MONTREAL -- West Islanders, and many others, are in a traffic nightmare. After the emergency closure of Ile-aux-Tourtes Bridge, they're using the train, ferry and highways 20 and 30 for workarounds.
The bridge is scheduled to start slowly reopening next week, but in many people's minds, that won't fix the underlying problems, they say.
Now citizens, and local leaders, are pushing the province to move up its scheduled construction of a brand-new bridge instead of focusing on repairs to the old one.
"It gives me a bit of anxiety, to be perfectly frank, about what's really going on," said one driver named Tasha on Wednesday. "What's really wrong with that thing?"
Another, named Cary, said the province needs to "once and for all, do something."
Even the full reopening of the bridge, predicted to be June 21, is just a short-term solution, says Vaudreuil-Dorion mayor Guy Pilon. The bridge has already been a problem for decades, he said.
His solution, for now, is to make Highway 20 through Dorion an autoroute and finish it off like other highways rather than leaving it going "through an [urban] place with lights."
But he also agreed the province needs to speed up Ile-aux-Tourtes construction in a serious way.
"Stop spending hundreds of millions on a bridge you're going to demolish in a few years," he said.
"The same thing on the Pont Champlain. They spent, I don't know, a billion dollars just to keep it open and then they demolish it."
Watch the video above for CTV's full report.
