Montreal drivers face gridlock to kick off September

The first week of September brought bumper-to-bumper traffic across Montreal, with drivers frustrated by heavy congestion.

Back to school, back to work, and back to gridlock —drivers in Montreal experienced what seems to be an annual tradition during the first week of September.

“I mean, I’m barely moving half the time, so the fact that I got here is excellent,” said one driver while stuck in traffic on Boulevard Decarie near Côte Saint-Luc.

With most people back to their regular routine after the summer, several streets were bumper-to-bumper on Tuesday.

“Return to chaos,” says traffic consultant Rick Leckner. “Unfortunately, September is generally the worst month of the year.”

It’s a unique time of year, when the weather is nice enough for construction crews to continue working, but the number of commuters is at its peak.

But, according to Leckner, it’s gotten worse over time because the city was not built to withstand this many drivers.

“When the roads were initially built, [they] weren’t built to the proper specifications,” he explains. “There are many reasons for this problem, not the least of which is the ongoing lack of planning.”

That’s something opposition party Ensemble Montreal is jumping on ahead of the election this fall.

“We need to restore order,” party leader Soraya Martinez Ferrada told reporters at a press conference Tuesday morning.

If elected, Martinez Ferrada says she would reform construction, adding that the city needs to regain trust from citizens when it comes to planning construction.

“I want to turn the page of having the orange cone as the symbol for Montreal.”

According to Mobilité Montreal, there are 44 major construction projects either underway or planned to begin in the fall in the Greater Montreal Area.

But the city says it’s taking initiative by doing work that needs to be completed now.

“There is a very big number of work that we have to do,” said Projet Montreal leader Luc Rabouin . “We decided to face that and not to postpone that for the next generations, as the people did before us.”