Mercier Bridge to partially close for 2 months (again)

Traffic was backed up for kilometres on the approach to the MercierBridge before the sun even came up Wednesday morning.

The summer of delays has begun. For commuters,your only hope is to leave home extra early, get on the busortake a different bridge. Or stay home.

For more information about why this closure is happening yet again, read on.

For those who use the Mercier Bridge, the almost-annual summer exercise in extreme patience, time management and trip planning is nigh.

Starting Friday at 10 p.m., the bridge will be down to one lane in each direction until Aug. 20.

Crews will be working on the bridge's safety barriers, improving the drainage system and increasing the lane width on the provincial portion of the southbound bridge, according to Transports Qubec spokesperson Martin Girard.

It is the first phase of a six-part, $12.7-million plan to maintain the bridge.

The speed limit on the Mercier has been 50 km/h for months, and this work will allow the speed limit to be restored to 70 km/h, Girard said.

It's all maintenance work to ensure the bridge is still safe for commuters to use. It's done in the summer, Girard explained, because traffic is typically lighter and allows everything to get done in a timely way.

But there's no telling when the work on the Mercierwillbe done for good. Or at the very least, when theprolonged summer closures will come to an end.

A new structure, eventually

If thenews of another summertime bridge closure sounds familiar, that makes sense.

Last year was the first summer in eight years that commuters had a reprieve from the traffic nightmare work on the federal portion shut the bridge for weeks in the summerfrom 2009 to 2016.

TheMercierBridge was only one span, with one lane in each direction, when it opened in 1934. When the second span opened in 1963, it became the inbound side. The older span was for traffic heading toward the South Shore.

That older span is now showing its age. These days, the federal and provincial governments share jurisdiction of the bridge.

Much of the work on the federal side was on steel reinforcement and replacing the bridge's deck. When it wrapped up, the federal bridge corporation said it will prolong the bridge's life by 75 years.

But almost immediately, the province warned motorists not to rejoice just yet there was talk of an upcoming "major intervention," with the Transport Ministry even floating the idea of a complete replacement of its portion of the bridge.

Last year, the province announced it would, in fact, be building a new structure toward the South Shore beside the one that currently exists. The structure will cost upwards of $100 million and include a bike path.

However, there are still no details on what the project will look like. The plan is supposed to be unveiled after work on the new Champlain Bridge wraps up,early next year.

In the meantime, the maintenance work on the bridge will continue. It's too soon to say whether a months-long closure will be required again next summer, Girard said.

For now, he is repeating a refrain motorists are familiar with at this point plan your trip and factor traffic into your commute time.