Green Line: Repair work in the tunnel will take 4-5 nights
The Lionel-Groulx metro station is located at the junction of the orange and green lines .
Although service resumed this morning on the green line, between Lionel-Groulx and Frontenac stations, after several hours of interruption at the height of rush hour, work will continue for another 4 to 5 nights in order to repair the cracks in the tunnel. In the coming weeks, teams from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) will continue to assess the condition of the tunnel.
This’s what the Director General of the STM, Marie-Claude Léonard, let know on the sidelines of a press conference Tuesday noon.
It’is a “superficial” degradation of the concrete which forced the closure of the section of the green line last night, concluded a team of experts after more than six hours of auscultation, hammering and observation.
If “the integrity of the vault is not compromised”, work is necessary. As a preventive measure, a metal fence was installed yesterday to allow STM teams to carry out emergency work.
“There really is no immediate risk in the network”, assured Marie-Claude Léonard, who specified that the STM teams carry out investigations every 5 years to find out the state of the network.
Necessary investments
If Ms. Léonard considers that the network is in good condition, she agrees that it is still aging. She acknowledges that there may be more cracks in the tunnel, but doesn’t expect service outages like yesterday’s to happen again with age.
Major work needs to be done to give us another life cycle for the métro.
Éric Allain Caldwell, Chairman of the Board of Directors de la STM
The STM's maintenance deficit is estimated at $3.8 billion. In 2023 alone, the STM has gone from $100 million to $430 million per year. “We are able to maintain ourselves [in relation to the maintenance deficit]”, Marie-Claude Léonard thinks, however.
On the 4.4 billion dollar investment plan over 10 years for the asset maintenance, $3.3 billion is confirmed. Some of the amounts have not yet been confirmed by the provincial or federal government, indicates the chairman of the STM board of directors, Éric Alan Caldwell.
