The city’s first female mayor came to power leading a party with an ambitious agenda to make the city friendlier, greener, safer and more accessible. How did she do?
Published Oct 24, 2024 • Last updated Oct 25, 2024 • 5 minute read
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante acknowledges supporters at city hall on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024 following her announcement that she will not be running for re-election next year. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal GazetteAfter two terms in office, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante plans to call it quits after next year’s election.
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The city’s first female mayor is leaving on her own terms, a rarity in the city’s municipal politics scene. All her predecessors, dating back to before the turn of the century, either resigned in disgrace, like Gérald Tremblay, or were defeated at the polls, like Pierre Bourque, Jean Doré and Denis Coderre.
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Plante came to power leading a party with an ambitious agenda to make the city friendlier, greener, safer and more accessible. So how did the self-proclaimed mayor of mobility do? Here are a few of her greatest successes and failures.
Success: Bike paths Cyclists take to the REV on St-Denis St. near St-Joseph on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf /Montreal GazetteSay what you will about Plante, but her legacy will probably be seen for decades to come on Peel St., St-Denis St. and St-Antoine St. with the creation of the Réseau express vélo, a trademark of her Projet Montréal administration. Despite facing some opposition as they were implemented, the bicycle paths have undoubtedly improved safety by placing physical barriers between cars and bikes. Before the REV, the city’s preference to bike paths was to paint lines on streets, a measure that frustrates both motorists and cyclists, with cyclists saying only physical barriers will improve safety and encourage more people to ride on two wheels.
Success: Pedestrian streets Wellington St. in Verdun was named the coolest street in the world by Time Out magazine. It is seen on Aug. 25, 2022. Photo by Dave Sidaway /Montreal GazetteAnother Projet innovation born out of necessity during the pandemic, the Plante administration experimented with closing major commercial arteries to cars during the summer months. The success was greater than even the politicians anticipated. It started with just a few blocks of Mont-Royal Ave., Wellington St. and de la Commune St. in the summer of 2020 and grew every year. Not only did the number of streets multiply to eight, but the length of roads closed and the length of time of the closures also increased. This year, the westernmost portion of Mont-Royal remained open until October. The program is likely to be another Plante legacy, as street closures will now be planned for a three-year period rather than annually.
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Success: Environment Mayor Valérie Plante discusses the redesign of Camillien-Houde Way during a news conference at the foot of Mount Royal on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf /Montreal GazettePlante’s record on the environment is mixed, mostly because of the sheer number of commitments she and Projet Montréal have made over the years. Perhaps the biggest and most well-remembered environmental policy was an early Plante decision to bar Mount Royal’s Camillien-Houde Way to cars in the first months of her mandate, a decision that was met with much opposition. Despite holding public consultations, where the overwhelming majority believed there should be some car access, Plante remained firm and once again promised to bar the iconic mountain parkway to cars, starting in 2027.
Other environmental achievements include the creation of the Grand parc de l’Ouest, the recent purchase of land in the Technoparc. The deal will see the city purchase 11 hectares of marshlands, forest and meadow from the tech company Hypertec and protect it as part of the planned Des Sources Nature Park. Plante has also taken major steps to make the city more resilient in the face of climate change disasters like flash flooding by adding more sponge parks, sponge sidewalks and sponge streets to the cityscape as a way to improve surface drainage and alleviate stress on the city’s storm sewer system.
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Success/failure: Transit Mayor Valérie Plante congratulates senior Micheline Roch at the Pie-IX métro station on April 19, 2023, after announcing free transit for seniors. Roch became the first senior to get her special Opus card for seniors. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf /Montreal GazetteMobility has been a major issue in the city — and for Plante in the last seven years. With a trademark pink water bottle always in tow, Plante pledged to make a new métro line in her favourite colour. The Pink Line was to relieve pressure on the métro network and connect communities that are far from the current network, while alleviating ridership from the saturated Orange Line. Plante’s plan to link Lachine to Montréal Nord never came to fruition, but she maintains a portion of the line is under study by the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain as part of a tramway linking Lachine to the downtown core.
Other transit achievements made during her tenure are the REM, the extension of the Blue Line and the SRB Pie-IX, but it was mostly the province and Plante’s predecessors who get credit for implementing those projects. Plante did make transit more accessible to seniors by providing free passes to anyone 65 and older across the island of Montreal, and permitting children 12 and under to ride free when accompanied.
Failure: Road safety and congestionArticle content
Mayor Valérie Plante visits a construction site on Ste-Catherine St. on May 21, 2019. Photo by Dave Sidaway /Montreal Gazette filesThe shine certainly came off Plante in the last two summers, as car traffic returned to its pre-pandemic levels and drivers realized the extent to which the road network was in poor shape. Numerous detours downtown because of road construction and badly managed projects are not necessarily the fault of the municipal government, but Plante became the scapegoat for frustrated drivers. Her pro-bicycle leanings certainly didn’t help in this regard. Plante also promised to improve road safety by implementing a vision zero strategy in hopes of eliminating pedestrian deaths. But road safety continues to be a major issue, with little improvement in the number of pedestrians being hit on the street.
Failure: Housing/homelessness Chinatown residents say the rise in the unhoused population is affecting their quality of life. Photo by Dave Sidaway /Montreal GazetteA dramatic rise in homelessness is not merely a Montreal phenomenon. All major cities are seeing a growing crisis, caused by mental health issues, an affordability crisis and an opioid crisis. This trio of crises was particularly difficult for Plante to manage. She lobbied the province constantly to pour in more funds to build affordable and social housing, to limited success. Only in recent months do those efforts appear to be paying off with several new announcements being made to build social housing units.
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Plante’s plan to encourage private developers to build social and affordable housing has yet to bear substantial fruit. She introduced the so-called 20-20-20 bylaw, requiring new developments to be comprised of 20 per cent social housing, 20 per cent affordable housing and 20 per cent family housing, which means units of three bedrooms or more. However, with few actual units in the pipeline and none yet fully built, the city adjusted that bylaw earlier this year.
Failure: City finances Mayor Valérie Plante and executive committee chairman Benoit Dorais pose for a photo after delivering her administration’s first budget on Jan. 10, 2018. Photo by John Mahoney /Montreal Gazette filesPlante’s first scandal is perhaps one that has now been long forgotten, but the newly elected mayor raised the ire of taxpayers just weeks after being elected when her budget raised taxes by higher than the rate of inflation. In the years since, Projet Montréal has been criticized for adding thousands to the city’s payroll while allowing the city’s debt ratio to balloon. In the inflationary years of 2023 and 2024, property taxes increased by more than four per cent. Plante is leaving with a smaller 1.8-per-cent increase in property taxes for her last budget.
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