The coloured lights on the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, installed with much fanfare and controversy during Montreal's 375th birthday celebrations a couple of years ago, haven't been working since Saturday because of the extreme cold weather.
But officials with the federal bridge authority are now saying the lights will be back on Tuesday night.
"The structure of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge expands and contracts with temperature changes, and this is completely normal," the bridge corporation tweeted earlier on Tuesday. "The bridge structure reacted more strongly on the weekend due to significant weather variations. Since the electrical equipment for the illumination behaves differently than the steel structure does, this caused an outage."
By late Tuesday afternoon, the bridge authority signaled that crews were able to get to the bottom of the issue, and the bridge lights should be back up and running by the evening.
The 2,800 bridge lights, part of a pet project of former mayor Denis Coderre for the city's 375th birthday celebrations in 2017, cost taxpayers $40 million.