Would a possible third link have two, four or six lanes? The CAQ government promised Thursday morning to “evaluate” the needs by mentioning, for the first time, to reduce the size of the tunnel which must connect Quebec and Lévis.
In an exchange between Quebec solidaire and the CAQ, Thursday morning at the Blue Room, the Prime Minister did not question the merits of the tunnel. However, he does not rule out the idea of reducing the number of lanes, for the moment planned for six.
“The Minister of Transport is seeing if it takes two more lanes, four more lanes. In total, do we need two, four, six lanes? This is what we are looking at, ”said François Legault.
He also said that “a fairly accurate estimate of how much the adjusted project will cost” will be presented over the next few months.
On May 17, Prime Minister Legault and his Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, presented to the public the government’s vision of the third link, a tunnel 8.3 km long and 19.4 m wide with six traffic lanes. The cost of the project varied, at the time, between 6 and 10 billion dollars.
The government has since been hounded by many opponents of the project, who are worried about its price, deplore its environmental consequences and question its relevance. In the National Assembly, no opposition party supports the project in its current form.
“We, at the CAQ, think that we need a third link between Quebec and Lévis,” repeated Mr. Legault Thursday morning. At the end of January, its Minister of Transport promised that the first sod of the project would be raised before the next electoral appointment, a promise made during the last campaign which brought the CAQ to power.