High Maintenance
Around here, as they say, there are only two seasons: winter and construction. So as Formula One cars rip up the race track here this weekend, the rest of the city is moving at a markedly slower pace. With the arrival of warm weather comes the seasonal onslaught of closed highway lanes, orange pylons, steel mesh fencing and large municipal vehicles sprinkled liberally across the roads- and sidewalks - of this fair town.
While the wear and tear of harsh winters is often fingered as the main culprit behind the sorry state of Montreal’s roads, it is obvious that neglect, poor planning and shoddy construction are equal partners in this endeavor. It is difficult to think of Montreal’s transportation infrastructure as anything other than cracked and creaking, the modernist highway fly-overs of visions past now little more than crumbling, even dangerous, concrete eyesores. I have often felt that this is one of the major reasons that Montreal, on average, presents a grittier and more haphazard physical landscape than many other Canadian cities. A long-standing affair with economic malaise during the late 20th century left the city with a legacy of mid-century concrete pipe dreams, only without the money or the political will to maintain their pretense. And so potholes have joined the likes of bagels and hockey as a central element to the common imagining of the city’s fabric.
This year, however, the city seems to be digging up the roads with added vigor. Major thoroughfares are undergoing serious renovation, with deep holes and twisted work signs decorating many an intersection. The orange pylons are numerous enough to make jaywalking a pleasant experience (you only have to dart across the single lane of traffic funneled down from three thanks to construction). Basic lane lines and directional arrows are appearing on streets where before there were none. Perhaps this is part of the larger sprucing up that Montreal has been experiencing over the past five years or so, with towers of glass and construction cranes slowly sneaking onto the scene alongside a regeneration of public spaces.
For now, however, much of it remains a dusty, jack-hammered work in progress. As it is every year, really. But the bustling clutter of these streets crowded with workers, machinery, pedestrians and vehicles- while perhaps inconvenient and cumbersome- nevertheless mirrors the explosion of life and activity that the arrival of summer brings to Montrealers.
