Delays will plague eastbound Ile aux Tourtes until bridge is repaired

Ile aux Tourtes problems The lanes on the eastbound bridge have been shifted to avoid a problem area.

Transport Quebec says at this point it does not know how long it will take to return to normal traffic conditions on the Ile aux Tourtes bridge.

The Ministry closed a section of the right-hand eastbound lane over the weekend to conduct inspections and to repair damage on that side of the bridge. Inspectors found a small crack on that side of the bridge within the past few days.

The eastbound lanes were made narrower and all the lanes were shifted to the left to keep traffic away from the edge of the bridge. At the same time the speed limit over the bridge was dropped to 70 km/h.

This change in the roadway resulted in a traffic jam at the bridge Monday morning, and it will likely continue to be a bottleneck for the near future.

Mario St-Pierre of Transport Quebec said it will repair the edge of the bridge as soon as possible.

"It's going to be facing major renovations or replacement in the near future. It hasn't been decided yet. But now what we concentrate on is, after the general inspection, we concentrate on fixing this problem so we can give back one lane that is missing right now," said St-Pierre.

The 50-year-old bridge has been repaired and upgraded repeatedly over the years to handle the increasing amount of traffic.

Eight years ago many concerns were raised about the horizontal tension cables on the bridge exterior that frequently snapped, but Transport Quebec said those cables frequently broke and were just as frequently replaced.