Photograph by: Phil Carpenter, The Gazette
Montreal narrowly escaped tragedy Sunday morning when a concrete beam and a section of the roof it was supporting collapsed onto the Ville Marie Expressway, somehow missing the hundreds of motorists that were on the road at the time.
About 9 a.m. Sunday, a transversal beam fell onto the eastbound half of the highway. The beam was supporting a concrete grid over the transitional zone at the entrance to a section of the Ville Marie Tunnel, which also fell. At least 15 metric tonnes of debris scattered across the roadway.
Ordinarily, the Ville Marie Tunnel is one of Montreal’s busiest stretches of road,with more than 100,000 motorists driving under it every weekday. Luckily, on Sunday morning, traffic was sparse.
“With the sheer amount of concrete that fell, anyone caught driving under it what have been badly hurt or killed,” said a spokesperson for Transport Quebec.
The collapse is the latest incident in a summer where Montreal has been plagued with the fallout from crumbling infrastructure and it raises questions about the safety of the city’s road network.
Infrastructure problems are piling up with the Mercier Bridge being shut down, the questions surrounding the Champlain Bridge, the Turcot Interchange and now the Ville Marie Expressway.
Although the cause of Sunday’s sudden collapse of a concrete section of the Ville Marie tunnel remains a mystery, two civil engineers are accusing Transport Quebec of not properly inspecting the structure.
