This week, the Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, urged the population to rally to the third link, a “green” project.
In order to minimize the environmental impact of this one, the Minister indicated in his letter that “very quickly after its commissioning, it will not be[it] no longer possible to buy a gasoline vehicle in Quebec. Between 2035 and 2045, Quebec should see the conversion of most of its vehicle fleet into zero-emission vehicles. However, the Québec-Lévis tunnel will have a useful life of 125 years. The construction of the tunnel will itself be carbon neutral ”. Several aspects of this claim are problematic.
First of all, the electrification of the vehicle fleet cannot be used as a pretext for expanding the motorway network. Regarding the third link, the argument of electric cars does not rule out the fundamental question of the relevance of a new infrastructure in an axis where the needs are not demonstrated.
By justifying the third link by the fact that it will be used by electric cars within 15 years, the minister eliminates all of the negative externalities of the project. Even more, it eliminates a question of fundamental society: is it really in a highway infrastructure that we want to invest 10 billion, and this, while the mobility needs are glaring in all regions of Quebec (ferries, missing collective interregional links? , etc.) and that our existing road infrastructure is threatened by climate change?
Let’s also talk about the environmental impact of electric cars, which is not totally non-existent. If the electric car is carbon neutral in its daily use in Quebec, it is not in its construction.
In fact, in the analysis of the life cycle, one must take into account the impact of mining and the energy supply of production plants. All of these steps are not carbon neutral.
The electrification of transportation, we do not deny it, is one of the changes to be made in Quebec in order to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. However, with a view to genuinely sustainable mobility, as it is moreover defined in the government’s own Sustainable Mobility Policy – 2030, it would be much preferable to focus first on reducing the number of trips – electric or not – then on the transfer of trips to sustainable modes, to finally electrify the remaining trips. Remember that the most ecological car is always the one… that we do not build.
However, what we are currently being offered is not at all in this line of sight. By increasing road capacity, the third link will, on the contrary, have the effect of increasing the number of vehicles in circulation in our territory, congestion and urban sprawl. This reality is that of induced demand: the construction of new roads systematically generates additional vehicle traffic equivalent to the new capacity. By making it easier for individuals to travel by car alone, we influence their behavior: they travel more, move further from their place of employment and choose the car rather than public transport. Eventually, the road infrastructure is saturated again, and it’s back to square one.
This phenomenon explains why even the widest highways in the world have failed to stop traffic congestion. Today we seem to want to make the same mistake… for the modest sum of 10 billion!
At this price, why not show ourselves to be visionaries and exemplary in the development of our territory? In this sense, the debate on the third link hides above all a collective questioning of the place we want to give to the car in our living environments over the next century. This is not about waging a war on the automobile – we are all dependent on it to some degree due to the paucity of sufficiently effective alternatives. Rather, it is a question of stopping planning transport as we did 60 years ago and of redirecting our resources as a priority towards land use planning and the development of public, active and shared transport, in line with the challenges of our era.
* Co-signers: Alexandre turgeon, Director General of the Regional Environment Council – Capitale-Nationale region; Sarah V. Doyon, general manager of Trajectoire Québec; Marc-André Viau, director of government relations at Équiterre; Charles Bonhomme, specialist, communications and public affairs, at the David Suzuki Foundation
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