The Southbound Champlain Bridge will be closed all weekend to regular cars, but overweight vehicles will never travel on the roadway again.
In the third of four construction blitzes, the southbound lanes closed at 10 p.m. Sept. 30 and will reopen to traffic at 5 a.m. on Monday Oct. 3.
During this period only one Montreal-bound lane will be open to traffic.
Most notably it means Highway 15 South will be closed between the Turcot Interchange and Highway 132
Crews are replacing expansion joints on the Champlain bridge, and this work will require another major closure the weekend of October 14.
To compensate for the closure, the Victoria Bridge will be limited to Southbound traffic only from midnight Friday until Monday morning.
#Blitz is on! Intensive work throughout the weekend to replace expansion joints #Champlainbridge . https://t.co/rj0UkxMjCy pic.twitter.com/LwXOdE4io4
— Pont Champlain (@pontChampBridge) October 1, 2016
#Blitz: demolition now fully completed, moving on to formwork and steel reinforcement #ChamplainBridge pic.twitter.com/2agrestlop
— Pont Champlain (@pontChampBridge) October 1, 2016
Meanwhile, on Saturday the Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges company announced that in order to maintain the structural integrity of the Champlain, overweight vehicles will no longer be permitted to cross.
“Over 5.3 million trucks cross the Champlain Bridge each year. However, repeated trips of overweight vehicles put stress on the structure beyond the load limits that it was designed to bear,” said JCCBI CEO Glen Carlin in a statement. “Just like the dynamic traffic lights installed in summer 2015 to put truck traffic in the centre lanes, this preventive measure is a sound and targeted action to lighten the applied loads on the bridge structure."
