A Ceiling Tile In Montreal's Ville-Marie Tunnel Fell Off & A Car Drove Into It
No one was hurt.
Ville-Marie Tunnel under downtown Montreal.
Traffic lanes have reopened after a ceiling tile in Montreal's Ville-Marie Tunnel came loose and was hanging low and a car drove into it at around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 29. The tile may have caused some material damage but no one was injured, Quebec Ministry of Transport spokesperson Sarah Bensadoun told Narcity Québec.
La Presse was the first to report this story.
Bensadoun said crews were immediately dispatched to the tunnel to close two of the three traffic lanes and completely remove the hanging tile. Since damage to the tunnel ceiling was only superficial, officials reopened the lanes at around 2 p.m.
As of Wednesday morning, an engineer is in the process of evaluating whether additional work is needed, the spokesperson said.
"We are not talking about structural damage, we are really talking about an incident, there is no safety issue with the structure itself," she assured.
"If there were, we would not hesitate to completely close the accesses to the tunnel if there was a safety concern for motorists passing through that sector. We wouldn't take that kind of risk at all."