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The City of Montreal will spend $6.3 billion in infrastructure repairs and upgrades over the next three years, with the lion’s share – 60 per cent — going to repair its crumbling roads and leaking water and sewage pipes.

Struggling to stanch an infrastructure maintenance deficit, the city’s capital-works budget for 2017 to 2019 is increasing by 22 per cent over last year, the city announced Wednesday. Most of the $1.1-billion increase is going to roads and pipes.

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“Forty-five per cent of our streets, 22 per cent of our sewers and 13 per cent of our water pipes are in bad or very bad condition,” Coderre said. “For a metropolis like Montreal, this is shameful. … We have serious catching up to do, and the more we wait, the more quickly it will degrade and the more it will cost.”

Boosts to infrastructure spending in the last years have shown the city has the means to increase investments while maintaining reasonable debt levels and tax rates, Coderre said. Most capital-works programs are paid for with long-term loans, but the city is funding a record $1.3 billion of the latest budget in cash, a 30-per-cent increase over last year. The money is coming from transfers from its operating budget as well as money collected through water taxes, city manager Alain Marcoux said.