NDG residents frustrated by dozen construction sites in neighbourhood
One project isn't expected to end until spring 2025
Blerina Ruka has to call her children's bus driver every morning to co-ordinate a new pickup spot based on the daily shuffle of orange cones and road closures in Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood.
She repeats the process every afternoon as well.
"It's not easy at all living here every day with this noise, with this dust," says the mother of two.
Today, work started on Côte St-Luc Road between Wilson and Girouard avenues, forcing drivers heading east to take a detour through Fielding Avenue, Cavendish Boulevard and Monkland Avenue.
According to the city of Montreal's Info-travaux website, there are about a dozen active construction sites west of Décarie Avenue, in the Côte-des-Neiges –Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough.
These include a major overhaul of Somerled Avenue between Beaconsfield and Côte St-Luc Road that will be done over two years until the spring of 2025.
"Those infrastructure are aging, the water pipe is 100 years old," spokesperson for the city of Montreal Philippe Sabourin told CBC News. "Everything will be changed."
Sabourin says 53 residents will have their lead water pipes replaced in the process.
The smaller sites have different end dates between now and November.
Resident Sarah Smith says she doesn't mind the construction if the end-goal is new pipes — she's not impressed with the water quality in the area — but as a commuter, she wishes it wasn't so difficult to decipher when and where to take the bus.
"You're kind of blindly trying to find where they relocated a bus," said Smith.
She's waited long periods of time before noticing the bus stop she was standing at was no longer in service.
"With my daughter, after daycare, it's kind of a nightmare," she says.
She also says she's observed several drivers struggle to read and understand the signage put in place to help them navigate through the different detours.
Sophie Martin also lives in the area and says she shares similar frustrations. This morning, she turned into a one-way only to find out — along with the drivers in front of her — that the street ended at a construction site, forcing them to do do a u-turn.
"Drivers were pretty frustrated," she says.
She says she hopes things will calm down soon, especially since she's started dropping off her kids at school again. In the meantime, she's doing her best to be courteous — even to visibly frustrated drivers.
"I also understand, I can put myself in their shoes, they need to get somewhere this morning, so it is what it is I guess," she said.
Sabourin says work at the intersection of Côte St-Luc Road and Somerled Avenue should be done by the end of October.
With files from Kwabena Oduro