Collateral victims of the work on the Louis-Hyppolyte-La Fontaine bridge tunnel, residents in the east of the island or in neighboring towns have doubled or even tripled their travel time since Monday.
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“In the past few days, a 20-minute ride has taken me up to an hour. People try to find alternatives and get to Notre-Dame street, for example, and that’s how traffic jams arise,” sums up Noémie Drouin, a 36-year-old docker who lives in Pointe-aux-Trembles and works at the port Montreal.
Since the complete closure of one of the two tubes of the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine bridge tunnel on Monday, the situation for the residents of the east has become hell.
“It has a huge impact on our lives,” says Christian Urdareanu, a Terrebonne resident who works at Place Versailles.
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Because for the 56-year-old, the effects of the gigantic construction site count in terms of both time and money.
Photo Martin Alari
The difficult return to the south coast through the tunnel on Wednesday afternoon.
pay for others
“It used to take me about 30 minutes via the Autobahn 40, now it takes me 1h30. Should be faster. but [hier] it still took 1 hour 15 minutes,” he laments.
“Every day I live through a nightmare, a nightmare that costs me almost $10 [par jour] “, he adds.
For Paola Dell Aquila, a resident of Anjou, hell begins just around the corner.
“We are completely isolated. Sometimes it takes us 30 minutes to get out of our sector. That’s how long it used to take me to get to work! “says the one who works in a Carrefour jeunesse emploi in Verdun.
To avoid traffic jams during her work, she had to agree with her employer that they would start at 7am instead of 8am.
“If I followed the same schedule, it would take me 1h10 to go to work,” adds the one who is now considering moving west of the city.
prisoner
Some residents, like Camille Harvey, feel downright stuck.
“We shouldn’t be directly affected by all the work, but now in the eastern world we are caught up in the overflowing traffic. Even the alternative routes are completely overcrowded, there is no escape,” laments the 31-year-old practicing nurse, who lives in Repentigny and works in Pointe-aux-Trembles.
After at least three years of work, Christian Urdareanu believes he must make a decision to escape this hell.
“The only solution will be to either move or have me transferred to another business,” he thinks.
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