Montreal's new beltway, success or flop?

  The jury will be returning soon to lay down the first verdict on the much-hyped beltway around the city that was promised to reduce traffic on Montreal island highways.
   In precisely one month, experts will set out to determine the impact of the newly-built Highway 30 toll road that was touted as the great tamer of Montreal island traffic.
   After decades of planning, the city's first beltway - a road that allows traffic to go around the island rather than straight through it - was opened on Dec. 15, 2012.
   The private-public partnership group that built the road, along with the transport ministry, will issue a study on the highway's effect on traffic patterns after the new roadway turns one year old.
   I spoke to reps from both agencies yesterday and neither had much to say beyond that but both suggested that it has been a success.
   About 20,000 vehicles take the $1.50 road (it costs much more for trucks) on a daily basis.
   Those who enter route requests into google maps for such trips as Toronto to Quebec City, or Toronto to Halifax are guided along the Highway 30 route, which only tends to save about six or eight or 11 minutes from the freebie route along Highway 40 or Highway 20.
   Officials say that traffic along the road has been rising about 10 percent per month.
   Many trucks, however, have shunned the beltway due to its costs. Highway 40 and 20 are still laden with trucks and the transport ministry has no power to lower the price of tolls on Highway 30. It would be difficult to ban trucks from the two east-west island highways, as many might be delivering to the island.
   Most motorists in an online discussion praised the new option as a good way to avoid frightful Montreal-island traffic. Some others said it was hard to figure out and one said that there was a 15 minute wait at the toll when he went but he said that using a credit card made it go much faster.  
   The possibility that the beltway might cost our tourism industry by making it easy to ignore the splendid lures of this city's charms has not been discussed anywhere as far as I could see.