(Lévis ) Bernard Drainville is fed up with people who denounce the fact that the construction of a third road link between Quebec and Lévis will increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. “Let go of me with the GHGs!” “, he thundered Friday, pleading that the future was in the electric car.
Updated yesterday at 10:38 p.m.
In a press conference with the leader of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), François Legault, on the terrace of the Chevalier-De Lévis, where Old Quebec is displayed like a postcard, the CAQ candidate pointed to the Saint River -Laurent the place where drilling is currently being carried out in order to know the nature of the ground where the tunnel must pass.
“Yesterday, I was visiting a factory. I gathered workers around me and said at the end: “Go ahead with your messages and your questions.” Third link. The wait has become hellish. Infernal! The wait is hellish, and in both directions! “, he said with emotion.
“I had people coming from the North Shore and telling me: ‘I finished work at 3 a.m., sometimes I had to wait an hour, an hour and a half to come back to the South Shore.’ […] The expectation that we live, it does not need to be studied. You just need to be in your tank, in traffic, and the damn wait is getting longer and longer,” he added.
Bernard Drainville also said that the vehicles that will circulate in the tunnel will be “more and more” electric.
The CAQ’s third road link project is a four-lane tunnel, at an estimated cost of $6.5 billion, two lanes of which would be reserved for buses during peak hours. It would take at least 10 years to build it. Quebec also announced that it would be banned from selling new gasoline vehicles starting in 2035.
For his part, François Legault has undertaken to make public the results of the drilling work when they are available. However, these data will not be published during the election campaign, even if the CAQ is asking “a strong mandate” from the citizens of the region to support the third link.
The PQ promises a light train
Opposed to the CAQ’s third link project, the Parti Québécois (PQ) unveiled its solution on Friday to tackle the issue of intershore mobility: a light rail between Quebec and Lévis. The overall project, which would go as far as the Lebourgneuf sector, could cost “between 4 and 5 billion”, including 3.6 billion for the section located between the two shores.
If it takes power, the PQ would create a light rail line from downtown to downtown, between Quebec and Lévis. The route would also connect the Lebourgneuf, Vanier, Saint-Roch, ExpoCité and Parliament Hill sectors in Quebec City to the Desjardins sector in Lévis. The new public transport line would be 15 kilometers long. It is an under-river link that would connect the two shores.
According to the Parti Québécois, this proposal would make it possible to connect five “major” regional hubs for which the public transport offer “must be improved”, and the new line will “connect perfectly” to the tramway project under construction in Quebec.
The route would be buried from the Desjardins sector in Lévis to the Saint-Roch pole (7 kilometres), it would then be on the surface to the end of the route (8 kilometres). The cost range for the entire project is between 4 and 5 billion, argued the PQ leader. The sub-river portion between Quebec and Lévis alone would cost $3.6 billion.
Critical QS Drainville
The parliamentary leader of Québec solidaire (QS), Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, for his part criticized Mr. Drainville’s statement on greenhouse gas emissions. “It seems to me a good illustration of the importance of the climate crisis for François Legault’s team,” he said on the sidelines of a press briefing on seniors in Gaspé.
It’s not just a matter of taking all motor cars and changing them all to electric cars. We must also transform the way we move around the territory. Producing a vehicle in itself emits GHGs. Everyone understood that. We are no longer in 1994.
Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, parliamentary leader of QS
“Bernard Drainville understood nothing about climate change and urban sprawl, neither did François Legault,” he added. According to Mr. Nadeau-Dubois, the third link is only an “electoral kid’s license invented by the CAQ”.
Québec solidaire unveiled this week that it wanted to establish a rapid bus service (SRB) “from downtown Lévis to western Québec, via the Québec bridge”. The Liberal Party of Quebec promises to extend the tramway project in Quebec to the South Shore while the Conservative Party of Éric Duhaime proposes a highway that would cross part of Île d’Orléans to join a new bridge to Levis.
With the collaboration of Charles Lecavalier, The Press