mount royal revamp doomed even before announced delay, union leader says
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design sketches presented by the city earlier this year showed no bus or shuttle in the remodel of camillien-houde way, which entails replacing the road that winds to the summit of mount royal with a footpath and bike path.
dave sidaway/montreal gazette
the projet montréal administration’s $89-million plan to remove cars and redevelop camillien-houde way was doomed even before party leader luc rabouin announced on monday that he will modify and postpone the project if he’s elected mayor, says the union representing montreal’s municipal engineers.
“i’m not surprised,” gisella gesuale, president of the association des scientifiques et ingénieurs de montréal (asim), said in response to rabouin’s declaration, adding that the project was “heading for a wall because it wasn’t well planned.”
a public transit shuttle that rabouin now wants added to the project “is a major change,” she said. “in my opinion, they’re back to square one.”
on top of that, the city is in the midst of cost-cutting, gesuale said. the city announced in july that it’s seeking to eliminate about 200 municipal positions to save $50 million a year.
does montreal have $89 million to fulfill a political desire to ban cars on mount royal when there are pressing infrastructure projects, gesuale asked?
for example, the price tag to double the capacity of the langelier collector in st-léonard borough, a need that was identified in 2022 due to increased risk of back flow and flooding for 20 per cent of the borough during torrential rainfalls, is pegged at $151 million but only scheduled to begin in 2029.
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rabouin, who was chosen by projet montréal members in march to replace valérie plante as the party’s leader and mayoral candidate in this fall’s municipal election, said in his announcement this week that he wants to focus on other priorities and said the camillien-houde project “cannot move forward until we have confirmation that it is possible to integrate public transit links to reach the summit.”
design sketches presented by the city earlier this year showed no bus or shuttle in the remodel of camillien-houde, which entails replacing the road that winds to the summit of mount royal with a footpath and bike path.
as a result, residents east of the mountain, including in projet montréal’s electoral base of plateau-mont-royal borough, have decried the impending loss of public transit access to mount royal for seniors and people with reduced mobility. (vehicle access from the west side of the mountain, via remembrance rd., is to be maintained.)
“this is what happens when you don’t finish your studies and you announce a project,” gesuale said of the desire to modify the camillien-houde plan.
“when the city doesn’t correctly plan its projects and doesn’t take the necessary time, possibly because it’s a political wish or command, we have to pay the price as problems arise.”
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she noted that a preliminary design study on the project, carried out by engineering firm cima+ in 2018 at a cost of $1.1 million, still hasn’t been rendered public. even so, the projet montréal administration awarded a six-year, $12.8-million contract in march to cima+ in partnership with architecture firm lemay to refine the design of camillien-houde and prepare the call for tenders for construction work.
normally, in the preliminary design, or pre-design, phase the city has identified its needs and the consultant evaluates different scenarios to suggest the best one, gesuale said.
the city isn’t obligated to redo a pre-design because of the shuttle, she said, “but in my opinion, it will cost more because you’re working backwards.”
a projet montréal spokesperson working on rabouin’s mayoral campaign confirmed to the gazette that the $12.8-million contract remains intact.
it was plante who telegraphed last week that the city might put off the project. however, she pinned the delay on the city’s closure of docteur-penfield ave., south of the mountain, between des pins ave. and mctavish st., for the next eight years to carry out long-planned upgrades to the nearly century-old mctavish pumping station. the facility supplies drinking water to 1.25 million residents.
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“if docteur-penfield is completely closed to traffic, we’ll necessarily adapt the schedule for camillien-houde,” the mayor said in an interview with 98.5 fm.
“i can guarantee that. we’re not going to hold motorists and citizens hostage.”
gesuale, whose union is in contract negotiations with the city, contends plante’s on-air declaration about delaying the project was news to some city staff.
“last week, the pretext (for putting off the camillien-houde project) was docteur-penfield,” she added.
“this week, the shuttle is the pretext.”
soraya martinez ferrada, the mayoral candidate for ensemble montréal party, has already said she will not close camillien-houde to vehicle traffic if she wins the election in november. responding to rabouin’s pledge this week to modify and postpone the project, martinez ferrada called the backtracking an “electoral tactic.”
rabouin, who is borough mayor of plateau-mont-royal, had told a borough council meeting in june that he would like to see a “small shuttle,” ideally electric, that would go up camillien-houde. he was responding at the meeting to a citizen’s concern about losing the société de transport de montréal’s no. 11 bus that currently traverses the mountain via remembrance and camillien-houde.
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“it’s just a matter of having it (the no. 11 bus) take a different route than camillien-houde,” rabouin said at the june meeting, as he maintained that the no. 11 bus will remain in operation.
“in parallel and as a complement, we’re working on a shuttle project. we would like to have a shuttle that can go up directly on camillien-houde. we’re thinking of a small shuttle that we would also like to be electric if possible.”
however, the stm doesn’t have “small electric shuttle buses” in its fleet, gesuale said. so that’s a new expense, she said.
moreover, a shuttle that goes up the mountain will necessarily have to go down, she said.
camillien-houde is about 11 metres wide for much of its length, she said. that’s not much wider than the future asphalted bike path and multifunctional footpath together if a shuttle bus in two directions is added, gesuale said.
“so we’re spending $89 million to remove one metre of road?” she said. “what’s the gain in terms of demineralizing (and) greening?”
the city is also looking to accede to the montreal fire department’s request to have a lane for emergency vehicles on camillien-houde, gesuale noted.
if shuttle buses and fire trucks end up using the new bike path, “then the situation isn’t any better than it is now,” she said.
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“now we see it’s being done chaotically in the sense that we’re finding problems, trying to patch the solutions and we might, in my opinion, end up being worse (off) than we are right now.”
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