Deck of the Quebec Bridge, inspection work and replacement of the Pierre-Laporte Bridge hangers, major construction site for the highway spaghetti for entrances and exits on the North Shore.
According to a preliminary scenario from the Ministry of Transportation, the closures will be spread over several months in 2025 and 2026. Mainly during the construction season, that is, without snow, from April to November.
A six-month period in 2026 promises to be particularly hellish.
The sun got its hands on a working document where the authorities of the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility of Quebec establish the schedule for partial or total closures of the two bridges, between Quebec and Lévis, for the years 2025 and 2026.
Works, reductions in the number of lanes and obstructions of varying importance, when not complete closures.
The summary table shows the concomitance of work on the two neighboring infrastructures which span the St. Lawrence River.
We read that from May to October 2026, the Quebec Bridge will be completely closed to automobile traffic, day and night, for 15 to 20 weekends.
During this same period, a few meters to the west, two of the three lanes of the Pierre-Laporte bridge will also be closed in one direction over the course of 25 nights, some of which could be consecutive.
Proceed at the same time
Certain nights at the end of 2025, from October to December, also look likely to be conducive to automobile congestion in this sector.
The Pierre-Laporte Bridge will then close two of its three lanes in one direction for 25 nights, not all consecutive, while two of the three lanes of the Quebec Bridge could also close on weekday nights.
Already under pressure from works at the bridgeheads, particularly in the Avenue des Hôtels sector, road traffic will undoubtedly be even more complex in the coming years.
One after the other, Quebec plans to undertake the replacement of the deck of the Quebec Bridge, major inspection work on the Pierre-Laporte Bridge, while continuing the major project started at the head of the bridges.
These works to maintain current infrastructure are considered inevitable by the ministry’s experts.
Motorists who take the Henri-IV highway heading south to take the Pierre-Laporte bridge may find themselves stuck in a long traffic jam.
(Caroline Grégoire/Le Soleil Archives)
According to their forecasts, during these two years, the Pierre-Laporte bridge should never be completely closed in one direction or the other and will not be hindered during the day, between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m., even partially.
On the Quebec Bridge side, complete closures or two out of three lanes will only take place at night.
Even at the worst of the situation, there should still be at least eight out of nine lanes open on weekdays in total on both bridges.
The ministry specifies in its document that “the contractor will not be able to close the bridge” on the weekends of National Day (June 24), Confederation Day (July 1), Labor Day (first Monday of September) and during the Quebec Summer Festival (from the first Thursday to the second Sunday in July).
“Other closures may be added depending on the progress of the project,” we can also read there.
Favorable to the third link
Anxious to justify the need to build a third road link, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Geneviève Guilbault, had clearly advised that significant obstacles remained to come.
She had already identified the summer of 2026 as a crucial period.
In the most recent chapter of the resurrection of the highway megaproject, the Legault government invokes the argument of economic security to plead the need for a new link between Quebec City and Lévis. A question, it is said, to compensate for possible prolonged closures that could jeopardize traffic, particularly heavy goods vehicles in the region.
Geneviève Guilbault and François Legault during their announcement on June 13. (Jocelyn Riendeau/Archives Le Soleil)
“We will experience the risk of a possible closure for the first time, in 2026. The two bridges will close at the same time in a partial manner and in the most coordinated manner possible. We will have to do the work both on the deck of the Quebec bridge and change the famous hangers and maintain the Pierre-Laporte bridge,” she explained during the press conference on June 13.
At his side, his boss and Prime Minister, François Legault, had just announced that his government would move forward with both the tramway project in Quebec and that of a third bridge between Quebec and Lévis.
An unexpected complete closure of the Pierre-Laporte Bridge would prove to be “hellish and catastrophic for the economy of our two regions” of the Capitale-Nationale and Chaudière-Appalaches, Minister Guilbault insisted.
The freight trucks should then cross the river at Trois-Rivières.
“We are trying to minimize as much as possible the obstacles that this will generate. [les travaux prévus]but we will have no choice. We will find ourselves in the situation where we will have to do work on both bridges at the same time. Imagine if, one day, something happened!”
— Geneviève Guilbault, Minister of Transport, June 13
“No one can predict the unexpected. We are not safe from the possibility that one day something happens on one of the two bridges and we have to close it. And if it’s the Pierre-Laporte bridge, we block the trucks,” Ms. Guilbault had justified, with the assent of Mr. Legault and his fellow ministers Bernard Drainville and Jonatan Julien.
