MONTREAL—South shore commuters should brace themselves for a long summer. On Thursday, the federal bridge corporation announced more than $180 million in road work for the spring and summer.
While one the stated goals of the repairs are to minimize the impact on drivers, commuters are going to need lots of patience and understanding.
One of the biggest jobs this year is re-decking the part of the Mercier Bridge over the St-Lawrence Seaway.
“The Mercier Bridge is going to be a project that is at risk of affecting traffic. Work will be done at night and we have to be able to open the bridge up for the morning rush hour,” said Glen Carlin, the general manager for the Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges corporation.
Nearly 300 deck slabs will be installed. While much of the work will be done at night or over weekends, the federal operator of the structure will pull out all the stops for a month-long blitz starting in mid-July. During that month there will only be one lane open in each direction.
The Jacques Cartier Bridge will be getting new guard rails and lights, while the approach from Longueuil will be reconfigured.
One of the busier sites will be the Champlain Bridge as the structure’s reinforcing beams have deteriorated because of years of road salt.
“We have to make sure that bridge that remains safe. It’s under close observation. We’ve got instrumentation that we're going to be adding this year,” said Carlin.
The bridge itself will be repaved and the expansion joints repaired. The Bonaventure and Highway 15 approaches will also be under repair.
“Everything is coming due at the same time, so we have to be working everywhere at once. If not, we just can't keep up with the rate of deterioration,” Carlin continued.
Through it all, the bridge authority says it is keeping drivers concerns in mind.
“We're doing work at night; we're doing work during the weekends; we're trying to concentrate work during the two weeks of the summer vacation when the construction season is slower,” said Carlin.
While the maintenance and repair work is underway, work will also begin on a new bridge to Nuns' Island—part of the bigger plan to build a new Champlain Bridge.
To keep everyone informed, the bridge authority is turning to social media.
“We can access people really fast and get information out to the media. There’s a lot of media who's looking to our Twitter and on our blogs,” said Jean-Vincent Lacroix, communications director for the JCCB.
There's no avoiding the inevitable impact on commuters. So Carlin's message is patience, understanding and the hope that bad weather doesn't cause even more delays.
