Travelling eastbound on Highway 20? Your commute is about to get even more gruelling
If you're heading downtown from west of the Turcot Interchange, expect longer delays
Transports Québec wants you to know the traffic nightmare is nigh.
Starting Sunday, one eastbound lane of Highway 20 from the Turcot Interchange heading towards the Ville-Marie Expressway will be closed.
That means if you're heading downtown from the western part of the island, your commute is bound to take longer.
Officials can't say just how long, but they expect traffic to be backed up west of the Saint-Pierre Interchange in Lachine. An estimated 3,600 cars travel through the interchange during the morning rush hour.
Their warning: plan a new route, change your schedule, take public transit, or be prepared to sit in traffic.
Transport ministry officials do suggest two detour routes, which both employ city streets in the Sud-Ouest borough:
- East along Notre-Dame Street to St-Rémi Street, then north to St-Jacques Street.
- St-Patrick Street eastbound along the Lachine Canal into the city.
Sylvie Gervais of KPH Turcot, the consortium in charge of building the new Turcot Interchange, said traffic lights will be adjusted, and the configuration of intersections and lanes in the areas will be changed in order to keep traffic flowing through those neighbourhoods.
Tearing down the Ville-Marie
The lane closure is necessary in order to prepare two new lanes to access downtown, which will be part of the eventual replacement for the Ville-Marie Expressway. Those lanes, which will be called Route 136, will open in mid-November.
The Ville-Marie is a four-lane highway. Route 136 will eventually also have four lanes, but only two will be in place when it opens.
That's because there's no room for the other two right now with the Ville-Marie expressway in the way. The distance between it and Route 136 is between 0.8 and 2.8 metres in some places, which is narrower than a typical three-metre-wide lane of traffic.
The three-kilometre stretch of the Ville-Marie from the Turcot to a point near the Guy Street exit will be dismantled starting in November.
On weekdays, the work will take place from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. On weekends, it will wrap up at 11 p.m.
For 15 weekends, Route 136 will be closed in order to tear down specific parts of the Ville-Marie, meaning there will be no access to downtown from the west along that stretch of highway.
But once it is torn down, crews will build the two other lanes for Route 136. They should open in 2018.
Public transit options
Late this summer, STM announced the measures it will be undertaking to mitigate the traffic challenges, including additional trips during rush hour on bus routes that serve the Angrignon and Lionel-Groulx Metro stations and express bus routes from the West Island.
And even though the bus lanes on the highway end well before the Turcot Yard, the STM believes taking the bus will still be faster than driving.
"We will save enough time to be competitive with anyone taking their car," said STM spokesman Alain Labelle.
As well, during rush hour another train will be added to the Metro's Green line, which represents 4,000 spaces for commuters.
As for commuter trains, Sandra Sultana, a member of the Turcot project build phase team at the Transport Ministry, said while the MTQ looked into it, it wasn't possible to increase the number of trains serving the west end of the island.