Send in the cones: City roads will be a sea of orange
Summer roadwork projects include building REM and Turcot overhaul
Workers will repair, renovate and rebuild large swaths of major arteries across Montreal this summer.
Mobilité Montreal unveiled on Thursday the list of coming and ongoing road closures and construction projects. A map of the projects shows most of the city’s major roadways and bridges highlighted in orange — denoting an ongoing or upcoming project.
Two major projects will begin shortly. Work on the Papineau-leblanc Bridge is set to begin Monday and last until the end of July. The work will close lanes on the bridge for long periods of the evening and morning, opening only during the afternoon rush hour. The other project features several reserved bus lanes that will soon be installed around the Montreal area, mostly in Laval near Highway 13.
But most of the summer projects are already underway. The construction of the REM electric rail network, the Turcot Interchange and the overhaul of aging pipes and underground infrastructure throughout the city have snarled traffic for years.
Sarah Bensadoun, a spokesperson for Mobilité Montreal, said the busiest area this summer will be the interchange between Highways 13 and 40 and the work on the Turcot along Highway 15 to the Champlain Bridge.
She referred to all work sites across the city as “hot” areas. But she called the area approaching the Champlain Bridge “scorching.” Major roadwork in that area, resulting in closures and shutdowns, will happen mostly on weekends in what Bensadoun referred to as “blitzes,” but sometimes they will stretch into weekdays.
She acknowledged that weekend closures could hinder people coming to or leaving the city.
“It will be pretty complex sometimes,” she said, “because there will be major shutdowns on the highway network and the municipal network depending on (the visitor’s) final destination.”
Philippe Sabourin, a spokesperson for the city of Montreal, said once tourists or visitors are in the city, they should abandon their cars in favour of a bicycle or public transport. He specifically urged people not to drive in the southwest sector, listing an array of projects that will snarl traffic.
“You should avoid those areas by car,” he said. “But feel free to pass by if you’re a pedestrian or a cyclist. If you want to enjoy Montreal this summer, it would be by walking or with your bike.”
The gauntlet of obstacles in the southwest includes the Turcot construction, work on Highway 15 and municipal roadwork.
The major summer projects run the length of Highway 15 in the area, starting at the Décarie Expressway (whose northbound lanes are in need of resurfacing) through the Turcot Interchange (which is almost finished, according to Bensadoun) to the Champlain Bridge and beyond (where workers are putting finishing touches on the bridge and work will soon begin on the Nuns’ Island REM station).
It will affect city streets. Atwater Ave., Wellington St. and Lasalle Blvd. will see closures this summer.
Municipal construction throughout the nearby areas will add to motorists’ woes.
Sabourin listed projects that will be ongoing across the city, but the map showed many of them concentrated in the southwest and up toward the downtown core where a stretch of Ste-catherine St. W. is being redone.
Much of the work deals with aging pipes. The Mctavish reservoir, atop the Mcgill campus, is in need of repair work. The city is paying $250 million for five years of work to fix it, Sabourin said. Doctor-penfield, the road that runs beside it, will close soon while that work is done.
Down the slope of the mountain, workers have torn up stretches of St-antoine and Guy Sts. to repair pipes. It will go on this summer.
And on Peel St., south of Highway 720, more underground infrastructure is being repaired, leaving the street a mess of cones and digging.
Where Peel St. crosses into Griffintown, the road network will become a maze, Sabourin warned. The neighbourhood is growing. Extensive private construction demands the installation of new sewers and electrical infrastructure.
Just east of Griffintown, in the Old Port, the eastbound lane of de la Commune St. will close between Mcgill and Prince Sts. It will be blocked between June and September.
The city, particularly Bensadoun’s “hot” sectors, will be a mess of cones and detours this summer, possibly made worse because the COVID-19 shutdown closed construction sites and slowed major work.
“We are still analyzing the impact of this short-term closure that we had between the end of March and early May,” she said.
She added that longer weekend blitzes — which mean complicated road closures that could extend into weekdays — are necessary to make up lost time.
She said the next major blitzes will take place at the end of June and at the end of July.