Papineau-Leblanc Bridge

Papineau-Leblanc Bridge
The Papineau-Leblanc bridge was one of the first cable-stayed bridges in North America.
Coordinates	45°34′34″N 73°40′00″W / 45.576°N 73.6666°W / 45.576; -73.6666
Carries	6 lanes of Autoroute 19
Crosses	Rivière des Prairies
Locale	Laval, Quebec and Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Maintained by	Transports Québec
Characteristics
Design	Cable-stayed bridge
Total length	420.6 m
Width	27.2 m
Longest span	240 m
History
Opened	1969
Statistics
Daily traffic	56,000 (2013)[1]
Location

The Papineau-Leblanc Bridge was one of the first cable-stayed spans in North America.^{[citation needed]} It is part of Quebec Autoroute 19 and is one of the connections between Laval and Montreal, Quebec, Canada, spanning Rivière des Prairies. It was fabricated from weathering steel and has an orthotropic deck. The freeway ends abruptly at the southern end of the bridge at the intersection of Henri Bourassa Boulevard, where Autoroute 19 follows Avenue Papineau down to Quebec Autoroute 40.

The Leblanc portion of the name comes from the name of a street in Laval that was expropriated to build the autoroute. That street was named after Alpha Leblanc, a local landowner. Portions of that street remain on both sides of the autoroute.

In 2000, a proposition to rename the bridge after the late Pietro Rizzuto was initially approved, then rejected by the Commission de Toponymie du Québec, which ruled that the name Papineau-Leblanc was already entrenched in local culture and non-controversial. Most locals simply refer to this bridge as Papineau.^[2]