The countdown has begun: the City of Quebec is giving itself another year to rally a majority of its population to the tramway. In this battle for social acceptability, councilor Maude Mercier Larouche is acting as general. The duty followed her last month during a citizen meeting in Beauport, where the tram, with a meager 24% of support, is in hostile territory.
The meeting took place at the community center Le Pivot, a well-appointed place to host an evening devoted to turning public opinion on board. Camped in her high heels and surrounded by an armada of experts from the Réseau de transport de la Capitale (RTC), Maude Mercier Larouche responded to criticism in the hope of confounding the skeptics, still numerous in Beauport, who doubted the relevance of the tramway for Quebec.
For three hours, the councilor chatted with the small groups that gathered around her to curse and, more rarely, to bless the planned tramway.
“It’s always the waste of money that bothers me,” laments Jean-Claude, a borough resident for whom the four billion dollar bill is simply not worth the candle. Her friend Mylène, she maintains that the price has now reached 10 billion – erroneous information, as many will hear in the evening.
“The majority of the sums invested have nothing to do with the tramway, explains the director general of the RTC, Alain Mercier. We are mainly taking advantage of the project to renovate all the municipal infrastructure that has been neglected for 75 years. »
Fresh sidewalks, new sewers, buried wires, new paved roads; “In the end, continues Mr. Mercier, all the residents of Quebec, and even of Canada, will finance the beauty of our city”.
No matter, according to Mylène: teleworking will make a tram of such magnitude obsolete. “We hear about lots of other options, but I have the impression that everything is already ‘canned’. Why not study a light metro or the addition of buses? »
“The tramway is modernity”, assures Maude Mercier Larouche. It will allow, enumerates the adviser, to reduce road congestion, to abound the greenery, to embellish the districts all along its 19 km route.
“Everything is beautiful, it’s like magic, it solves all the problems”, launches Jean-Claude, ironically. The latter does not believe in the virtues of the tramway so much vaunted by the City. “It’s a unilateral plea, here it’s a promotional showcase,” he says, adding, however, that he appreciated “the exchange with the adviser”.
Others, like Simon, adhere more to the gratuitousness advocated by Éric Duhaime, “even if[il] don’t like the guy”.
“I don’t believe a crumb in the environmental benefits of the tram,” he adds.
Alongside the opponents are also some convinced. Daniel, a retired CEGEP teacher, took the bus for 30 years to get downtown. No need to woo him: the capital, according to him, needs a tram.
“In the morning, the buses are always full,” he observes. We know how important a structuring network is for a big city. »
He laments that the pandemic has overshadowed the City’s communication efforts. “Here, the support is at 24%, it’s quite pathetic. What took all the place during COVID was the criticism,” notes Daniel. Yet, he says, “to do a project like that, you need engineers. Not stage managers”.
The challenge of transparency
For six months, Maude Mercier Larouche, a newcomer to politics with a background in communications, has been traveling through all the neighborhoods of the city, pilgrim’s staff in hand, to preach the good news of mobility to come. A sign that its challenge is sizeable in a capital that has long rolled out the greatest number of kilometers of highway per inhabitant in Canada: after answering questions from 3,760 citizens during more than 70 meetings, the tram won a slim 3 % support.
“The results of the latest survey, published last June, confirm that the needle is hard to move, but it has moved, indicates Mr.me Mercier Larouche. Among the people who live along the route, in Sainte-Foy, Sillery and Cap-Rouge, membership has increased by 17%. »
In Beauport, meanwhile, the number of converts fell 16%. However, the project faces several headwinds. On the radio, especially private, an almost daily stream of mockery pours out against the streetcar.
The felling of 1,500 trees becomes a “chainsaw festival”, although the town hall promises to plant 30,000 as compensation. ” Wake up ! even asked a popular morning host from Quebec about the tramway in mid-June. It’s an atomic bomb! I tell you: an atomic bomb! »
The counselor chooses the euphemism “a certain propaganda” to designate the phenomenon and invites people to “not give it too much importance”. Nevertheless: opponents of the tramway recently seized the courts, accusing the elected officials in power of perpetrating a “hijacking of democracy”.
The group Quebec deserves better promises that the formal notice sent to the City in June will turn into a lawsuit if the tram remains on the tracks – provided, however, that the citizens give generously to support the lawsuit defended by the cabinet by Guy-Bertrand.
This opposition, assures Maude Mercier Larouche, in no way shakes her conviction that the tramway, in Quebec, is necessary. “What we fight against is cynicism, and the best way to stop it is to be honest, authentic, sincere. »
Even if it means having to, if necessary, meet the entire city to convert it.