Construction on the new Turcot Interchange is almost 50 per cent complete, on budget, and on schedule for the end of 2020.

In the years since the project began a major bridge has been torn down, several ramps are gone, and there are detours galore. But the project's director said there is plenty of work to do, some of which will be very noticeable at the end of this year.

Sebastien Marcoux of the KPH Consortium said Monday that 10 of 45 large structures will be finished this year, and drivers will increasingly see wider lanes and more shoulders on the new roads being built.

“We're demolishing as we go, so as soon as we build one structure we can demolish the one adjacent to it,” he explained.

Work on the Lachine Canal Bridge is about to begin 10 metres below the one it's replacing

“It’s very different from the existing one, so it has to be built on a temporary structure because we cannot put the cables on right away; it’s in conflict with the existing structure,” Marcoux explained.

Marcoux said the next large-scale change that will affect drivers will be in November when the Turcot's configuration is altered.

In other words, lanes will be reduced as demolition begins on the Westbound Ville Marie Expressway. Drivers can expect the number of westbound lanes to eventually drop to two as the project proceeds.

Drivers will start to see the new Turcot take shape this fall, explained the project’s manager, Martin Girard.

“People coming from downtown to the West Island are going to be on a new highway by the end of the year,” he said.

The number of eastbound lanes coming through the Turcot, however, is going to increase around the same time as work on Route 136 continues. Marcoux said the Highway 20 to Route 136 connection should expand to two lanes later this year.

Managing traffic through the interchange is always difficult, especially with trucks frequently coming and going through the site, but Marcoux said he does not expect traffic to get any worse.

Marcoux added that the new structures rely less on concrete, which failed in the original structure, and have more all-steel supports, chord braces, and pillars.

The Turcot Interchange is expected to be completed in September 2020. It will have a planned capacity of 300,000 vehicles per day, which is what it carried before construction began -- although the previous Turcot was never designed for that volume of traffic.

It should include 6.7 km of bicycle paths, but they will not open as the ramps are built. Marcoux said because of dust and debris, they will wait until construction is done before allowing cyclists access.