The Legault government has presented a new version of its third Quebec-Lévis link project, of which it has reviewed the costs, which have gone from a pharaonic 10 billion to a hefty 6.5 billion. But, for lack of serious studies, it has still not answered, with supporting scientific evidence, the preliminary question: do we really need it? And if this is the case, is this highway tunnel the optimal infrastructure, the model that will prevail in 15 years, when Quebec will progress on the road to carbon neutrality?
Flanked by the Deputy Premier and Minister responsible for the Capitale-Nationale region, Geneviève Guilbault, the Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, unveiled a sketch of a more modest project than the one envisaged last May. Thus, there is no longer any question of building the largest under-river tunnel in the world with a tunnel boring machine of an unprecedented diameter that would have had to be developed. Instead, a “twin-tube” link is proposed consisting of two side-by-side tunnels that can be dug with existing and proven machinery. The government thus avoids imagining a project that presents an enormous technical challenge with the ensuing risks.
Minister Bonnardel spoke of humility, which is conceivable, but also of “galloping inflation”, which is frankly strange when you think that the first sod will not be lifted for several years. It is as if he feared that the Bank of Canada, which the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, trusts, will not be able to meet its inflation targets over the long term.
With 6.5 billion at stake, the project is no longer quite the same. Still of the same length, an ambitious 8 kilometres, the two tubes will together contain four lanes rather than the six originally planned. Cars and trucks will drive in three lanes instead of four. Buses will travel in a single lane, one way in the morning and the other in the afternoon, following the traditional 9-to-5 model. This “dynamic management”, as it is called, is a significant reduction in the public transport contribution of the project.
This will be enough to make it attractive, assures the minister, which it is not at the present time, one can easily recognize. At least, the route is connected to stations of the future tramway in Quebec.
According to François Bonnardel, the two bridges “stuck” to the west are “an error of the past”, which has led to “50 years of development in the west and an imbalance in the east”. Rather, it was the only choice at the time. He talked about densification through the construction of condo towers as a fad not all families are ready to embrace. As if this intensive densification were the only possible model. Urban sprawl, there will be: with the third link, young families will be able to settle in small municipalities east of Lévis, he argued.
The Minister distributed a ten-page document containing some statistics on current traffic on the Laporte Bridge and projections that conclude that it is saturated and clogged.
The document contains a funny comparison on the number of bridges per million inhabitants. There are 2.44 bridges per million inhabitants in the metropolitan region of Quebec, 3.85 bridges per million inhabitants in the Ottawa-Gatineau region and a formidable 8.7 bridges per million inhabitants in Montreal. Of course, Montreal is an island. As a mocking Sol Zanetti pointed out on Thursday, Venice has more than 400 bridges and 260,000 inhabitants.
The CAQ government will take stock of the project each year, and a real business plan will be presented in 2025. In the meantime, it is clear that the data put forward for the construction of the third link are at best fragmentary, at worst absurd. The CAQ ministers say they rely on the study that Bruno Massicotte produced in 2016 for the Couillard government. However, as reported on Thursday The dutythe Polytechnique Montréal professor believes that this study is outdated and that several questions remain unanswered.
In the absence of up-to-date studies carried out according to the rules of the art, including an environmental assessment, this third link project takes on the appearance of a waking dream whose episodes are awaited. We have no doubt that in the long term, the government, whatever its color, will not launch headlong into a project of 6.5 billion without scientific projections on urban mobility and without an integrated plan for the development of the territory. long-term. But, for now, the third link remains a tunnel in Spain.