Achi news desk-
The expected completion date for renovations to the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel in Montreal will be pushed back a year — to 2027 — because “the work was more complex than we expected,” Quebec’s transportation minister said Friday.
“We have to change the ventilation towers and we didn’t know we had to but it turns out we have to.” [the] “Manpower shortages, combined with safety and health issues with the CNESST,” are contributing to the delay, Minister Genevieve Guillebeau said at a news conference in Quebec City.
“So all this forces us to delay a year so that the tunnel should be in service again in the fall of 2026. Right now, we have two [lanes] To the north and one direction to the south, so that there will be a change of direction in the spring of 2025.”
The Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility (MTQ) has confirmed that the opening of the two pipelines, planned for November 2025, has been pushed back to autumn 2026, with the completion date set for next year. The press release stated that the damage to the ventilation towers was worse than previously thought and that the workers would have to design, manufacture and install 128 portable panels. The towers are designed to handle the emission of traffic or smoke from a fire.
Last August, work in the tunnel was stopped for about two weeks after workers raised concerns about the presence of mold in the tunnel’s service corridor.
“The department is aware that the extended duration of the blockades will have significant consequences for citizens, road users and businesses in the Montreal metropolitan area. The work is, however, essential to preserve this critical transportation link,” the ministry said in a statement. .
Guilbeau also took the opportunity to criticize the previous Liberal government for not fixing the tunnel when they were in government.
“We are stuck with this because of the infrastructure maintenance deficit in Quebec because when we came in 2018 there was a lot of non-maintenance of our infrastructure. We saw it with Pont ÃŽle-aux-Tourtes, we saw it with Pont de l’ÃŽle d’Orléans and so it turns out that we have to Urgent work that costs a lot of money and which we cannot postpone because safety is at stake,” she told reporters.
Before construction began, the tunnel was used by an average of 120,000 drivers daily. The construction project is the first major renovation project in the tunnel in nearly 60 years.