Province open to bringing back Turcot walkway
Dalle Parc, active transport link over Hwy. 20, was left out of project
Quebec is breathing new life into a part of the Turcot project that was left out from the original plans.
The Dalle Parc, a park, urban walkway and bicycle path planned to link LaSalle to Notre-Dame-deGrâce, was originally supposed to be built on the south end of Cavendish Blvd. to connect to Irwin St. in LaSalle.
Over the last few years, several environmental groups and cycling activists have called for that part of the Turcot project to be revived. Earlier this year, Projet Montréal added its voice to the movement.
On Monday, Quebec Transport Minister André Fortin said newly minted Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante brought up the project in a meeting the two had before visiting the Turcot site, and he is open to the idea.
“I can’t go back in the past and tell you why it was left out, but we agreed to work together towards a consultation process with the citizens north and south of the highway to see what sort of infrastructure they want,” Fortin said standing next to Plante in the approximate location where the park was originally planned.
“We know it’s something that matters to citizens, and when we think of highway projects in the future, we have to think about transit, and that includes active transport.”
And while the land is still being set aside for the project, Fortin said it likely won’t happen before the Turcot project is completed in 2020.
Fortin said Kathleen Weil, the MNA for the Notre-Dame-deGrâce riding, has also been lobbying him about the park. However, he did not give a date for when he expected the consultations to be held, saying just that it would be “in the short term.” However, he said there was no question about reopening the contract with KPHTurcot, the consortium tasked with building the majority of the nearly $4-billion project.
For her part, Plante said she believed the park could be completed by the time the project is completed.
“We understand how important it is to renew this highway, but the fact that we don’t have anything to connect these two neighbourhoods to support active transport is a problem and we both agree on that, so now, we have to see how to make it happen. Our hope is for this to happen close to the end of the construction of the (Turcot),” Plante said. “We share the same goal, so I’m very encouraged.”
Used by approximately 300,000 motorists daily, the Turcot Interchange is the conjunction of Highways 15, 20, and the VilleMarie Expressway in the centre of the city. The project to replace the aging infrastructure, and bring much of it down to ground level, is estimated to cost $3.7 billion.
Plante and Fortin took a walk in frigid temperatures on the westbound Highway 20 bordered by the St-Jacques Escarpment in the spot where hundreds of thousands of drivers will be diverted starting mid-December.
Highway 20 will be moved several hundred metres north from its current location, closer to the escarpment. The highway was already paved on Monday when reporters and politicians got a tour of the construction site, and some of the lane markers had already been painted.
Reporters also saw several new entrance ramps that will be open to drivers next month, including the new ramp leading from Highway 20 east to the Décarie Expressway. While crews were getting that ramp ready to go for its opening next month, other crews were demolishing the ramp leading from Highway 20 east to the Ville-Marie Expressway.
KPH-Turcot officials also showed off a new permanent entrance ramp leading from Highway 15 north to the eastbound VilleMarie. However, for the next year that ramp will be used to divert drivers coming from the Champlain Bridge to go west to Highway 20, essentially forcing drivers to go east before heading west.
Transport Quebec has warned users that in the coming weeks and months, they may be diverted to detours that may seem counterintuitive, and said using the mobile application Waze could help, because the province is updating its detours in realtime using that program.
Sébastien Marcoux, KPH Turcot’s assistant project director, said so far the project is respecting its original budget and still on track to be completed by its contract date of September 2020.
He said one of the greatest challenges is managing the safety of the roughly 1,200 people who work on the sprawling site every day, as well as the safety of the hundreds of thousands of motorists driving through it.
The biggest challenge for motorists is likely to come in the next few months, as crews close off the westbound Ville-Marie expressway, and the downtown Fort and Lucien-L’Allier St. entrances. The old roadway will be demolished and rebuilt, and cars will be allowed to drive on it in the first few months of 2019.