Several Montreal Bridges development plans for 2024 are underway

Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Incorporated (JCCBI) announced their development plans for 2024 at a press conference on Thursday.

In addition to the Bonaventure Expressway sections, the Jacques Cartier Bridge will also be under construction in the next few months.

Repairs to the concrete are planned for the elevated sections between the Victoria Bridge and Peel Basin.

The work will require reconfiguring the lanes and reducing the number of lanes in one direction to two between May and November.

In addition, full and partial closures of the freeway and access ramps are expected overnight and on weekends.

Repairs to the beams and concrete surfaces of the bridge will also be carried out on the Clement Bridge.

To ensure the safety of workers, the speed limit on Bonaventure Road is 50 km/h from June to November.

Honoré Mercier Bridge

Construction work is scheduled to repair piers, clean and paint steel members, which will result in overnight closures of the South Shore entrance and exit ramps.

Jacques Cartier Bridge

Since February 2024, cleaning and painting work on the steel structure has affected various parts of the sidewalk and required the sidewalk between the Île St. Helens Pavilion and Montreal to be completely closed until the end of November.

However, pedestrians can still use the multi-functional path.

Renovations to the pavilion on St Helens Island are also planned to ensure the bridge has a lifespan of over 150 years, which will affect the building, the Jacques Cartier bust, windows, mosaics and the interior of the pavilion.

Demolition of the old toll booth in Longueuil will begin this fall.

The original Champlain Bridge

The deconstruction of the 3.4 km Champlain Bridge produced 264,000 tons of material, 100 percent of which was tracked, 96 percent recovered, 90 percent reused and 10 percent recycled.

Only four percent of the total was wasted.

Sandra Martel is an engineer and CEO of Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges.

He said they want to leave a legacy to the community even though they know the bridge will be destroyed.

“Despite the enormity of this historic project, the JCCBI was bold in deconstructing the original Champlain Bridge and wanted to do more,” he said in a news release. “This multi-faceted project includes environmental protection, materials recovery, research, commemoration and the development of spaces for the benefit of the community. I believe that we were able to implement this large project with exemplary respect for the environment and society.”

About 4,000 souvenir rivets from the steel structure of the bridge were distributed to citizens in Brossard and Nuns Island in September 2023.

Three fish habitat compensation projects are planned to protect the environment, the most important of which is the development of six hectares of flood-prone land in Saint-Ignace-de-Loyola.

The deconstruction ends with the development of the land vacated by the disappearance of the bridge on Nuns Island and Brossard.