Montrealers Vote 2025: How can the next mayor improve mobility, construction?
Posted October 21, 2025 10:03 am.
Last Updated October 28, 2025 3:22 pm.
Orange cones, detours, and gridlock. For many Montrealers, it’s just part of daily life. As the city races to fix its aging infrastructure, frustration is growing over how long the work takes and how poorly it’s coordinated.
“Yeah, really tough. Driving rough time,” said one Montrealer.
Another saying, “Stop doing more road work and putting up signs everywhere, there have been signs over there for like six weeks and nothing’s been done.”
Experts say the frustration is justified and that the city’s mobility problems go deeper than just too many cones.
“Mobility is kind of a misnomer because it’s not very efficient and not very mobile. One should use the word ‘fluidity’…. but that, unfortunately, is often not the case,” said Rick Leckner, a traffic consultant.
Leckner says coordination or the lack of it is a major issue.
“I’m not convinced that there is proper oversight of everything being done, although the city will say otherwise,” said Leckner.
“The city has been having a war on cars for quite some time and it’s not effective because while there is of course public transit, it’s not as effective. Either systems break down or strikes or look at the REM, 6 billion plus to build the thing and I don’t think it’s had a solid month of operation. So people lose confidence and what happens? They turn to their cars.”
With the municipal election November 2, candidates are promising solutions from a construction czar to smarter planning with AI.
- Ensemble Montréal Would create a full inventory of all worksites within 100 days, ban repeat excavations on the same street within five years, and use QR codes on signage to improve coordination and transparency.
- Projet Montréal Would launch Action Chantier, a new city body to oversee and coordinate all roadwork, cut delays, reduce orange cones and ensure smoother traffic flow.
- Transition Montréal Would set up Infra-Montréal to manage construction projects in-house and better plan work to limit congestion.
- Action Montréal Would maintain car access on Mount Royal reconfigure bike lanes that remove parking, and add structured parking to ease circulation.
- Futur Montréal Would map and coordinate major worksites in advance and use better planning to prevent gridlock on key arteries.
Urban planning expert Pierre Barrieau says better coordination and communication are long overdue.
“So for example, if we’re communicating maybe a year or two in advance, you know, this work is coming, you know, first of all, businesses can plan in accordance, diminish purchase orders, you know, reschedule, prepare to maybe hire one person less staff on the summer,” said Barrieau.
While Montrealers want less construction, Barrieau says the short-term pain is part of catching up on decades of neglect.
“Unfortunately, the solution to less construction is… doing more. We’ve fallen behind over the last decades,” said Barrieau.
For now, orange cones remain the city’s unofficial symbol, but, whoever wins this election will have to convince Montrealers they can finally make traffic move a little faster.
“Stop building like bicycle lanes because that’s what creates like traffic and removing parking spots so people are actually more on the road because of that,” said one Montrealer.
Another saying, “Well, just give us some space and parking so we can do something about it, but it’s really bad. Yeah. Whenever you want to go downtown or something, like you just like want to pill it.”
