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In 1960, the construction of the Trans-Canada Highway (TCH) through Quebec from the Ontario border to Rivière-du-Loup was announced. In Montreal, to avoid having to build a huge bridge that would have disfigured the city and destroyed a neighbourhood, engineers opted for the construction of a tunnel located under the Saint Lawrence River and dug a trench under the river bed and buried the tunnel sections 4.6 metres (15 ft) to 6.1 metres (20 ft) under the river bed.
The church in Longue-Pointe had to be demolished to make way for the tunnel, and 300 families were expropriated from the village in 1964.[4] The construction was completed in March 1967, just before the opening of Expo 67. Construction cost $75 million.[5]
A major four-year refurbishment of the tunnel began in 2020 was originally planned to be completed in 2024 at a cost of $1.2 billion, but in 2022, it was announced that the project would take a year longer than expected and that at its completion in 2025, it will have a total cost of $2.1 billion.[6]
Specifications
Inside the tunnel
Each of the seven tunnel sections weighs 32,000 t (31,000 long tons; 35,000 short tons) and [3] is 110 metres (360 ft) long, 37 metres (121 ft) wide, and is 8 metres (26 ft) high. In total, the bridge–tunnel is 1.8 kilometres (1.1 mi) long.
The tunnel was built with sections prefabricated in dry dock and then sunk in the river[7] 24 metres (79 ft) below the surface of the water.
It is one of the largest prestressed concrete structures in the world and is the longest bridge-tunnel in Canada.[2]
