MONTREAL – Navigating through Montreal’s labyrinth road construction is a major headache at the best of times.
It will likely only get worse this summer.
A major repair work blitz has been planned for the Champlain and Mercier bridges as well as the Bonaventure expressway beginning this spring.
It means major lane closures and detours.
The Champlain Bridge: Beginning Victoria Day weekend most of the six lanes will be closed to traffic on weekends in May and June and again between September and October.
The Mercier Bridge: Two of four lanes will be closed to traffic seven days a week between June 21 and August 10.
The Bonaventure Expressway: Two of four lanes will close for six months from May to December.
“This is our biggest construction year ever,” said Glen Carlin, the Jacques-Cartier and Champlain Bridges Executive Director.
The work includes taking down the super beam on the Champlain Bridge and replacing it with a new support beam below the bridge paving the way to re-open the right hand lane in the southbound direction to traffic and bring back the reserved bus lane.
The federal work blitz calls for repairs and upgrades to other support beams; repairing and replacing decks and strengthening pillars among other projects.
The total bill is expected to be $364 Million, more than double last year’s amount.
“We have a very exhaustive communications plans to make sure that everybody knows where and when we will be working,” said Carlin.
The work is only temporary.
The bridge is expected to be replaced with a new one by 2018 that could cost between three to five billion dollars.
The existing Champlain Bridge has reached the end of its life span.
It was built more than fifty years ago and opened in June, 1962.
The problem was that no one anticipated the volume of road salt that would be needed to clear the span of ice and snow.
Transport Quebec started salting highways and bridges about two years after the Champlain Bridge opened.
The bridge also lacked an adequate drainage system for water run off.
Gutters were only introduced in the early 1990s.
“If the gutter system was better planned back then we sold have saved a lot of problems today,” admitted Steve Tselios, Champlain Bridge Chief engineer.
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