Motorists already taken hostage by traffic in the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel are worried about spending even more time in their cars from November when the new works will deprive them of three lanes out of six until 2025. The newspaper collected the testimonies of these citizens who are already going through hell on a daily basis.
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• Read also: Works at the bridge-tunnel: “motorists will have to adapt”
• Read also: The Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel under construction until autumn 2025
Less time with his disabled daughter
Every day, Suzanne Lebreux (to the right) spends three hours on the road, robbing her of valuable time with her 34-year-old daughter Jennifer (to the left), suffering from cerebral palsy.
“One evening, it took me four hours to get home. It’s going to be worse when there’s going to be a single lane. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I am taken hostage, ”sighs the single mother from Repentigny, who works in a trucking workshop in Boucherville to make ends meet. She can’t really move, because her house is adapted for her handicapped daughter. As for his work, it can only be done face-to-face.
She regrets the great confinement of March 2020. Without traffic, she went to work 23 minutes and spent more time with her big daughter.
Night shifts to escape traffic
Even with their atypical schedules, Chantal Morin and her husband endure the traffic of the tunnel that leads them from the South Shore to the hospital where they work as attendants.
The couple plans a two-hour drive to get to work on time at 4 p.m. To avoid the detour via the Jacques-Cartier bridge when the tunnel is closed at night, the two guardian angels agree to work 16 hours in a row, until eight in the morning. With the work, they are squarely thinking of changing hospitals.
“We are no longer young, we are 47 and 56 years old, I don’t know if we can find a job elsewhere. It would mean losing all the seniority we have accumulated,” laments Chantal Morin, who has worked in the same place for 20 years.
No public transport
Julia Peccia leaves at dawn to go from Montreal East to her office in Brossard, where she has her dream job in urban planning.
But even before 7 a.m., she sometimes still encounters a blocked tunnel. From the east end of Montreal, “the poor relation of public transport”, she calculates that it would take her at least an hour and a half to get to work by metro and bus.
“Three or four hours of transport a day, even one or two days a week, that doesn’t make sense,” she says.
She believes that the Ministry of Transport is simply letting down Montrealers who work on the South Shore by leaving only one lane of the tunnel open in this direction.
No option but to worry
For Emily Fleming-Dubuc, there is always something in the tunnel: accidents, cars cutting each other, closures…
“It’s hell at rush hour with just two lanes. When there is an accident, it takes half an hour more. I don’t know how they’re going to do with one track,” worries the student in intervention in a correctional environment at Cégep de Sorel-Tracy.
The morning of an accident, the Tétreaultville resident spent 40 minutes in traffic on Hochelaga Street without reaching the tunnel. Eventually she got discouraged and went home.
“I don’t know what to do except worry,” drops the young woman.
One more reason to quit
For the employees of the Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital, at the exit of the tunnel, the traffic is one more reason to think about quitting.
“It’s a headache. You want to take public transport, but it’s the quality of life that takes a hit. Even if you don’t heat up, it’s still 3 hours of public transit a day,” explains Jean-Sébastien Sirois, who lives in Longueuil. Without a direct shuttle to the hospital, he believes that many of his colleagues will resign.