Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante unveils the plan to create pedestrian plazas on Ste-Catherine st.
A vast so-called public consultation on pedestrian-only parts of Ste-Catherine St. appears to have caught many people flat-footed.
The head of the city’s largest merchants association and the city councillor for the district both said Wednesday they were in the dark about a plan to restrict two large segments of the city’s historic commercial artery to pedestrians only. In unveiling the concept Wednesday, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante said her administration said it “spoke to everyone” over the course of two years and came up with a consensus.
Robert Beaudry, the executive committee member in charge of urban planning, said several workshops were held in 2022-’23, and the public was asked their preferences before the concept was chosen.
All this begs the question: Who did the Plante administration speak to during this period of consultation?
The timing of the plaza construction isn’t clear, as the portion of Ste-Catherine in front of Concordia will undergo a replacement of its underground pipes and infrastructure between 2025 and 2030. Further east, the roadway is already mostly completed around McGill. However, construction on Oscar Peterson Square has yet to begin and the McGill REM station is still under construction.
Castanheira begged the Plante administration to suspend the project until the election next November, so there can be a real consultation process.
“There is a path to success with this project, but it is not the one that was put in place by the city of Montreal,” he said. “If Montrealers don’t feel listened to, neither do we. The business community feels lied to and cheated with this project.”
He added that there are many examples of successful pedestrianization projects, but all of them were done with the agreement and the involvement of the local business communities, so he’s baffled why the Plante administration isn’t following its own model.
Local councillor Serge Sasseville said he too was in the dark about the project.
“Let’s be clear: there was never a real consultation on the specific project to pedestrianize, which was presented today,” Sasseville wrote in a text message.
He added that the project as presented needs to be seriously reworked.
“In its actual form, I am completely against this project which has been denounced by many,” he added. “If it goes ahead as is, it will be part of Valérie Plante’s legacy when she leaves City Hall: she will have contributed to killing Canada’s most important commercial artery.”
Opposition Ensemble Montréal agreed.
“Valérie Plante seems intent on imposing a project that could disfigure downtown for the next 50 years, without genuine public consultation. She relies on her electoral base to ignore the concerns of Montrealers and merchants, prioritizing her own agenda,” said Julien Hénault-Ratelle, the Opposition spokesperson for economic development. “Downtown traffic will be further paralyzed, even with some accessible sections.”
After a story in La Presse this month, both Ensemble Montréal and Sasseville brought a motion to the November council meeting urging the administration to hold a referendum before going ahead with creating the pedestrian zones.
Plante’s Projet Montréal voted against that motion.
“We are already consulting; we’re speaking with everyone,” Plante said. “We have been doing this over the last two years. We’re going to come up with a scenario, but there won’t be a referendum. When I was chosen for a second time with a majority, people knew I would go forward on pedestrianizing many roads. That’s what I was elected for.”