montréal Reconstruction de l'autoroute Métropolitaine

[Rocco]

Encore du foutu niaisage! J'ai tu droit à une montée de lait?! Colace.

[bob]

Ça arrive tout le temps. Au moins cette fois ci on a une confirmation que le coût sera assumé par l’entrepreneur (espérons que c’est vrai et qu’il n’y a pas un kickback par en arrière… je m’attends à tout dans ce milieu). Je suis agréablement surpris que cela fasse les nouvelles pour une fois.

Dans mon quartier, le tronçon tout neuf de Atwater sous la 15 (entre le canal et Verdun) a été refait à neuf 3 fois en deux ans. Béton et asphalte installé à l’été 2019, tout re-pété et refait l’été suivant, puis à nouveau détruit et refait par patches plus tard dans la saison. On voit encore très bien les différents bouts de trottoir de couleurs différentes qui montrent ce qui a été détruit quelques mois après construction, puis refait à l’identique. Il faut dire que durant les travaux, les génies de la construction s’amusaient à rouler quotidiennement en camion sur les trottoirs tous neufs, qui n’étaient probablement pas conçus pour cela, ce qui explique probablement le besoin de les remplacer après seulement quelques mois.

Dans Hochelaga, autre coin où je passe souvent: une rue que je ne nommerai pas a été éventrée au complet chaque été les trois dernières années, et à chaque fois refaite à neuf.

c’est monnaie courante ce genre de pratique à Montréal. Nos *chers* entrepreneurs véreux sont morts de rire et tout le monde hausse les épaules…

[Rocco]

La commission Charbonneau est loin, très loin.

[universityst]

this province is the third world 

[acpnc]

On est dans une société humaine bien imparfaite où l'abus et la malversation ne sont jamais loin. Pourtant le Canada est parmi les pays les moins corrompus au monde. Nous figurons en 14 ème place sur une liste de 116 publiée en 2021, bien au-dessus de la France et des USA notamment, imaginons les autres https://www.donneesmondiales.com/corruption.php

C'est pour cela qu'il faut toujours mettre les choses en perspective. Facile de s'indigner et simpliste d'accuser sans nuance en faisant des déclarations chocs. On ne changera pas la nature humaine, mais on peut au moins l'encadrer par des enquêtes et des audits, puis exiger réparation. Ce que font les meilleures démocraties pour éviter le pire.

La Commission Charbonneau a peu d'exemples similaires dans le monde, parce qu'elle demande justement beaucoup de courage politique et une transparence peu répandue au niveau des gouvernements nationaux. Ne nous méprenons pas, beaucoup de pays auraient avantage à suivre notre exemple, on serait d'ailleurs vraiment surpris du résultat.

Alors au lieu de s'autoflageller une fois de plus, allons aux sources et assurons-nous d'y trouver des informations véridiques et vérifiables, au lieu de dénigrer gratuitement et sans fondement les autorités canadiennes et québécoises. Bien sûr c'est bien plus facile de déchirer sa chemise et se mettre en valeur par la mésinformation, mais ça ne rend service à personne et c'est tout le monde qui y perd quand la vérité est écorchée. 

Finalement si on se base sur l'histoire, la lutte à la corruption existe depuis le début des sociétés humaines et demeure encore aujourd'hui un des principaux défis de notre monde moderne. C'est pour cela qu'il faut toujours rester vigilant car c'est un combat sans fin, même dans les pays les moins corrompus. 😬

 

[acpnc]

Asphalte à refaire sur la Métropolitaine

Une situation « frustrante » qui ne doit plus se produire, dit Bonnardel

 

PHOTO SARAH MONGEAU-BIRKETT, LA PRESSE

Des tests effectués en laboratoire ont confirmé que le bitume utilisé dans les secteurs concernés de l'autoroute Métropolitaine « n’était pas de bonne qualité ».

Le retrait de plusieurs kilomètres d’asphalte sur l’autoroute Métropolitaine, en raison d’une « classe inférieure » de bitume produite, est une « situation frustrante » pour la population, a reconnu vendredi le ministre des Transports, François Bonnardel. Il promet un « suivi rigoureux des chantiers » pour assurer qu’une telle situation ne se reproduise plus.

Publié à 9h33

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/grand-montreal/2022-05-20/asphalte-a-refaire-sur-la-metropolitaine/une-situation-frustrante-qui-ne-doit-plus-se-produire-dit-bonnardel.php

Henri Ouellette-Vézina La Presse

« Il s’agit évidemment d’une situation frustrante pour les usagers de la Métropolitaine qui devront composer avec les travaux de réfection. Nous en sommes pleinement conscients », a indiqué M. Bonnardel dans une déclaration transmise par son cabinet à La Presse, en début de journée.

Pour l’élu caquiste, il faut toutefois comprendre qu’il y avait urgence d’agir « parce que la situation pouvait causer des enjeux de sécurité ».

 

PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, LA PRESSE

François Bonnardel

« L’entrepreneur a admis son erreur et la réparation se fait à coût nul pour les Québécois », a-t-il encore insisté, faisant écho aux propos du ministère des Transports (MTQ) la veille. « C’est une situation jamais vue et le ministère assurera un suivi rigoureux des chantiers pour éviter qu’une telle situation ne se reproduise plus jamais », a aussi souligné M. Bonnardel.

Jeudi, La Presse rapportait que l’été dernier, le gouvernement s’est aperçu qu’« un peu de ressuage » apparaissait sur la surface de l’autoroute. Habituellement associé à une trop grande quantité de bitume dans l’asphalte, ce phénomène fait concrètement en sorte que le bitume remonte vers le haut. La route donne donc « l’impression d’être mouillée », ce qui pose des enjeux de sécurité. Des tests effectués en laboratoire ont confirmé que le bitume utilisé « n’était pas de bonne qualité ».

Des demandes, des inquiétudes

Jusqu’ici, le ministre Bonnardel n’a pas exactement précisé quelles actions seront prises pour corriger le tir à l’avenir. Jeudi, le président de l’Association professionnelle des ingénieurs du gouvernement du Québec (APIGQ), Marc-André Martin, a notamment déploré que la situation illustre la faiblesse des processus en place.

« Tout ce qui touche au contrôle des enrobés et du bitume, c’est de l’autocontrôle par les entrepreneurs, et ça, c’est une décision du MTQ. Ça fait plus de 20 ans qu’on dit que c’est épouvantable », a-t-il fustigé.

L’expert en planification des transports à l’Université de Montréal, Pierre Barrieau, a aussi dit douter du fait que ces travaux se feront à coûts nuls pour le gouvernement. « Ça va probablement coûter des millions en supervision pour s’assurer que ça soit fait correctement, sans compter les coûts de congestion aussi très élevés, les fermetures et la communication autour du chantier. Tout ça a un prix que le gouvernement va devoir payer », estime-t-il.

Le MTQ, lui, a rétorqué vendredi par courriel qu’en plus de la totalité travaux, « les coûts de surveillance et d’analyse des laboratoires seront aussi aux frais de Roxboro ».

Rappelons que dans l’ouest de la Métropolitaine, l’asphalte sera entièrement replacé dans les prochaines semaines par « blitz », les travaux de réfection majeure ne devant pas être réalisés avant au moins cinq ans. Dans l’est, où le gros du chantier pourrait être lancé d’ici cinq ans, entre les axes Provencher et Saint-Laurent, l’asphalte ne sera pas remplacé, du moins pour le moment. Sur ce segment, l’entrepreneur s’est engagé à donner « une garantie de durabilité de cinq ans » sur son bitume. Si celui-ci ne répond pas aux attentes, les travaux devront aussi être repris.

[jesseps]

20 hours ago, Rocco said:

Encore du foutu niaisage! J'ai tu droit à une montée de lait?! Colace.

How does Roxboro keep getting contracts?

[Rocco]

il y a 6 minutes, jesseps a dit :

How does Roxboro keep getting contracts?

Cuz they are friends with the powers that be? Nothing changed.

[swansongtoo]

Article qui me rend sans parole a comment le MTQ et gouvernement gèrent les choses.  

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/whats-to-become-of-the-met?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1653128372

 

What's to become of the Met?

WEEKEND READ | Montreal’s crumbling monument to the automobile — the busiest highway in the province — is at the end of its lifespan. Yet all that’s been promised is a “major repair."

Author of the article:

Linda Gyulai  •  Montreal Gazette

Publishing date:

May 21, 2022  •  2 hours ago  •  13 minute read  •   Join the conversation

“I don’t think they’ve ever done a major overhaul,” veteran traffic commentator Rick Leckner says of the Met. “There have been a lot of repairs, for sure, as conditions demanded. It seems to be non-stop.” PHOTO BY PIERRE OBENDRAUF /Montreal Gazette

First in a three-part series

Traffic expert Rick Leckner on the long road to our crumbling Met

The Met, Montreal’s crumbling concrete monument to the automobile, is 100 years old.

Or at least the project to build a metropolitan boulevard across the entire island is marking the milestone. Montreal’s first full-length east-west roadway wasn’t planned as an elevated structure when it was approved in 1922. The concrete and aerial ambition came later.

Still, motorists claiming they’ve gone prematurely grey idling in gridlock on the dreaded expressway will be forgiven if they don’t partake of the birthday cake.

A century after the metropolitan boulevard was born, and a half-century after it was finally completed, a mainly elevated 12-kilometre stretch of it between Côte-de-Liesse Expressway and Provencher Blvd. is at the end of its lifespan. Arguably, the Met has been on life support for decades.

Can any Montrealer of any age recall a time when the concrete columns holding up the Met were not visibly cracked and exposing rusted steel rods where plates of concrete had detached, or when the roadbed didn’t offer a — tha-thunk — rocky voyage across disjointed joints and potholes? 

“If I had a car, I wouldn’t drive on the Met,” said Peter Trent, the former mayor of Westmount. He became acquainted with the expressway’s afflictions in an earlier career, while working on the highway’s first “major” repair in 1977.

Trent and his business partner, Raymond Charlebois, had invented high-density polymer concrete, a material they patented worldwide. As part of the broader repair, Transport Quebec, the provincial ministry that controls the Metropolitan, had contracted their company, Plastibeton Inc., to cover the already crumbling exterior sidewalls of the expressway with protective panels made of their impervious invention.

“We were told, ‘This is a holding pattern until we can replace the whole thing,'” Trent said. “That was 1977.”

Instead, the Met underwent a second “major” repair in 1990. And every provincial government since 1999 has pledged to carry out one more big fix. So far, none has followed through. What has ensued are urgent repairs, maintenance and sporadic attempts at rectifying some of the built-in design flaws that years ago earned the Met the reputation of worst designed, most dangerous highway in North America.

Yet the piecemeal investments have not added any more capacity to the expressway, improved over-all traffic flow or cured it of all its dangerous left-hand exits and exits that are too close to entrance lanes. And, of course, it’s still falling apart.

Observers describe a paralyzing limbo when it comes to planning the future of the Met, even though it’s a linchpin of the provincial highway system.

Oct. 22, 1958: Construction of the concrete pillars to hold up the Met. Montreal city archives.

“Metropolitan Expressway” is the official name of the elevated portion of Highway 40, which in turn is the name given to the section of the Trans-Canada Highway that travels across the island of Montreal. All of it forms the trans-island metropolitan boulevard whose piecemeal construction began in the 1930s and morphed into a partially elevated freeway in the 1950s.

While it was built to handle 89,000 vehicles per day, the Met blew past that number four years after its first elevated section opened in 1960. Traffic hovers around an average of 200,000 cars and trucks per day. In fact, traffic at the most congested part, the Décarie Interchange, averaged around 250,000 vehicles a day during the two years before the pandemic hit.

A study released by the Canadian Automobile Association in 2017 found the stretch of the Met between Côte-de-Liesse and Pie-IX Blvd. (near Provencher) is the third-biggest bottleneck in the country, causing motorists to lose nearly two million hours a year, burn an additional 1.3 million litres of gasoline and release an extra 11 million kilograms of CO2 into the air.

As the figures suggest, the Met isn’t just any highway. It’s the busiest in the province, and the backbone of the Quebec economy. It’s also the busiest stretch of the Trans-Canada in the country. As a result, existential questions like ‘whither the Met’ and pragmatic ones like whether and when to shut a section of it for repair are complicated by concerns about the flow of goods through eastern Canada.

“I think definitely it’s at the end of its lifespan,” veteran traffic commentator Rick Leckner said.

He has for decades lamented the poor design of the Metropolitan Expressway, which was built without shoulders and too many entrances and exits. Such flaws contribute to the congestion. Leckner has also long condemned Quebec and Montreal’s inaction to complete the beltway of connected roads that would allow trucks to bypass the island.

He and other experts say they’re baffled by the willingness of successive provincial governments to pay extraordinary amounts of money to patch a structure that everybody seems to agree has never worked.

“How do you define ‘major repair’? I don’t think they’ve ever done a major overhaul,” Leckner said of the Met. “There have been a lot of repairs, for sure, as conditions demanded. It seems to be non-stop. Just tear the bloody thing down and build a new one.”

“Everybody knows it has to be replaced,” says Pierre Barrieau, a transportation planner and lecturer with Université de Montréal’s urban planning and landscape architecture school. “And everybody says, ‘We’ll just put a Band-Aid on it for now and it’ll be somebody else’s problem down the road.’” PHOTO BY DAVE SIDAWAY /Montreal Gazette

Some cities in North America have torn down their mid-century elevated highways, notably Boston, San Francisco and Seattle. Others, like New York City and Syracuse, N.Y., are considering that drastic option for their decaying overhead relics.

But dismantlement isn’t in the cards for Montreal’s Metropolitan Expressway.

The Coalition Avenir Québec government has put the kibosh on any proposal for the Met that has been floated on and off for decades, including rebuilding it or replacing it with an at-grade boulevard, a tunnel, or both.

“It will be more modern, but it will look like the current highway,” the CAQ’s junior transportation minister, Chantal Rouleau, told the Journal de Montréal in January 2019 about the impending “major” repair to the Met that has been promised for over 20 years.

She specifically ruled out following the lead of the city of Montreal, which decided in the early 2000s to raze the part of the elevated Bonaventure Expressway that was on city territory. In its place, Montreal built a ground-level boulevard and a new entrance to the city.

Transport Quebec spokesperson Sarah Bensadoun says replacement and reconstruction of the Met were ruled out because of several constraints, including the highway’s critical role in ensuring traffic mobility in the region. She called the coming repair “excessively major” even if it won’t be as long-lasting as a rebuild.

The ministry says the repair will make it possible to operate the Met “without further major intervention for a period of about 25 years.”

But it acknowledges this “major repair” may be the last.

“At this time, the ministry preferred to concentrate on a major repair, which will already be a first step to plan the next interventions, which could maybe be its reconstruction,” Bensadoun said.

Leckner calls the 25-year horizon a joke.

“Who builds roads for 25 years?” he said. “It’s outrageous.”

Trent says the province is just kicking the challenge of replacing the Met to the next generation and washing its hands of the problem.

“I’m really appalled that something we were trying to solve 45 years ago has come back with a vengeance,” he said.

“Even if it did last for another 25 years, what are we going to do then?”

The price tag on the next “major” repair of the Met was estimated at close to $1 billion in 2003. Rouleau said in her 2019 interview that it will cost several billion dollars.

“There’s a question of throwing good money after bad,” said Pierre Barrieau, a transportation planner and lecturer with Université de Montréal’s urban planning and landscape architecture school.

“Fixing the Metropolitan Expressway is getting more and more expensive and after a while there’s a decision that has to be made. … We have to say, ‘You know what? This is becoming way too expensive, we have to tear it down.’ I think we’ve been at that stage for a while now.”

Cars line up to merge eastbound onto the Metropolitan from the Décarie Expressway. The Met was built to handle 89,000 vehicles per day. During the two years before the pandemic hit, traffic at the most congested part, the Décarie Interchange, averaged around 250,000 vehicles a day. PHOTO BY DAVE SIDAWAY /Montreal Gazette

Rouleau, one of the CAQ’s two MNAs on Montreal Island and the minister responsible for the Montreal region, refused an interview request to talk about the Met.

“It’s simply not possible, that’s all,” her spokesperson, Catherine Boucher, said without offering an explanation.

Meantime, Transport Quebec has stepped up inspections of the structure. Twenty-five of the 68 sections that make up the Met underwent a thorough general inspection last year, and they’re on the ministry’s list for a look-over this year to monitor for any change in condition. And while the ministry says that a general inspection is done on average every three years, 26 sections of the Met that are scheduled for one in 2022 had their last general inspection two years ago.

Transport Quebec engineers present the damage in photos and sometimes gory detail in their inspection reports.

For example, the August 2020 report on a section of the highway identified as 14870K1 found “exposed, corroded reinforcements,” “very significant vibration of the decking during the passage of heavy trucks,” “damage to columns and headers that could significantly affect the load-bearing capacity” and a “loss of section of more than 30 per cent.” The report on 14870K1, which is a portion of the Met passing over Côte-de-Liesse in St-Laurent borough, also mentions damage to the decking “significantly affecting its ability to withstand and distribute loads.” A box marked “risk of falling concrete fragments” is ticked off, as it is on the inspection sheets for many of the 60-odd sections of the Met.

Transport Quebec’s Bensadoun said such “localized” defects don’t affect overall capacity. She also assured the highway is safe without introducing weight limits, and that it’s constantly monitored.

“I have cause for concern,” Alan DeSousa, the mayor of St-Laurent borough, said when the Montreal Gazette recently showed him the inspection report on 14870K1.

However, there was a development last week. DeSousa said he was relieved to learn from his borough staff that it discovered Transport Quebec had plans to start repair work in June on the underside and on the deck joints of the section in question and elsewhere.

But that turned out to be false hope. Bensadoun told the Montreal Gazette that while other maintenance work is planned along the Met this summer, the scheduled work on the underside of the structures in question will not go ahead because the bids submitted for the contract were much higher than Transport Quebec’s estimate. She said the ministry will launch a new call for tenders.

“I cannot confirm the timetable for this work,” Bensadoun said.

News of the delay prompted DeSousa to urge Transport Quebec to launch a new call for tenders and start the work as soon as possible.

“I’ll be holding my breath until they actually do the work because the risks are there,” he said.

“In the meantime, I would call on the Ministry of Transport to make sure all safety measures be taken with regard to the designated sites, in part because of the concerns raised in the report, and two because of the delays. I would not want there to be an unfortunate incident.”

Some cities in North America have torn down their mid-century elevated highways, notably Boston, San Francisco and Seattle. But dismantlement isn’t in the cards for Montreal’s Metropolitan Expressway. PHOTO BY DAVE SIDAWAY /Montreal Gazette

It’s not like Rouleau’s boss, Premier François Legault, has an aversion to mega projects benefitting automobiles, notably tunnels. 

With the October provincial election looming, the Legault government recently unveiled a new $6.5-billion version of a “3rd link” tunnel his government has been yearning to build under the St. Lawrence River to connect Quebec City and “downtown” Lévis, even though critics say that building a new bridge would be less costly and suffice.

Legault said the tunnel is necessary because the wait time on Quebec City’s two existing bridges “will be greater than the waiting time on the Montreal bridges” whenever the population of Quebec City will grow. His political opponents mocked his comparison of Quebec City’s traffic woes to those of the metropolis, noting that Quebec City isn’t even on an island.

It’s the old story, Trent said of how the replacement of the Met is idling while projects elsewhere are speeding along.

“No cost is too high to please the Quebec City area voters who, like in Laval and the North Shore, always get the royal treatment by threatening to vote against the party in power,” he said. 

“Montreal Island just votes in a predictable pattern. Montreal is rarely on the government’s priority list. With the CAQ, we’re not even on a list, full stop. Getting re-elected trumps any other consideration.”

Tunnelling the Metropolitan Expressway makes more sense than building a tunnel in Quebec City, Barrieau said.

Unlike the “3rd link” proposed for Quebec City, the Metropolitan is a “critical piece of the transportation network in eastern Canada,” he said.

The Quebec City tunnel would almost exclusively serve commuters, Barrieau added, in part because trucks hauling hazardous materials are barred from tunnels.

“Building the tunnel in the way that they’re proposing is basically just asking for more urban sprawl for Quebec City,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

But the CAQ’s electoral base is in the Quebec City area, Barrieau said. “And that is a fundamental element in understanding why they’re pushing the 3rd link in Quebec City. It’s ideological, not logical.”

Legault has also demonstrated that he has no aversion to new transportation projects in Montreal — so long as they’re seen to benefit the east end of the island, where the CAQ has its two seats.

The premier and his government are boosters of the $10-billion REM de l’Est electric train project that Quebec’s pension-fund manager was proposing to connect downtown Montreal and Pointe-aux-Trembles at the east end of the island.

Legault announced last week that he was canceling the downtown portion of the proposed network, stating the aerial concrete structure that CDPQ Infra proposed to splice the downtown core — which Trent says resembles the Metropolitan Expressway — lacked social acceptability. However, the premier offered no disavowal of an elevated concrete structure along the rest of the 32-kilometre route.

“It is crucial for the development of the east end of Montreal,” Legault said at a press conference with Mayor Valérie Plante to announce that Quebec and Montreal were taking over management of the REM de l’Est project now that CDPQ Infra has backed out. He also said he’d like to extend the REM de l’Est to off-island Laval and the Lanaudière region.

While Legault said he wants to move the REM de l’Est forward as quickly as possible, he acknowledged the opening will be delayed beyond the original target of 2029.

Dinu Bumbaru, the policy director of Heritage Montreal, said the delay offers an opportunity to consider moving the light rail network to the Metropolitan Expressway corridor.

The Met is an existing “scar” that requires rehabilitation, he noted. Moving the REM de l’Est to the existing transportation corridor that was intended a century ago to connect the east and west ends of the island seems logical, he said.

“The point is to examine it, diligently,” Bumbaru said.

1961: A year-old Metropolitan Expressway at Décarie Blvd., before all the traffic jams. Montreal city archives

If it had been left up to the province to build the Met 100 years ago, Montreal might still be waiting.

It was the municipalities on the island that traced the boulevard and then jointly funded and built it when they grew tired of waiting for promised funding from the province and for the federal government to make up its mind on building the Trans-Canada Highway.

The Quebec government bought the Metropolitan Expressway from the municipalities in 1961 for $122 million.

Barrieau and Leckner point out that Quebec has a history of postponement and poor planning.

In 2020, Transport Quebec announced the long-promised “major” repair of the Met is so massive it will be divided in two. However, no timeline or budget is yet available for the first project encompassing the eastern section of the expressway, from St-Laurent Blvd. to Provencher, or the one that will follow for the portion west of St-Laurent to Côte-de-Liesse. The ministry recently awarded engineering contracts to create the plans and specifications for each project, a process that it says will take two to three years.

Barrieau said he doubts the Met repair project will begin before “at least a decade, a decade-and-a-half” and be completed before 2040. Work is already behind on other deteriorating infrastructure in the Montreal region, and major road and bridge projects can’t be overlapped or they will strangle the city, he said. 

Major repairs to the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel to Longueuil have begun and are expected to take 10 years. Meanwhile, the province is preparing for the reconstruction of the St-Pierre Interchange and the Honoré-Mercier Bridge, along with the reconstruction of the Île-aux-Tourtes Bridge, Barrieau said. 

Even so, Quebec should already be busy planning the replacement of the Met, he said.

“It’s always been in the philosophy of Transport Quebec to never sufficiently plan ahead of time what to do if a structure is at the end of its useful life,” Barrieau said, and that applies also to the Met. 

“Everybody knows it has to be replaced. And everybody says, ‘We’ll just put a Band-Aid on it for now and it’ll be somebody else’s problem down the road.’”

The Met has been wounded so long, the old Band-Aids have to be changed.

The high-tech panels that Trent’s company installed in 1977 were removed years later when Transport Quebec finally repaired the concrete underneath. But those “new” exterior sidewalls are broken again. The list of work included in Transport Quebec’s impending “excessively major” repair calls for reconstruction of the exterior sidewalls. Perhaps the third try will be the charm.

lgyulai@postmedia.com