With work on Highway 20 going well, the Department of Transport expects to be able to reopen the westbound section near Drummondville in the coming hours.
Posted at 10:43 a.m.
Updated at 6:06 p.m.
Eastbound, the full reopening of the highway is scheduled for the evening, Transports Québec said via its Twitter account at 5 p.m.
The important road link between Montreal and Quebec had to be completely closed in both directions on Saturday due to a risk of subsidence of the roadway in the Drummondville sector.
“The contractor in charge of the site, under the supervision of Transports Québec, has begun emergency corrective work aimed at restoring traffic. This work will last all day and will probably have to continue in the evening, ”the ministry said on Twitter in the morning of Sunday.
The spokesman for Transports Quebec, Louis-André Bertrand, clarified that it was “the appearance of three chimneys, therefore holes, near the highway”, which led to the emergency closure of the lanes.
Municipal aqueduct works on a pipe that passes under the highway would be the cause of the appearance of these chimneys in the central reservation and on each side of the tracks, reported Mr. Bertrand.
“We are talking about emergency corrective works which include excavation, backfilling, soil compaction and then asphalting of the roadway,” he described.
Despite a detour route set up via exit 181 (boulevard Foucault), rue Montplaisir, route 122 (rue Saint-Georges) and route 143 (boulevard Saint-Joseph), significant congestion had settled in the area Saturday.
Sunday, at the end of the afternoon, the situation had hardly improved.
In a press release, the city of Drummondville invites the population to avoid the area as much as possible.
With The Canadian Press