Missing link is overpass at highway 40 junction extension
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At its March 5 council meeting, Pierrefonds-Roxboro borough passed two motions aimed at pushing the long-awaited highway 440 project forward.
The borough has called upon the Quebec ministry of transport to install solar powered street lights along the highway 440 right-of-way.
It also proclaimed solidarity with Kirkland, whose citizens have endured years of traffic hazards caused by Pierrefonds commuters using detours to escape rush-hour gridlock on St. Charles Boulevard. The anxious drivers create daily speeding hazards along residential Kirkland streets that connect to Hymus Boulevard. “We should be working as a team, together, to be able to influence the government toward a decision on this. We’re at that point,” beamed an enthusiastic Mayor Monique Worth.
“We want to work together with Kirkland, Dollard des Ormeaux, Yolande James, Geoff Kelley, Pierre Marsan and the provincial government in order to see this happen.”
According to Mayor Worth, the highway 440 project already has the support of all levels of government. The Quebec government through the ministry of transport has owned the land along the right-of-way for decades.
“The City of Montreal is going to pay for building the urban boulevard,” she observed. However the mayor noted that the remaining stumbling block has stalled construction for decades.
The mayor acknowledged that the province is currently rebuilding more overpasses than building new ones.
“We don’t seem to have priority, because everything else is happening at the same time,” she noted. “You have the Turcot interchange that came in the picture and we had Notre Dame before that. We had Pie IX before that. So everything has to be prioritized.”
If Quebec funds the plan, it will be the West Island’s biggest infrastructure project in decades. Besides being a boon to local commuters, permitting heavy tractor-trailer trucks to bypass Montreal through Laval via the 440 will reduce urban pollution as well as wear and tear and heavy congestion on routes such as the Metropolitain and Ville-Marie expressways and eastern Notre Dame boulevard leading to the Lafontaine tunnel.
“That’s why we have been working on this for at least the eight years that I have been here.
