Separated couples are forced to make heartbreaking choices when reviewing childcare schedules, because of the infernal work on the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine bridge-tunnel.
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“When you’re a family and your child lives on the South Shore, I apologize, but it’s heartbreaking. It hurts, it hurts. We can no longer see our children, we lose hours with them, ”drops the tight throat Marie-Eve Robertson, who lives in Terrebonne and who has joint custody of her daughter, Noémie, 9, whose father is in Longueuil.
For her as for others, the work on the bridge-tunnel also creates a real headache for separated parents who live on one side or the other of the St. Lawrence and who share custody of their child. .
“Before, I had my daughter every other week. But there, with the works and the traffic, it is impossible to bring him to his school every morning, ”laments Ms. Robertson.
Since the closure of one of the tunnel tubes on October 31, the travel time between her home and her ex-husband has almost doubled, going from around an hour to more than two hours.
“We’re not going to wake up at 4:30 in the morning just so it’s time for school!” It would be ridiculous, ”drops the cleaning lady.
Longer than going to beauty
Tommy Morin, a resident of the Pointe-aux-Trembles sector in Montreal, who usually babysits his son every other week, faces the same dilemma.
“I just can’t walk him to school every morning anymore, because it would take more than three hours,” the 39-year-old father laments.
Her son goes to high school on the South Shore of Montreal, in Sainte-Julie, where he lives with his mother the rest of the time.
Before the work, Mr. Morin took about 30 minutes to bring his 15-year-old son to school, and 25 minutes to return home. Today, the travel time has literally tripled.
“I realized that it would take me less time to go to Beauce to see my father than to make the round trip to pick up my son,” he laughs.
Change of program
Result: Ms. Robertson and Mr. Morin resigned themselves to reviewing the call schedule, reluctantly.
Instead of seeing their child every two weeks, they will only have him at home on weekends.
“But even on Friday, it takes me 3h15 to go there and back and the same thing on Sunday when I bring him back to his mother. It’s been more than six hours where I can’t spend quality time with it, ”regrets the one who works at the Port of Montreal.
Three years
For both parents, it is difficult to see how the situation can be resolved, because the work must stretch over at least three years.
Some try to manage as best they can.
“As he is tall, he will soon be able to take public transport to help us a little to reduce the travel time to, at least, reach Montreal. Except that again, it will be very expensive in terms of transport tickets to go from Sainte-Julie to Longueuil, then from Longueuil to Montreal,” laments Mr. Morin.
For her part, Ms. Robertson is thinking of rearranging her work schedule to avoid traffic and huge traffic jams.
“It’s going to be a lot of adaptation, but it’s just really sad that there is no other solution,” she says.