WATCH ABOVE: After months of being at a standstill, Transports Quebec announced construction has finally resumed on the Dorval Interchange. Felicia Parrillo reports.
MONTREAL – It’s a scene that’s all too familiar: the Dorval overpass stuck in time, surrounded by orange cones that don’t seem to be doing much.
“The bridge to nowhere,” a Lachine resident told Global News.
READ MORE: Costs mount as Dorval Interchange sits idle
After months of inactivity, construction will once again begin on the Dorval Interchange.
Transports Quebec explained it had to revise their plans after a dispute with CP Rail.
READ MORE: Dorval overpass stalled by legal dispute
The new contract stipulates there won’t be any pillars near the railways.
“Right now we are finalizing our plans and specifications,” said Sarah Bensadoun, a spokesperson for Transports Quebec.
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“It should be done this fall and after that we’ll be able to go for a call for tender and then start the work that needs to be done.”
Work on the overpass is expected to begin by March 2016 and the road will eventually allow drivers direct access to Trudeau Airport from Highway 20.
READ MORE: Dorval overpasses going nowhere fast
To get there, Transports Quebec will use some of the land owned by the Fairfield Inn Hotel; the parking lot is being redesigned to make more space.
The overpass should be finished by 2017 and the north side of the interchange should be completed by 2019.
But not everyone is buying it.
“They were supposed to do it last year and the year before and the year before and they never did it,” a resident told Global News.
One of the contractors who worked on the interchange is also fed up with the delay.
Garnier Construction has filed a $500,000 lawsuit against Quebec’s Transportation Ministry.
READ MORE: Train de l’Ouest to link Trudeau Airport hotel to Dorval train station
The company won the contract for paving, sewers and waterworks and insisted the job should have taken 13 weeks, but it’s now been about a year.
The project for the Dorval Interchange was first announced in 2005 and estimated at $150 million.
A decade later, it is still unfinished and the current estimatesits at $500 million.
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