You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (December 2017) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 6,158 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Pont-tunnel Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|fr|Pont-tunnel Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine Bridge–Tunnel

Montreal entrance to tunnel, 2009
Overview
Location	Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Route	A-25 (TCH)
Crosses	St. Lawrence River
Operation
Opened	March 11, 1967; 57 years ago (1967-03-11)
Traffic	120,000 [1]
Character	Limited access highway
Technical
Length	1,391 m (4,563.6 ft) (tunnel section) 409 m (1,341.9 ft) (causeway section)
No. of lanes	6
Tunnel clearance	4.4 m (14 ft 5+1⁄4 in)
Width	37 m (121.4 ft)
Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine Bridge–Tunnel (Montreal)

The Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine Bridge–Tunnel ( French: Pont-Tunnel Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine) is a highway bridge–tunnel running over and beneath the Saint Lawrence River. It connects the Montreal borough of Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve with the south shore of the river at Longueuil, Quebec.

Named after Lower Canada political reformer Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, the Lafontaine Tunnel is an immersed tube structure, measuring 1,391 m (4,563.6 ft) long. It carries the Autoroute 25 expressway and passes beneath the main shipping channel in the Saint Lawrence River immediately downstream from the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It surfaces on Île Charron ( Îles de Boucherville at entrance/exit #1 of Autoroute 25), then continues by bridge to Longueuil. The bridge-tunnel sees about 120,000 daily crossings, of which 13% are trucks. ^[1] Its construction began in 1963 and it opened on March 11, 1967. ^{[2] [3]}

History

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 Longue-Pointe church 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, originally planned to complete 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, completing in 2025 at a total cost of $2.1 billion. ^[6]

Specifications

Each of the seven tunnel sections weighs 32,000 t (31,000 long tons; 35,000 short tons), ^[3] is 110 metres (360 ft) long, 37 metres (121 ft) wide and rises to a height of 8 metres (26 ft). 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]

See also

• List of crossings of the Saint Lawrence River
• List of bridges in Canada
• List of bridges in Montreal

References

External links

• Louis-Hippolyte Bridge–Tunnel (A-25) at Steve Anderson's montrealroads.com
• Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine Tunnel at Structurae

45°34′46″N 73°28′46″W / 45.57944°N 73.47944°W / 45.57944; -73.47944