Government was wrong about bridges, Quebec minister says

Nearly half of all bridges in smaller Quebec communities are in bad shape, and it was a mistake to download the task of maintaining them to municipalities,the province's transport minister said Wednesday.

Fifty-five per cent of 4,281 bridges examined in 904 different municipalities are in poor shape and need significant repairs, according to a recent survey done by the department.

It's clear today that a decision made by a past Quebec Liberal government to transfer bridge maintenance responsibilities to municipal authorities was wrong, Julie Boulet, the transport minister,said at a press conference in Quebec City.

"We should have never transferred these structures to them, on a financial level and technical level," she told reporters.

The late Liberal premier Robert Bourassa was in office in1993.

"We're taking them back today, and that's good news. Sometimes it's better late than never," she saidin her French statement.

The province's transport ministry reclaimed jurisdiction over smaller bridges in Dec. 2007, as the Johnson Commission recommended in its report on the Concorde overpass collapse in Laval.

The Commission was charged with determining what caused the Highway 19 overpass to collapse on Sept. 30, 2006, killing five people and injuring six.

Investigators concluded the overpass's failure was due to a combination of factors, including years of neglect and shoddy repair work.

The transport ministry will authorize repairs on 300 of the bridges targeted in the survey. The government hopes to fix 70 per cent of the province's municipal bridges by 2012, Boulet said.