(Lévis) To connect the city centers of Quebec and Lévis, the Legault government now plans to build two tunnels, with lanes reserved for public transport, but only during rush hour.
Posted at 1:10 p.m.
This was confirmed Thursday by the Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, during a press conference to present the new version of the project, in which Prime Minister François Legault did not participate.
Exit, therefore, the project presented with great fanfare by the CAQ government in May 2021, which provided for a huge two-storey tunnel valued at 10 billion.
This new idea of drilling, under the St. Lawrence River, two more modest tunnels, will represent savings for taxpayers of approximately 3 billion, welcomed Mr. Bonnardel.
The cost of the project is now estimated at 6.5 billion.
Unlike the old version, some lanes will be reserved for buses, but not at all times. There will therefore be no lane reserved exclusively for public transport.
We will focus instead on dynamic lane management, so that at least one lane is reserved for buses during peak hours, during which heavy trucks will not have access to the tunnel.
The Legault government has always been criticized for its inability to produce studies proving the need for a third link in Quebec, the bill for which will be passed on to all Quebec taxpayers.
Thursday, he argued that by 2036, 36,800 additional trips between shores will worsen traffic, which has increased by more than 20% in nearly 20 years on the two current aging bridges.
Quebec estimates that in ten years, 143,000 vehicles per day will cross the Pierre-Laporte bridge, whereas it was designed for a daily flow of 90,000 vehicles and that we record 126,000 per day.
Project still as “absurd” and “harmful”
In the morning, the deputy of Québec solidaire in Jean-Lesage, Sol Zanetti, declared that the Coalition avenir Québec “stubbornly persisted” in presenting a project “to widen highways”.
In a press briefing at the National Assembly, Mr. Zanetti described the revised draft third link as “ridiculous, harmful, absurd”. “It’s an urban sprawl project, an increase in the GHG balance. »
He deplores in particular the abandonment of the “only business which could have had a quarter of a thousandth of a fraction of common sense, that is to say public transport”.
For the Liberal spokesperson for the environment, Isabelle Melançon, it is obvious that François Legault was absent “because he must know himself that it makes no sense”.
With this “electoralist” project, the government is essentially trying to “save the seat of Éric Caire”, for his part denounced the PQ Pascal Bérubé.
In 2018, Mr. Caire, who is the current Minister of Cybersecurity and Digital, promised to resign if the CAQ backed down on the third link file.
“There is no MP who will see his re-election worth as much as him,” quipped Mr. Bérubé.