Nice cement truck. Wouldn’t want to see anything happen to it.
Recently at the Sheraton Laval Hotel, a capo in the Montreal Mafia was dramatically gunned down at a family party. Unlike a previous attempt to murder him a couple years ago, Salvatore Scoppa this time succumbed to his injuries. It got us wondering: Was this a punishment dealt by his criminal brethren for not starting enough new construction projects in Montreal ? Okay, that question was a poor attempt at humor, but what we do know is that [1] too many roadwork projects occur here simultaneously, and [2] public construction in Montreal has long been significantly corrupted by organized crime. (Not by Salvatore Scoppa, however, since his family’s expertise is in drug trafficking and violent crime).
The Charbonneau Commission was an investigation into potential corruption in the management of Montreal’s public construction contracts, culminating in a report made public in 2015. Subsequently, the unité permanente anti-corruption (UPAC) was tasked with acting upon the recon. As reported in the Globe and Mail, “arrests have been plentiful but trials and convictions painfully slow, and jail time rare.” A couple of the bigwigs received 4– and 6–year prison sentences, but one of the two has already been granted parole after a single year behind bars. Such is the nature of white collar crime. Looking at UPAC data up to mid-2018, the ratio of criminal charges laid (against people and companies) to convictions thus far achieved was 331:114, or roughly one third.
In April, the Montreal executive committee in charge of infrastructure announced plans for 25 large infrastructure projects for 2019, with an estimated cost of $766 million. Almost half of that sum is expected to be spent in repairing or rebuilding roads, sidewalks, intersections, tunnels and bridges. If organized crime manages to syphon off only 10 percent of the 2019 total into their own pockets, $76 million is not a bad payday even when split between dozens of crooks. Let’s hope the threat of actual time behind bars (and repaying stolen monies) is enough to deter at least some potential shysters who would miss their yachts too much if they had to serve time.
If you’re intrigued by the history of organized crime in Montreal and can tolerate some truly abysmal dialogue, Netflix has a series for you based on the biographical 2015 book Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War. While the serial Bad Blood certainly isn’t the The Sopranos, it offers just enough history-based material — such as a dramatization of the Charbonneau Commission — and footage of Montreal that we could tolerate an otherwise mediocre production (at least many of the actors performed well, especially considering the script they were given).
Going deeper than a pothole
Ask anyone who drives in the city, and you’ll get an earful about Montreal’s potholes, or nids-de-poule. If you ride a bicycle or motorcycle, you risk not only damage to your vehicle, but damage to yourself from taking a spill. Any paved city with Montreal’s winter weather can expect nids-de-poule (due to the freeze / thaw weather patterns), but by now many of the city’s denizens feel that city hall wants us to believe potholes are indomitable. This has given the city a national reputation for incompetence and/or corruption in the realm of municipal road maintenance and not meeting acceptable standards. Documented chronic underfunding of road infrastructure over the past quarter century plays a part in the mess, but other fundamentals need to be considered. The proper asphalt used properly. Tracking whether repairs are effective over time. Prophylactic rather than overdue reactive measures.
A 2019 article in the Montreal Gazette by freelance journalist Victor Schukov reported that [not surprisingly] Transport Quebec uses a France-inspired paving standard. Not only does language separate Quebec from the rest of North America, so does pavement type. “Superpave” — based on results from the [U.S. federal] Strategic Highway Research Program* — is used throughout the USA and Canada [excluding Quebec] because it takes into consideration the volume of traffic (which requires gathering data), the weight of traffic, and local long term temperature phenomena. In other words, Superpave is variable depending on locality, while France’s pavement is “one size fits all” (an apparently acceptable all-season solution for France). It’s not that Quebec is skimping on materials. Transport Quebec is buying the best for their specifications — it’s just that it may be time for them to reevaluate their specifications.
* If you happen to have an insatiable curiosity, here’s the original research (as a pdf) in all its 171-page glory.
Our photos taken at construction sites around Montreal, 2018–19
The paradox of Montreal road construction
A guy named Christian Fay, whose company owns some 10,000 of the hated construction cones placed across construction sites in Montreal, understands what drives drivers to throw dirty diapers at his signage workers. “Sometimes you get two or three or four construction sites in the same area, so you’re sending people from one construction site to a detour onto the next construction site”, says Fay. Indeed, we’ve noticed access to highways cut off in adjacent neighborhoods, resulting in ridiculous transit times.
But the people finally prevailed, somewhat. Late in 2018 mayor Valérie Plante’s administration announced a new timeline for completion of roadwork objectives: 2023 deadlines have been stretched to reach 2028. While it might sound counterintuitive that slowing down construction will make Montrealers happier, the truth is that most of the city’s drivers are fed up with so many roads ripped up concurrently and an overabundance of construction leading to congestion. Adding to the good news, the Samuel De Champlain Bridge replacement that cost taxpayers $4.24 billion opened on June 24, 2019, and it’s built to last 125 years.