With 118,000 people using the Ville-Marie tunnel each day, the expressway is starting to show its age.
And now, the government is planning a major infrastructure project to repair it.
“This infrastructure is 40 years old, and we need to make these repairs because we want to give it another 40 years,” said provincial transport minister Chantal Rouleau.
On Thursday morning, the government announced a 10-year project to repair the Ville-Marie and Viger tunnels. The work will encompass the highway surface but will also include major work to the structure surrounding the tunnels.
The Ville-Marie tunnel is 5.4 kilometres long and was built in 1974. The Viger tunnel is 1.3 kilometres long and was built in 1986. Roughly 72,000 cars use it every day.
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In all, about 10 kilometres of road work will be repaired.
The transport ministry gave reporters a tour of the Ville-Marie service tower where repair work will be done.
The tunnels’ vast ventilation systems need replacing. The massive vents pump out toxic car emissions from the tunnels, keeping them clean. But the pipes and turbines are now dated.
The tunnel has a system of generators in place in case of power outages that need work.
A water pump and drainage system used to keep the tunnels dry needs repair.
Dozens of joints along the length of the tunnel are decaying, leading to leaks.
Project general manager Pierre Blanc says several emergency corridors are too narrow. Some will be made wider.
The government plans on limiting work to the evenings and weekends and hopes to always keep two lanes open to traffic.
“We want to make those works as efficient as possible and to minimize the damage to traffic,” Rouleau said.
The government doesn’t yet have a price tag on the project, but it’s expected to cost well over $100 million. It’s expected to start at the end of next year, and last a decade.