No cars will be traveling on the new Champlain Bridge anytime soon. Ottawa will announce Thursday it will postpone its opening until the end of June 2019 at the latest, TVA News learned.
It seemed written in the sky for months, but now it's confirmed. Federal Infrastructure Minister François-Philippe Champagne and representatives of the Signature Construction Consortium on the St. Lawrence (SSL) will confirm a second postponement of the inauguration. In 2015, an opening was scheduled for December 1, which was later delayed until December 21, 2018.
According to our information, most of the bridge structure will be completed as planned in December. Where the problem lies is the paving and waterproofing of the deck surface, operations that are almost impossible to do in the cold and wet winter. These last steps will be completed "at the latest" at the end of June 2019, confirmed several sources.
From the beginning of the work, SSL admitted that the biggest challenge of the project was the "extremely tight" schedule. By the time of opening, the federal government will have to continue to invest millions of dollars to continue to maintain the current bridge.
The tone of Ottawa and SSL about the timeline has changed in recent weeks. If the federal elected officials swore last spring that the bridge would be ready in time, the Minister Champagne refused to engage again in response to questions last week.
In addition, municipal officials have noted that in recent weeks, SSL has removed all mention of December 21 in its public notices, preferring now to refer to the end of shackles "the opening of the new Champlain Bridge."
Several obstacles
Certainly, the problems with this $ 4.5-billion project, one of the largest in the history of the federal government, are not new.
Already in July 2016, "Le Journal" revealed that the new site had already suffered three major failures in the first months of construction, which had caused some delays.
In the same year, Quebec announced to SSL that it would no longer be able to carry heavy prefabricated parts on Quebec roads, forcing the consortium to transport them mostly by sea, which is longer and more expensive.
In addition to all that, there has also been a strike by state engineers, construction workers and crane operators in the last two years.
For example, the Trudeau government announced last April that it was injecting another $ 235 million into the project and would double the number of workers on the job site.
The VG did not believe it
Even the Auditor General of Canada did not seem to believe that the new bridge would be delivered by the end of the year, going so far as to say in a report last May that the promise seemed "very ambitious".
"We are of the opinion that the new bridge will be more expensive than if the decision to replace it had been made sooner, will cost more than originally expected and it is uncertain whether will be completed by December 21, 2018, "said VG Michael Ferguson in his report.
In response, former Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi vowed that the bridge would be ready to welcome motorists by 21 December 2018.
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