After a brutal weekend on the Mercier Bridge, officials on the south shore say they want a better warning system for motorists whenever something goes wrong with the bridge.
Just before 10 a.m. Saturday morning, the section of the bridge heading toward the south shore was completely closed for emergency repairs after a piece of concrete fell off the bridge, causing a four foot depression in the roadway. onto the roadway, causing a depression. It took Transport Quebec workers about two hours to place a steel plate on the roadway.
In the meantime, southbound traffic had to be re-routed back to Montreal.
The bridge was already down to one lane because of planned work on the span. That's expected to continue every weekend until December.
Many of the motorists that encountered those problems on the span that Saturday morning made it halfway down the bridge, only to have to backtrack and return to where they started in LaSalle.
The mayor of Chateauguay, Pierre-Paul Routhier, told the Journal de Montréal that drivers need to be better informed about problems with the bridge — with the help of things like traffic cameras and illuminated signs.
Down the road in Kahnawake, officials there say traffic is tied up in their community at the slightest incident on the bridge.
"If you could put some temporary signs at the various gatepoints to the Mercier Bridge, and along the route, and be able to have somebody to provide an update as it happens, a real time update, then I think that would save a lot of people a lot of problems," says Kahnawake Mohawk Council spokesperon David Lahache.
The affected portion of the bridge dates back to the early 1960s. Outgoing transport minister André Fortin had said work on a replacement structure would begin by 2023. In the meantime, however, the Transport ministry insists the bridge is secure, and the measures it has in place to inform the public of problems are sufficient — one of those being the ministry's Quebec511 app.