia-kowaluk-45086
Joey 10:35 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
Occam’s Razor says that the reason we overpay for poor-quality construction is organized crime and corruption within the municipal government, no? To us lowly citizens, the fact that we never seem to benefit from technological improvements, that the typical construction project is poorly planned, executed and communicated (and doesn’t last its expected lifetime), and that innovative ideas that would reduce long-term maintenance costs (i.e., gravy for the construction sector – think of the decision *not* to do heated sidewalks on Ste-Catherine, leading to relying on the same shitty snow removal that @DeWolf describes) are always abandoned all suggests that the *actual* powers that be have us right where they want us.
Yes, Mayor Plante can go to Europe to study transit (she could also go to Plattsburgh to look at the roads) and may genuinely want to improve how we do things – but it feels like any well-intentioned politician has the deck stacked against them. Meanwhile, the mob is literally torching cars and shooting up restaurants almost daily. Who exactly is supposed to stand up to OC in Quebec?
Shawn Goldwater 10:58 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
Except that our snow removal isn’t shitty. People from other places marvel at how we do it. True, the original plan called for heated sidewalks on Ste-Catherine as I recall, but that was abandoned. Maybe that’s what you are referring to.
Joey 11:08 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
@Shawn sorry I didn’t mean that the snow removal was shitty, only that we haven’t figured out a way to do it without removing painted lies, tearing up asphalt, dinging curbs, etc. It sounded for a while like part of the objectives for Ste-Catherine was to test out heated sidewalks/streets to see if (a) the tech would work and (b) whether we could gradually implement the concept at larger scale – maybe only on streets where the externalities of ‘classic’ snow removal are particularly burdensome, either in expense or inconvenience. Perhaps the city engineers decided it couldn’t be done, or at least not at anything close to a reasonable price. Perhaps the OC leadership decided that any potential hint of a threat to those fat snow removal contracts had to be cut off at the pass.
Kate 16:23 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
Joey, you seem to believe that city hall is as corrupt now as it was under Tremblay.
Blork 19:47 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
I suppose it’s nice that they’re fixing up Parc Lucia-Kowaluk, but you could also see this as a case of poor priority management. As green spaces go it’s grim; surrounded on two sides by wide traffic-filled boulevards, but more cogently it’s at the foot of the very nice Parc Jeanne-Mance and kitty-corner to the city’s flagship park, Mont-Royal. So who the heck is going to bring their kids to fly kites or picnic in that noisy patch of green when two fantastic parks are RIGHT THERE, spitting distance away?
Perhaps it would be more useful to put that money into a park in some other part of town that doesn’t have immediate access to the cream of the crop, park-wise. It’s a bit like putting a city-subsidized greengrocer across the street from the Jean-Talon Market instead of in some food-desert part of town.
CE 19:58 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
I really wish the city had have gone ahead with its original plan to build housing on that plot. It’s near useless as a park (especially considering how much other green space there is around) and would have been a great location for housing with its proximity to green space, transit, services, etc. They also probably could have gotten away with building at least a mid rise building there. Imagine how many public housing units could have been built in just one place!
Shawn Goldwater 20:13 on 2023-06-02 Permalink
What I see from the design is that it will be some sort of boundary area mixing greenspace and concrete to create a sort of transition between city and the parks.
I do think that’s a good idea, especially with Pine being redone.
Joey 08:08 on 2023-06-03 Permalink
@Kate not the Projet leadership… did you see that story the other day about a blue collar worker manager who was illegally growing and selling weed using his city email address?
Kate 13:04 on 2023-06-03 Permalink
Joey, yes, but it’s a bit of a stretch between a guy growing a little pot, and a universal assumption that any contract written by the city has corruption at its heart.