Several development plans for Montreal bridges underway for 2024

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

For the next few months, construction will take place on the Jacques Cartier Bridge, in addition to sections of the Bonaventure Expressway.

Maintenance work is scheduled on the elevated sections located between the Victoria Bridge and Peel Basin, to repair the concrete.

This work will require a reconfiguration of lanes, and a reduction in the number of lanes to two per direction, from May to November.

In addition, complete and partial closures of the highway and access ramps, at night and on weekends, are expected.

Work will also be carried out in the Clément Bridge to repair the beams on the bridge as well as the concrete surfaces.

To ensure the safety of workers, the speed will be limited to 50 km/h on Bonaventure from June to November.

Honoré- Mercier Bridge

Construction work is scheduled to repair piers, clean and paint steel elements which will result in some nighttime closures of access and exit ramps on the South Shore.

Jacques Cartier Bridge

Since February 2024, cleaning and painting work on the steel structure impacted various sections on the sidewalk and required the complete closure of the sidewalk between the Île Sainte-Hélène pavilion and Montreal until the end of November.

However, pedestrians can still use the multifunctional path.

To ensure the longevity of the bridge for more than 150 years, repair work on the Sainte-Hélène Island pavilion is also planned which will affect the building, the bust of Jacques Cartier, the windows, the mosaics, and the interior of the pavilion.

Starting this fall, demolition work on the old toll station will take place in Longueil.

Original Champlain Bridge

The deconstruction of the 3.4 km Champlain bridge generated 264,000 tonnes of materials, where 100 per cent was traced, 96 per cent was recovered, 90 per cent reused and 10 per cent recycled.

In total, there was only four per cent which went to waste.

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

She said although they knew that the entire bridge would disappear, they wanted to leave a legacy behind to the community.

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

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

To preserve the environment, three fish habitat compensation projects are planned, with the most important being the development of six hectares of flood-prone land in Saint-Ignace -de-Loyola.

The deconstruction will conclude with the development of land vacated by the disappearance of the bridge on Nuns’ Island and in Brossard.