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Earlier this month, the city of Montreal issued a public notice on a Friday afternoon that it was closing half of a major street for three weeks the following Monday morning.

In an ideal world, the city would have given more than three days notice about closing two lanes of Monkland Ave., a street with two bus lanes and a métro station, in an area plagued with congestion because of the Turcot project. The problem was, however, that the city itself only found out that morning about the project by Bell Canada to replace underground infrastructure.

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“This is a perfect example of what we are trying to avoid,” said Lionel Perez, the executive committee member in charge of major roadwork projects. “This is a Bell Canada worksite, and the borough was only notified three days before the work was set to begin.”

Perez explained that more than half of the projects on city’s streets are not done by the city of Montreal, rather other actors like natural gas and electricity providers, phone and cable companies. While they have to get permits from the boroughs to do the work, the information about projects sometimes falls through the cracks.