Auto-solo at the La Fontaine tunnel | No rush hour ban planned for the moment

Quebec does not currently plan to ban solo driving in rush hour in the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel, in order to relieve the significant congestion apprehended there, confirmed Thursday the Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault. .

Henri Ouellette-Vezina
The Press

“We are not at this moment at a stage where we want to prohibit or oblige anything. We are in the very strong recommendation, ”said Ms.^me Guilbault on the sidelines of a media visit to the tunnel on Thursday, a few days before the closure of three lanes out of six of the infrastructure, until 2025.

The idea of ​​banning solo driving during the morning and evening points was initially suggested on Wednesday by the president of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal (CCMM), Michel Leblanc. Prime Minister François Legault said he was “not closed” to the idea in the hours that followed.

M^me Guilbault maintains that his teams especially want to “wait to see how it will go on Monday”. A monitoring committee will be in place and will hold meetings every day, morning and evening, in order to “adapt as we go”. Will there be any adjustments to mitigation measures? “Probably,” replied the minister, reiterating however that the authorities will have to be given a few days to assess the situation.

“By dint of repeating the message, I think that there may be someone who will prefer public transport to their car, so we may not have to come to that,” she insisted on the ban on solo driving during rush hour.

“We can’t exclude anything,” however qualified Minister Guilbault. “I don’t expect a miracle. It’s going to be tough. There are undoubtedly people who will try to take their car and who will see that the traffic is restrictive, annoying, and then make the choice to take public transport, to carpool or to telecommute, ”she said. To hear.

Everything will be “safe”

Wanting to be reassuring, M^me Guilbault assured that the tunnel remains safe and that “all the emergency services will be present to ensure that we can intervene quickly in the event of an accident, in order to minimize the impact on traffic”.

Over the past few days, the Minister has repeatedly shown herself to be open to implementing new mitigation measures if necessary, without however specifying exactly what could be involved. Voices are being raised more and more to criticize the inadequacy of the measures in place, the “improvisation” surrounding them or even the little time that Quebec has left for the population to adapt.

“There’s not all improvisation. What we are talking about, there are people who have been working on it for months, even years. And it is thanks to them that we will be able to keep our tunnel for at least 40 years, ”defended Thursday the one who is also Deputy Prime Minister. “People here are going to be at work 22 hours a day. I think we have to take the time to thank them,” she insisted.

M^me Guilbault says he is currently having discussions to assess “other possible river shuttle connections” this spring, in order to offer other options to users who wish to avoid congestion. She considers in passing a pity that one lane will remain on the Victoria Bridge until the end of November, one of the main crossings between the South Shore and Montreal, in the current context. “It is sure that it is flat, a bit like the REM which has been postponed. But these are realities that are beyond our control, with which we have no choice but to deal, ”she concluded.