When it comes to commuting, Montrealers are more tortoise than hare. It takes an average of 76 minutes to get to and from work in the city, the second-worst time among the 19 international cities ranked in March in a Toronto Board of Trade study. (Toronto was dead last, at 80 minutes.)

Economists say traffic congestion, exacerbated by urban sprawl and underinvestment in public transit, costs the Canadian economy billions of dollars a year. Long commutes make cities less attractive places to set up or expand businesses.

It’s not that Montreal isn’t trying to fix things. It’s just that all of its attempts to make getting around easier progress at the same sluggish pace as the city’s traffic. Pricey transportation megaprojects are bumper to bumper, stuck in a log-jam that has come to be known as immobilisme — Quebec’s inability to get things done.

Here’s what happens. Projects are studied to death before a plan emerges. The public is consulted extensively. The final plans are widely panned. Politicians are paralyzed by indecision. Procrastination ensues.

Take a pair of $1.5-billion projects that have been in the works for years. One, announced in 2001, would revamp Notre Dame Street, a congested east-west thoroughfare heavily used by trucks from the Port of Montreal. The other project, announced in 2007, would rebuild a series of crumbling highway interchanges known as the Turcot, used by 290,000 vehicles daily.

Both projects, to be funded by the province, were widely derided for increasing car capacity and not doing anything to encourage the use of public transit. Notre Dame’s estimated price tag has also skyrocketed. Shovels have yet to hit the ground.

Ditto for a 2002, $260-million city plan to tear down the downtown portion of the Bonaventure Expressway to make way for a major real estate development. Critics have complained it would cause bus congestion in a residential area and endanger heritage buildings.

And a long-discussed train shuttle linking downtown Montreal with Trudeau Airport at a cost of at least $500 million is stuck in limbo. The problem? The regional transit and airport authorities can’t agree on a route.

Then there are the subway cars that date back to the metro’s opening in 1966. Since 2003, the city’s public transit authority has been talking about replacing them. There have been many snags. Alstom SA filed a lawsuit contending that Bombardier Inc. was being favoured. More recently, a Chinese manufacturer that wants to bid has threatened legal action. The size of the contract has also tripled — to a possible 1,000 cars — as has the estimated cost.

But there have been some rays of hope recently. In the provincial government’s spring budget, it set aside $200 million for the airport train — an encouraging sign, although Ottawa will also have to chip in. And there’s still the little matter of where the tracks will go.

On two other projects, optimism has been generated by an unexpected source. Last fall, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay appointed a long-time foe to try to move transportation projects along. Richard Bergeron, an urban planner derided by critics as an anti-car ideologue, had run against Tremblay for the mayoralty, coming in a strong third and helping to elect 10 environment-minded councillors on the 65-seat city council.

Tremblay surprised many by making Bergeron responsible for urban planning on the city’s executive committee (the mayor’s cabinet), part of an effort to foster non-partisan co-operation on council.

Bergeron has announced the city will make major changes to the Bonaventure plan to make it more palatable to critics. And he’s in backroom negotiations with Quebec in a bid to force the province to revamp its Turcot project.

But Montreal’s complaint machine remains cranked up to full force. Tremblay loyalists are still fuming over the amount of power (and visibility) the mayor has given to a political enemy. IE