Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante rode to office eight years ago on the promise of improving mobility, building a new Pink Line of the métro and taming the notorious congestion on city streets.

On Monday, she tabled a 102-page list of her accomplishments at her final city council meeting, as a transit strike paralyzed Montreal for the second time since June.

The woman who shattered the glass ceiling of the mayor’s office is entitled to take a victory lap as she reaches the finish line of her double mandate. But timing is everything. The effort to burnish her legacy unfortunately coincided with a major disruption in the movements of millions of Montrealers and underscored that there is much unfinished business, despite the long list of ways Plante says she has transformed the city.

That includes expired union contracts for Société de transport de Montréal maintenance staff and bus drivers, not to mention blue-collar workers, that the city and the STM can ill afford to bolster given their current financial predicaments.

It includes new transit projects that are underway but behind schedule, like the extension for the Blue Line of the métro, and the REM branches to the West Island, Deux-Montagnes and the airport. It also includes those that have yet to break ground, like the Projet structurant de l’Est, formerly known as the REM de l’Est, which initially derailed over the social acceptability of its design.

Plante mentioned these on her checklist, along with the elusive tramway to Lachine. The Quebec government shelved that project earlier........

© Montreal Gazette