Weather & transportation services in Montreal : What connection ? World Weather Open Science Conference, Montreal,August 2014 Mr.France Bernard, ing.M.A.,M.Sc.A Division De La Gestion Des Actifs De Voirie Service Des Infrastructures, De La Voirie Et Des Transports (SIVT)

Introduction  Since early’80 Quebec’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs requires that every field of urban activities includes social and environmental considerations  These considerations can contribute to influence the decisions of elected people in urban services  We are driven to ask the unavoidable question : What kind of connection exists between weather and transportation services ?  To answer this question we’ll consider the multiple stages of pavement management

Agenda Since we are more familiar with transportation infrastructures management, our field of competence, we’ll talk about hard transportation (pavements,roads, sidewalks,etc) at many stages :  Planning stage  Designing phase  Building phase  Maintaining phase

Planning stage(NCHRP report 750)  First step : preparation of the work scope  Scope describes range of issues & steps that must be undertaken  Scope describes to what extent climate adaptation will be adressed as part of the plan  Scope includes a discussion - how weather stressors will be forecast & at what level of detail

Designing phase  Québec Civil Engineers :  Geotechnical Science for cold regions  Soils and granular materials  mechanistic behavior function of nominal size,  water content and temperature(weather)  For water content charts  correlating materials behavior and temperature ( by Pr. Guy Doré (Laval University)

Building phase  MTQ Guide for construction materials  No regular heavy road works allowed from November 15th to April 15th  A regular winter period suffers from 4 to 6 strong storms(> 20 cm) with snow & sometimes ice  Each snow storm provides around 300 mm that will be pushed aside and collected in 48 hours  Ater a strong storm traffic in the city is jammed for at least 24 hours.

Maintaining phase  Maintenance and rehabilitation are parts of pavement management  Maintenance has the same analysis process as new construction :planning, designing & building  In Montréal, the weather conditions are the primary parameters to be taken into account

Real maintenance issues  Routine maintenance  Like: sidewalk washing impossible below 0 ⁰ C  Crack filling not feasible below 8 ⁰ C to10 ⁰ C  Potholes filling on service road of Highway 25 impossible to realize last Wednesday July 28  work programmed but it was raining  therefore one day delay and citizens’ complaints

Same major role for weather in soft transportation  Days of snow storm peak hours very difficult to manage in terms of traffic  Citizens encouraged to use public transit  20 years ago day following a storm was a day-off  Days of severe rainfall (end of July 93)  Major highways and arterial streets closed to traffic for many days  question of public safety in Montréal urban community

Conclusion  Major role of weather in all phases of transportation management : soft and hard  Snow storms in Montréal leads big trouble in traffic especially in peak hours  citizens are encouraged to use public transit  Severe rainfalls generally cause similar problems (July 93)  Main consequence : Montréal is now housing one of longest underground walkways in the world (30km)

New Prospects New ideas from Cheurfi’s master degree thesis :  prolong work hours during summer period;  add more teams for the same jobs in each project;  find more workable days at the beginning & at end of winter by claiming more precise weather forecasting from the meteorologists;  require more openess from our project engineers supported by risk analysis and assessment;  require more inventiveness from our engineers and researchers to conceive more cold-resistant materials  Example: by including polymeric additives in asphalt mixes

Thank you ! Questions … Comments …