TRAFFIC NIGHTMARE AHEAD
The St- Jacques St. overpass, top, will close as of March 21 and won’t reopen for 21/2 years, adding to the traffic woes of residents of N. D. G. and areas around the new MUHC superhospital.
It will be a long two and a half years for residents of the city’s west end as part of a major thoroughfare heading downtown is about to be closed.
Used by 21,000 motorists daily, St- Jacques St. between Girouard Ave. and Décarie Blvd. will be closed starting on March 21 and ending in September 2017.
Transport Quebec will reinforce a waste- water collector while also diverting some of the water. It will then demolish and rebuild the elevated roadway of St- Jacques over the Décarie Expressway starting late this year. Preparatory work already began in November. The total project is expected to cost $ 64.9 million.
The collector was reinforced already, but the second part of the work, to divert water, will necessitate the closing of the road, said Martin Giroux, an assistant director working on the Turcot project. He said one of the work sites for the construction of the collector will be situated on St- Jacques St. between Addington St. and Girouard.
The detour roads will be Décarie Blvd., Upper Lachine Rd. and Girouard. Addington and Prud’Homme Ave. will only be open to local traffic for at least the first year. The road configuration may change after that, Giroux said.
The work will also require the closing of two access ramps for three months starting at the end of March: the Décarie Expressway entrance from Highway 20 westbound, and the Highway 15 South access ( toward the Champlain Bridge) off the Ville Marie Expressway. The Ville Marie Expressway exit toward St- Jacques also will be closed for a period of three or four months starting this fall, so part of it can be rebuilt.
Giroux said there are several mitigation measures planned to ease congestion in the sector. However many of them are already in place. Among them are a reserved lane on Sherbrooke St. W. for buses and taxis, a new turning lane on Côte-St- Luc Rd. heading east to access Décarie Expressway southbound, and a new exit off Décarie toward de Maisonneuve Blvd. The department plans to add a bus lane on Upper Lachine for the 90 and 104 buses.
He added that the work on the collector is going as fast as possible because crews are working around the clock. He did not know if the company that won the tender to rebuild the street will be able to work 24 hours. If it could, that would make the project’s end date considerably earlier.
Local city councillor Peter McQueen said the timing of the project is bad because the MUHC superhospital is slated to open at the end of next month, and this could add a lot of traffic right in front of the main access to the hospital on Décarie Blvd. ( between St- Jacques and de Maisonneuve).
“When we first heard about this three years ago, I asked if we really needed to do this,” McQueen said. “Once they insisted they were con- tinuing, we would have been happy if they had started two years ago. It would have been finished in time for the superhospital.”
Transport Quebec Spokesperson Sarah Bensadoun said the work was delayed because the department had to undertake several studies beforehand.
Giroux said the access to the hospital has not yet been worked out, but Transport Quebec intends to work with hospital officials and those from Westmount and Notre-Dame-de- Grâce to come up with an alternate access route if necessary.
McQueen said he’ll push for more alternatives to allow people to use public transit or bicycles as alternate ways to get downtown.
“They put the bus lane in ( on Sherbrooke), and then they cut service,” he said. “People can’t use their cars, and yet they don’t have the bus or bike capacity to get downtown another way.”
The transport department will answer residents’ questions next Tuesday at Centre St- Raymond at 7 p. m., and the closing will also be discussed at the Turcot Good Neighbours committee for the Sud- Ouest on Wednesday at the Centre récréatif, culturel et sportif Saint- Zotique at 7 p. m.