The closure of three of the six lanes of the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel promises to be a headache for travel in Greater Montreal until 2025. The construction site is all the more problematic as the car is still queen for the moment to cross the St. Lawrence River between the South Shore and the island.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
475,000 daily trips
This is the average number of individual trips between Montreal and the South Shore, each day. Nearly nine out of ten trips are made by motorized vehicle, either by car or truck, while public transport represents only 12%.
The Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel alone normally accommodates a quarter of all trips, i.e. 120,000 per day, hence the fear of seeing the closure of one of its two tubes for three years on its neighbours, already very busy.
Together, the Samuel-De Champlain and Jacques-Cartier bridges already account for 46% of daily trips between the South Shore and Montreal. The first receives approximately 130,000 vehicles every day (27%), while the second sees an average of 90,000 motorists using it every day (19%).
Public transport still marginal
The pandemic has hurt, very badly, public transport, which is still struggling to regain its pre-pandemic traffic. This reality is felt very well between the island and the South Shore: the yellow line of the metro currently welcomes an average of 32,000 users per day, or 7% of total trips. The Réseau de transport de Longueuil (RTL) and exo bus services make 19,300 trips per day, or 4% of the total.
It is at exo that traffic is much lower, with barely 1,070 daily trips currently. Commuter trains also remain at half mast, with barely 2,530 daily users. This is less than the 3,600 cyclists using the cycle paths of the Jacques-Cartier and Samuel-De Champlain bridges daily. Although increasingly popular, river shuttles also remain marginal in the transport offer, with 2,000 trips per day.