Montreal delays planned roadwork on Décarie Blvd. in NDG

The city of Montreal says it will put off badly needed sewer repairs on Décarie Boulevard, after borough officials argued residents are already dealing with too much traffic mayhem.

"They have to approach this in a fashion that respects the fluidity of the neighbourhood and the patience of the people of NDG,” said Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough mayor Russell Copeman.

The work, announced earlier this week, was supposed to close down a lane on Décarie Blvd. south — between Queen Mary and Côte-St-Luc Road — for three months starting in June.

But NDG residents are already dealing with heavy congestion due to ongoing roadwork on St-Jacques Street, Sherbrooke Street and the Turcot interchange.

"The last thing we need to be doing is building a Berlin wall around NDG," Copeman said.

Residents and merchants agree and say they’ve had enough with the ongoing construction in their neighbourhood.

Bunty Bakheri, the owner of Autotronic on Décarie Blvd., said he’s considering moving his store out of NDG.

“There’s no business happening — nothing happening. With that lane closed over there at the 20, it’s causing major problems now. Nobody stops now — nobody wants to come here," Bakheri said.

Copeman met with city officials today to make his case, and the city agreed to delay the sewer work on Décarie.

“Definitely we should change the date because we cannot afford to have all this traffic on this street. It‘s impossible to do the job at the same time with everything happening there,” said Aref Salem, Montreal’s executive-committee member in charge of transport.

Salem said the city had planned the sewer work on Décarie for June 15 because the construction on Sherbrooke was supposed to be completed June 1.

But the work on Sherbrooke is running late, so it agreed to postpone the construction on Décarie.

“The pipes should be changed. The work should be done, and we had a schedule, but we’ll have to change it.”

A new start date for the work on southbound Décarie Blvd. will be set next week.