On November 20, the Legault government mandated CDPQ Infra to “improve mobility and fluidity in the metropolitan community of Quebec, particularly between the two shores”. However, on the same day, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Geneviève Guilbault, like François Legault, herself indicated in the media that the construction of a third motorway link would respond to the first part of this mandate. This is where CDPQ Infra’s freedom of choice could end! Will the latter manage to carry out independent reflection on such a political order?
Numerous origin-destination surveys have already shown this: 85% of motorists who cross one of the two existing bridges during rush hours leave from the west of Lévis to go to work or study in the western sector of Quebec. Most of the significant current and planned real estate development contributes to maintaining this state of affairs. The mayor of Lévis has never promoted the idea of densifying the east of his city, where we are also quickly encountering agricultural land. The problem is well-defined in the West, and a variable like teleworking will not change anything in the long term. It is in the west that we need to make corrections.
If we really want to improve the mobility of people rather than vehicles, why not reserve a lane of the Pierre-Laporte bridge for carpooling, practiced by barely 12% of people, according to the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility ? Why not transform one of the nine current automobile lanes on the two bridges into a lane reserved for public transport, for example on the Quebec Bridge? As CDPQ Infra will see, the new South Shore Metrobus line ends near the Quebec Bridge and a new lane reserved for these Metrobuses is under construction at the north exit of the bridge, towards the Laurier interchange hub of tram.
Finally, why not consider the possibility of immediately building an extension of the tram line on the Quebec Bridge towards two incentive parking lots on the South Shore, one to the west, the other to the ‘East ? Rapid and easy passage over the river is an essential condition for generating a significant modal transfer from individual cars to public transport and thus freeing up space for heavy transport.
Collective or individual?
As for the second part of CDPQ Infra’s mandate, namely “improving public transportation for Quebec City”, the agent will not need six months to understand that the vast majority of numerous existing studies arrive at the same conclusion and to the current project: a tram mode circulating in the most densely populated and most attractive urban axis due to its numerous places of work, study and mass leisure. CDPQ Infra could improve this project by returning, for example, to the option of the long tunnel in the upper town. It could then also confirm and improve the components of a new structuring public transport network in Quebec which extends in all geographical directions and which falls back towards incentive parking at the ends of the tramway axis and at traffic hubs. exchanges already strategically chosen and located on its central axis.
CDPQ Infra’s planning exercise leads it to the following choice: focus on the development of a real structuring transport network on each bank with a river junction or continue to increase a road network that is already too dominant, cumbersome and doomed. to perpetual saturation. It’s almost a choice of values: the collective or the individual?
Will CDPQ Infra dare to go against the vision of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), always inclined to prioritize the second option in Quebec to ensure the acceptance of its suburban electoral base, known for its resistance to conceding automobile lanes to public transport?