I don’t know if Dominique Anglade and the Liberals will make political progress with their new proposal on public transit in Quebec, but it has merit.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
If I summarize, they are proposing a phase two of the Quebec tramway project. The details are yet to come, which requires some restraint, but I know the case no worse.
It is that in Quebec, you see, in recent years, intelligence and science have been cursedly lacking in the debates on the transportation of goods and people. Political expediency being the main basis for evaluating projects.
Political deficiency has taken over the science of mobility.
Quebec has developed three different public transit projects in the past 15 years.
Sam Hamad killed the first tramway project, with the complicity of the region’s elected federal conservatives, out of pure political expediency.
The second, that of the trambus with a route on both shores, saw the political Lévis become renegade and rush into the tunnel of the third link project, by the same opportunism.
And finally, if it were up to the elected representatives of the CAQ in the Quebec region, the blessed party of the outskirts, the current tramway bis project would not exist, always for the same reasons.
We must give credit to Premier Philippe Couillard, who really believed in it.
The Liberals, in the case before us now, are proposing a phase two which, in the current election, makes good sense and brings something concrete.
Complicated for those who do not know Quebec, but the Liberals propose, after the current east-west route whose preparatory work is underway, a new north-south route.
If we forget the idea of reaching the airport of Quebec, the first quality of the exercise is to extend the tram service to the north of the city, in the old suburbs of Quebec, even more than the current project does. .
Let me remind you that during the 2017 municipal elections, I opposed a tramway project that only covered downtown Quebec. I was convinced, and I still am, that the population would rebel against a project that would only cover this central part of the territory.
Since then, smart people have made me say that I was against all tramway projects. But hey, nothing to do there, you have to let go.
The PLQ goes even further, it believes that Lévis and Quebec should be connected by a tramway. wow! Political science is kamikaze here! But he is right.
He is careful not to comment on the idea of an under-river link to bring this tramway to the South Shore, which is wise.
Connecting the two shores by a structuring means of transport, we believed in it in Quebec.
Until the moment when the mayor of Lévis, Gilles Lehouillier, decides to simultaneously deny his word and the project he had helped to develop, and betrays Quebec with a magnificent backflip, thus turning his behind at the crib!
This gentleman, like Moses at Mount Sinai, experienced the revelation and understood that supporting the third bond would pay more for his re-election. A great leader.
I quote a paragraph from the excellent article by Guillaume Bourgault-Côté on the third link, The Bridge Breaker Tunnel1 in the September issue of News “Traffic studies show us beyond any doubt that it would not be justified to invest $1.5 billion for a tunnel,” said the Liberal MP for Lévis in 2011. The latter felt that, to solve the problems of inter-river congestion, the region should have lanes reserved for public transport. The elected official in question, Gilles Lehouillier, would become mayor of Lévis two years later, and one of the fiercest supporters of the third link (he did not respond to interview requests for this report).
Nothing to add, except that he already had common sense, this guy…
I will end by informing you that I have lived on Île d’Orléans for a long time, and that Mr. Duhaime’s proposal to build a bridge between the two shores, via the Island, as a third link, is crazy.
It was also the idea of the CAQ not so long ago, but they gave up, noting the imbecility of the project.
The Island is heritage, and half of its island population will immolate themselves before we take the decision to massacre a part of it. The other half will lie down in front of the first bulldozer who will come forward for this purpose.
This matters little to Mr. Duhaime, like his opposition to the tramway, for that matter.
The objective is to enter the National Assembly at all costs.
Without faith or law, as long as it pays.
Between us
I’ve always been a bit obsessed with the political, social and economic environment in Germany that brought Adolf Hitler to power.
For those interested, read: How a Democracy Dies, The End of the Weimar Republic and the Rise of Hitlerpublished by L’Artilleur.
Using new declassified information, Benjamin Carter Hett gives us the most thorough chronological account I know of those years, from the birth to the end of this Weimar Republic, with the coming to power of Chancellor Hitler.
I told myself that with the current political zoo, and to come to our American neighbors, perhaps it was worth starting to document…
How a democracy dies
Benjamin Carter Hett
The Gunner