The government will announce Thursday a new version of the Quebec-Lévis tunnel project without a highway link.
The information first released by TVA was confirmed at Duty late Tuesday afternoon. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) is abandoning its promise to create an additional road link in Québec between the two shores.
The idea of a tunnel dedicated to public transport will always appear in the plan, the latest version of which must be made public on Thursday.
The CAQ has been defending this project tooth and nail since its years in opposition, before 2018. Most experts in the field, however, believe from the start that it is a bad project to reduce traffic congestion.
At the time of writing these lines, the mayor of Quebec Bruno Marchand, had not yet commented on the news. Like his predecessor Régis Labeaume, Mr. Marchand was not a supporter of the project.
As for the mayor of Lévis, Gilles Lehouillier who is one of the most ardent defenders, he preferred to wait until Thursday to do so.
Long-awaited studies
In the campaign, the government had undertaken to make public the studies it had commissioned on the project, but the latter had been waiting since January.
Asked in March about the chances that the tunnel will see the light of day, François Legault again cast doubt. “Listen, we’ll look at the traffic study, then we’ll get back to you with data,” he said.
Relaunched on the possibility that the third link will only be used by public transport, as the Parti Québécois proposed during the election campaign, Mr. Legault repeated that he would wait for the publication of the studies.
During the election campaign, the member for Lévis, Bernard Drainville – then a CAQ candidate – strongly defended the project during a press conference. “Electric vehicles are going to take it, more and more [le tunnel]. Make that loose me with the GES [gaz à effet de serre] ! he had said.
The latest version of the project presented in April 2022 estimated the project costs at $6.5 billion.
More details will follow
With Florence Morin-Martel and François Carabin