I’m back in Montreal following a couple of weeks of taking it easy up north in Charlevoix and Quebec City. I’m still wading through the pile of shots taken during my vacation which I will hopefully get around to posting in the coming days.
Since I still had the rental car, on Tuesday I ventured over to Nuns Island (Île des Soeurs) specifically to take some photographs of the Champlain Bridge – named in honor of the explorer Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec City in 1608).
Including the approaches, the bridge is around 6km long and is used by about 160,000 vehicles per day making it the busiest bridge in Canada. The Champlain has 6 lanes (3 north/3 south), but anyone who uses the bridge on a regular basis will know it isn’t often that all 6 lanes are open these days :-/
Although opened in 1962, the bridge has required major repairs and is in urgent need of replacement which the federal government has pledged will be done by 2018 at a cost of between 3-5 billion$. The current bridge took 5 years to build at a cost of 35m$.
I found a path near the Bell Campus and a few nice clearings giving a good view of the cantilevered section in the distance. As you can see from the images, major repair works are ongoing to keep the bridge safe until the replacement bridge is completed.
Champlain Bridge
ISO 100 – 70mm – f6.3 – 1/1600 sec (-2ev/0/+2ev)
Champlain Bridge
ISO 100 – 300mm – f6.3 – 1/800 sec (-2ev/0/+2ev)
Champlain Bridge
ISO 100 – 300mm – f6.3 – 1/800 sec (-2ev/0/+2ev)
Champlain Bridge
ISO 100 – 122mm – f6.3 – 1/640 sec
A major controversy surrounding the new bridge is that the federal government propose charging a toll to help cover the cost. Tolls were charged until 1990 on the current bridge, but has since been free to cross.
Another point of contention is whether the bridge will include a light railway that will help fight rising congestion on the island of Montreal.
With the tight deadline to build a replacement, the original intention to hold an International design competition for the new bridge was scrapped and the Danish architect Poul Ove Jensen was hired. His design was unveiled at the end of June and 3 consortia will now bid for the construction contract.
The clean and simple design received a mixed response. I personally like it and look forward to photographing it in 2018…particularly at night if the reality matches the artist renditions…
New Champlain Bridge Design
And there will be a bike and pedestrian path…
New Champlain Bridge Bike and Pedestrian Path
I believe the bridge may get a new name…my vote is for it to be the Maurice Richard Bridge!
A bit of fun
Just to be clear, the weather wasn’t that bad that I spent it doing jigsaws, but I did think it could be fun to add some jigsaws to the website. So far I’ve only found this plugin for wordpress which only works on desktops since it uses flash, but hopefully I’ll find one that’s mobile friendly.
I thought this shot of the Champlain Bridge would make for a tough 100 piece puzzle as a test.
You can rotate the pieces using the arrow keys on your keyboard. Let me know in the comments if you would like more jigsaws or games added to Montreal in Pictures 😉
A word of warning…be careful not to click the bottom left link ‘mypuzzle.org’ as you will be redirected and lose your hard work.
Thanks for stopping by. Until next time.
– Martin
Montréal in Pictures
Your virtual guide in and around Montréal