MONTREAL – Damage to the Mercier Bridge is worse than originally thought, and the span may be partially closed more than once per month this year for repairs.
“There’s new damage, new gusset plates that need work,” Claudia Goulet, a spokesperson for Transport Quebec, told The Gazette Wednesday.
“The damage is worse than we imagined.”
In February, the department said it expected the bridge to be closed about once a month in 2012.
“Unfortunately, now there may be more than one closure per month,” Goulet said.
She said there is no danger to the public. “The work is preventive,” she said.
The next bridge closure is this weekend.
The part that normally carries traffic toward the South Shore will close Friday at
10 p.m. and reopen Monday at 5 a.m. During that period, the part of the bridge that normally carries traffic toward Montreal will have one lane open in each direction.
News that the bridge has sustained further deterioration raises new questions about a two-month-old report that led Transport Quebec to cancel a $45-million Mercier reconstruction contract.
Despite a pledge to be more transparent, Quebec has not made that document public.
On March 22, Transport Minister Pierre Moreau said the decision to cancel the contract, with the Pomerleau/Demathieu & Bard S.E.N.C. consortium, was taken after the Dessau engineering firm reviewed the consortium’s plans and found them to be deficient and too expensive.
He denied a Journal de Montréal report suggesting the cancellation was due to new degradation on the bridge, which was partially closed last year over safety concerns.
At the time, Moreau said he would like to publicly disclose the Dessau report to clear up new concerns about the safety of the Mercier.
But he hinted he might keep it secret because of the possibility the consortium might launch a lawsuit over the cancelled contract.
“In principle, I don’t see a problem with” making it public, he said last month. “But I don’t know what Pomerleau will do in the coming days.”
Three weeks later, the report has not been released.
“We are not ready to make the report public yet since we don’t know … if there will be actions from Pomerleau’s side,” said Andrée-Lyne Hallé, Moreau’s spokesperson, said Wednesday.
“As soon as we can make it public, we will, like we did for a lot of other reports.”
The decision to keep the report under wraps is in contrast to Quebec’s recent stance on transparency, even in cases where the courts are involved.
In February, Moreau disclosed a report that cleared Transport Quebec of blame in last year’s partial roof collapse in a Ville Marie Expressway tunnel.
That disclosure came even as the department was preparing to launch a lawsuit against the engineering consortium that was blamed in the Ville Marie report.
Moreau also has made public long-secret inspection reports for the Mercier, the Turcot Interchange and other structures.
The Pomerleau-led consortium was hired by Quebec – a contract worth $45 million – to develop plans for a new deck for the Mercier Bridge and then to carry out the replacement work. It submitted its plans last summer.
In December, Quebec hired Dessau to review those plans.
Dessau’s report, submitted to Quebec in February, found the plans “were not optimal for the bridge” and would have required extra work that would add as much as $24 million to the price tag, Moreau said last month.
The deck proposed was too heavy and “could not be supported by the bridge as it is now,” he said.
“It would add a load that normally the bridge cannot or should not” handle.
The deck-replacement work was scheduled to start in the summer of 2013. Transport Quebec has said it will be delayed for a few months because the contract will be put out to tender again.
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