Sherbrooke

By Joel Ceausu
The Suburban

It can be maddening, as anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in gridlock will tell you.

The Sherbrooke exit on northbound Décarie is often much worse at rush hour, where the entire area’s fluidity is further complicated by the barricaded U-turn circling back south to Addington for those wanting to head west via de Maisonneuve.

Provincial highway infrastructure joins with arterial and residential streets across the city, but the concrete barrier and pylons dropped here each winter for more than a decade forces commuters to wait while trying to exit the highway, then inch their way up and onto Sherbrooke, through jams going west to circle south. It’s a slow route creating more traffic, more idling, more headaches, and more costly intervention with occasional SPVM officers managing traffic.

The obstruction of the 70-metre roadway does not appear on the city’s obstruction map, but it does show as “route fermée” on the province’s Info-Travaux.

NDG councillor Peter McQueen told The Suburban the roadway has been blocked by Transports Québec because MTQ snowplows that clear the U are too wide to drive down Addington ever since they built a sound wall. Asked why the U loop cannot be cleared with the same equipment used on Addington or bike paths and sidewalks, McQueen said “they cannot plow the U with a city of Montreal plow because the only way to access it is by coming off the highway. It has been like that since they built the exit and wall on Addington about 15 years ago.”

The ministry can clear snow from its ramp and turnaround, but the issue is with exiting onto the municipal road network, MTQ spokesperson Sarah Bensadoun confirmed to The Suburban. “The street is too narrow, due in part to the presence of vehicles parked on both sides,” she told The Suburban. “This is especially difficult after accumulations of snow, which shrinks the space even further.”

The department had previously cleared snow in this area, says Bensadoun, but after several episodes of plows being blocked, “the Ministry offered the borough two solutions to keep the U-turn open in winter”: prohibit parking on one side of the street in winter or take over clearing the U-turn, since the borough already has small snow removal equipment. “Since the borough had refused both proposals, the Ministry had no choice but to close this section each winter.” McQueen says removing parking on Addington was something that neither local residents or local businesses want.

Indeed, borough communications director Étienne brunet told The Suburban the borough does not take care of this small turn “because there is no other access than by highway. To get there, our teams would have to take the highway and take a very long detour. Secondly, it is not part of the public domain for which we are responsible.”

Brunet added that the detour is only a few meters to get to Sherbrooke and go back down through Addington at the second light or to make the right turn on Sherbrooke and take Prud’homme to reach de Maisonneuve. “This is certainly an additional travel time, but it is safe to do so.”

The Transport ministry does not have small trucks, said Bensadoun, as they are not suitable for clearing snow from highways which represents the vast majority of their operations, and what small vehicles they do possess don’t have the equipment or power to clear highway roadbeds.

So in the meantime, the traffic infrastructure remains off limits to… traffic, but there is hope, as winter’s worst days seem behind us.