Labelle was killed. Lortie was seriously injured, suffering a fractured pelvis, a broken femur and five cracks in her spine. He says Labelle would still be alive if the roads in western Quebec were better maintained. “We pay crazy high taxes for cratered roads,” he said. “Let the city take care of its citizens and then send the bill, because the opposite is not working right now.” Repeated accidents on highways 15 and 117 have prompted a group of mayors from the Laurentians to call for more measures to be taken on both of Quebec’s highways. Just on Monday, an eight-year-old girl and a woman, 37, died on Route 117 in Labelle, Laurentians. Michèle Lalonde, mayor of Sainte-Adèle, and her counterparts in the region are calling on the Quebec Ministry of Transport (MTQ) to hand over some road repair responsibilities to them. “What I’ve told other mayors is that if within two or three weeks we don’t have solutions from the ministry, we’ll probably prepare solutions and suggest what we can do for them,” he told CBC Montreal’s Daybreak. But that is provided they are given enough funding, he said.
Repairs underway
MTQ said it could not provide the annual average daily traffic volume that Highway 15 was designed for because the infrastructure is “too old,” a spokesman wrote in an email. The most recent figures from 2019 show that the section of highway 15 passing through Saint-Adèle had an average annual daily traffic volume of 30,000 vehicles. MTQ’s Sarah Bensadoun says the ministry is investing $300 million in roads and bridges in the Laurentians between now and 2024. “We’re well aware that there are some areas on Route 117 that are not up to our standards, mainly potholes, but those potholes are seasonal unfortunately,” Bensadoun said. “So that’s why we have to come back from time to time to do some repairs and we will continue to do that.” In an email to CBC, an MTQ spokesperson confirmed that the ministry plans to make repairs to sections of highways 15 and 117 in Saint-Jérôme, Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Mont-Blanc and Mont-Tremblant. Catherine Hamé Mulcair, the mayor of Sainte-Anne-des-Lacs, says she knows firsthand how terrifying driving on Highway 15 can be. “No one drives in the lanes,” he said. “Everybody’s driving a little bit outside the lanes and it’s obviously not a safe way to drive on a freeway.”
Increasing use
Hamé Mulcair is urging transport authorities to consider major repairs to the 15 northbound and southbound. “It has reached a level of degradation that is significant,” he said. “Because of the pandemic and because of the growth we have in the area, I think maybe the freeway was used a lot more than planned. Morin-Heights Mayor Timothy Watchorn, who has been a council member for 20 years, says Morin-Heights has seen a huge increase in traffic on its main arteries. The area has more than doubled its population in the past two decades, growing from 2,100 to 4,755. Cottage visitors make up about a third of the population, Watchorn says. “On a busy summer day there are 6,000 cars driving down a small street in downtown Morin-Heights,” Watchorn said, referring to a traffic test conducted downtown in the summer of 2021. “We’re trying to work with MTQ. It’s very difficult because we have to try to enforce the current regulations and speed regulations … we’re trying to make people aware that people live here.”
