- Target:
- Ministry of Transport of Quebec
- Region:
- Canada
- Website:
- mobilisation-turcot.info
The government's plan to build a new highway that will be built right alongside the existing elevated structure. While nobody denies that the Turcot Interchange is in need of repair, the proposed lower structure will have a negative impact on public health, on our environment and on the socio-economic development of the South-West.
Not only does this project lack vision, it will endanger Montrealers' health and well-being:
* Residents of the South West borough will be even further exposed to the negative effects of automobile generated air pollution from a lower highway structure;
* The project will further contribute to greenhouse gases; No attempt is being made to reduce car traffic.
* Hundreds of people will be expropriated and their homes torn down: A community will be destroyed.
* A walled highway will fence in many South West communities, effectively stunting their long term growth and socio-economic development.
Other cities around the world have managed to conceive and build grand projects that do respect environmental goals.
Here in Quebec, it is possible to replace Turcot within a framework of sustainable development and of respect for the environment and the local population.
Whereas:
- The Ministère des transports duQuébec (MTQ) is currently preparing to rebuild the Turcot interchange and the adjacent expressways, with work planned to start in summer 2009;
-Transportation is the largest source of green house gas emissions in Québec (accounting for 49% of emissions in Montréal);
-According to the Direction de la santé publique de Montréal, more than1,500 deaths in the city each year are connected to atmospheric pollution;
-The current plan calls for the demolition of more than 200 residences in the borough of Le Sud- Ouest, throwing that many households into an already oversaturated housing market;
-The current planned use of embankments will create physical barriers between the neighborhoods of Le Sud-Ouest, thereby worsening the physical fragmentation and isolation of these neighborhoods;
We, the undersigned, call on the National Assembly to seize the opportunity presented by the reconstruction of the Turcot Interchange by requiring the MTQ to submit a new project that includes:
- a specific plan to reduce automobile traffic through an increased supply of alternative transportation, thereby reducing green house gas emissions and local pollution and increasing the quality of life and health of the population;
-specific measures that will maintain the current number of affordable housing units, that will address public security concerns and that will reduce the physical barriers that already fragment and isolate the communities within the borough of Le Sud-Ouest.
-compensation for the citizens who will suffer the ill effects of the construction work.
You can further help this campaign by sponsoring it
The Petition For Another Turcotplan petition to Ministry of Transport of Quebec was written by Citizens of the South West and is in the category Roads & Transport at GoPetition.