For only the fourth time since work began, the Turcot Interchange will be closed during a weekday as workers continue tearing down the old spans of Highway 20 and Highway 15.
The southbound lane of Highway 15 and Highway 20 in both directions will be closed starting Thursday night at 11 p.m. until the wee hours of Monday morning.
“It will be difficult,” said Martin Girard, spokesperson for Transports Québec.
About 45 trains pass underneath the Turcot on a daily basis, which makes demolition work that much more difficult. Workers have to work around the freight trains passing underneath, and the old lanes of Highway 15 sit 60 metres above in the sky.
“This is the most complicated project my company ever built,” said Olivier Beaulieu, a deputy project director with KPH-Turcot, the contractor building the new interchange.
Transports Québec officials said it is supposed to be the last time that Turcot closures affect weekday traffic.
As a mitigation measure, trains on the Vaudreuil-Hudson and Candiac lines will be free on Friday only. There will also be some additional trains added to Vaudreuil-Hudson on Friday. A full list of the measures is available online.
Some 300,000 cars and trucks drive across the interchange every day.
The work on the new Turcot Interchange is now 77 per cent complete, Girard said. The structure is expected to be finished by June 2020.