In 2021, the CAQ government refined the political marketing surrounding the third link, an essentially highway project, to make it an important element of a vast public transport network including the Québec tramway and a hundred kilometers of lanes reserved for buses to serve the suburbs as well as Lévis. The Réseau express de la Capitale was born.
It was a pale greening of the flagship promise of the Coalition avenir Québec, put forward during the 2018 election, which was to build a highway bridge between the two shores to the east passing over the tip of the Isle of Orleans.
In this version, the third link became a tunnel of unprecedented diameter, from city center to city center, containing a four-lane sub-river highway, to which were added two lanes for public transport – we were talking about electric buses.
Although summarily assessed, the costs of the mega-tunnel were prohibitive, in the region of 10 billion – at that point we stop counting – and such a work presented very high technological risks, not to mention this highway supposed to flow into the very center- city. The CAQ government still had no traffic studies showing the need to carry out the pharaonic project: everything indicated on the contrary that the volume of travel between the two shores did not justify it.
“It’s a challenge,” said François Legault, who would like to thwart the forecasts of demographers and make the national capital a metropolis.
A year ago, the Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, and the Deputy Premier and Minister responsible for the Capitale-Nationale region, Geneviève Guilbault, presented another version of the project, with two smaller tunnels rather than one and four lanes rather than the six of the previous version. The project cost was reduced to 6.5 billion; scientific studies on urban mobility were still missing. The mass transit element was reduced to only one lane during peak hours. At a press conference Thursday, the one who is now the Minister of Transport revealed that the costs of the project reviewed last year had gone from 6.5 to 9.5 billion to 10 billion.
The Deputy Prime Minister repeated that the abandonment of the third motorway link was a “difficult” decision, but “pragmatic and responsible”. Difficult political decision, it goes without saying – disastrous even. A decision that will fuel the disillusionment and cynicism of cheated voters who believed in the repeated commitment of CAQ figureheads. It is true that this commitment, rehashed over more than five years, has served the CAQ well in the national capital.
Both François Legault and Geneviève Guilbault have claimed that the pandemic has changed the situation. Teleworking has had an effect on travel habits between the two shores. Traffic is lower during peak hours and average flows are lower than in 2019.
In a document made public on Thursday, the Ministry of Transport contradicts this interpretation, stressing “that it would be reasonable to conclude that teleworking has little impact on the road network and public transport”. The ministry’s hypothesis is not the same as that adopted by the government: the results of future studies will not call into question the need for a third motorway link. We recall the importance of evaluating major infrastructure projects “over the long term, and not from a short or medium term perspective”.
Building a single tunnel could cost up to half as much. And since it is a public transit project, the federal government could be called upon to fund it up to 40%, the minister outlined. But one wonders whether the number of new passengers who could use the tunnel will be sufficient to justify such an investment. Mystery and gumdrop.
The ambition of the Legault government is to consolidate “a new strong metropolitan economic zone”, in the words of the minister. The new third link project is part of this vision of making the Greater Quebec City region an attractive and modern metropolis, capable of competing with the most dynamic agglomerations in the world.
However, the new project is not defined: no timetable, no budget, no solid studies, no technical analyses. It remains a figment of the imagination, just like this national capital transformed into a metropolis.