The automobile unquestionably reigns over the suburbs — and its kingdom is growing. Urban belts are becoming ever wider as the climate issue becomes more urgent. The City of Lévis, on the South Shore in the region of Quebec, is working on the implementation of a sustainable mobility plan, but some criticize it for missing the boat in terms of public transport.
or the moment, the car dominates as an empress the mobility of Lévisiens. They use it for 85% of their trips, and 81% of teenagers in Lévis have their driver’s license in their pocket at the age of 18.
“Even trips for distances of less than one kilometer are mainly made by car” in a proportion of 71%, observes a study carried out for one year by four students from the Graduate School of Territorial Planning and Regional Development from Laval University.
Public transit in Lévis is struggling to keep up with the automobile. Leaving from the west of the city to get to Cégep de Lévis, to the east, takes more than an hour by bus. The same journey, by car, turns out to be half as long – not to mention the punctuality problems, which penalize public transport users.
“At the evening rush hour eastbound, only 40% of Lévisien 2 buses respect the schedule,” write the researchers about the express shuttles deployed by the STLévis. The authors of the study published last summer note that “the travel time can then go from simple to double”.
The municipality is betting on the arrival of the Québec tramway by 2027 to reduce 27,000 hours of service on its territory. “Historically, says Jean-François Carrier, General Manager of STLévis, our network was structured to move people from Lévis to Quebec. Now, we want to do Lévis-Lévis. However, the challenge appears to be as great as its territory: spread over 448 km2the city is 20% larger than Montreal, but 14 times less densely populated than the metropolis.
A revolution “
“It’s still a revolution we’re making,” enthused the mayor of Lévis in November 2020. Never short of superlatives, Gilles Lehouillier then presented the plan to change the face of public transit in his city. by 2026.
This year, Lévis is implementing the centerpiece of this plan, namely the widening of the most congested sections of its main traffic arteries to add lanes reserved for buses.
Boulevard Guillaume-Couture and Route des Rivières, the two “backbones” of road transport in the city outside of Highway 20, will each have six lanes when the work is due for completion in 2025, in addition to reserved corridors active transport arranged on each side.
“In a first phase, we will unclog the problematic sectors, explains the president of the STLévis, councilor Steve Dorval. The goal is for us to have fluid traffic throughout Guillaume-Couture. It is not necessary to widen it completely. »
Professor of the Faculty of Planning at Laval University Jean Dubé doubts that additional lanes will manage to divert many Lévisiens from all-by-auto.
“We will have to get up early to convince people to abandon their vehicles,” he believes. The agent who travels is routine: if 90% of people take the car, it’s hard to break this habit without a shock. »
It is not enough, according to him, to add bus lanes and increase the frequency of passage to attract users. “It could be a step in the right direction,” explains Mr. Dubé. On the other hand, when the user gets out of his bus, he does not want to wait five minutes to be able to cross a six-lane boulevard while being splashed by cars or land in the middle of a sea of parking lots. Successful public transit, he says, designs the environment around it to make it user-friendly. »
Lévis promises to change the look of its boulevards, for the moment areas of concrete and billboards. “At the end of the work, you will no longer recognize Guillaume-Couture, maintains Steve Dorval. We will add a bike lane separated from the bus lane by a median strip. Today, we can no longer make projects without thinking about the environment, without thinking about trees. It will be included in our project, that’s obvious. »
However, the added lanes must be reserved for public transit for Mr. Dubé. According to the latter, the addition of lanes reserved for buses only a few hours a day amounts to “instrumentalizing public transit to widen roadways. The City has not yet determined whether the new lanes will be open to vehicular traffic outside of rush hour. “We will see in due time,” says Mr. Dorval.
Counter productive
For Christian Savard, general manager of the Vivre en ville organization, Lévis is doing too little and he is doing it, above all, too late. “What the City could have done first is slow down a growth model conducive to urban sprawl,” he believes.
According to him, the City prides itself on belonging to the big leagues, without having a public transport that is worthy of it. “We missed the appointments with the major projects. We could have brought the tramway to Lévis, it would have been grandiose and visionary, but Lévis decided to get off the tramway. We could have had a quick bus service [SRB] on Guillaume-Couture, but we only have a pale copy of that right now. »
The STLévis explains that budgetary reasons led to the abandonment of the SRB, in 2017. “We were talking about a project of 600 million dollars, says its general manager, Jean-François Carrier. There, it’s on a smaller scale, but we have a project of around $90 million, which will bring us the gains we want. »
For Christian Savard, however, it seems obvious that the addition of reserved lanes and hours of service will not be enough to change the deeply rooted motorization of Lévis residents. Especially when the administration in place is campaigning for the third link to come out of the ground.
“The mayor of Lévis is not crazy,” says Mr. Savard. I’ll give it to him, he knows how to calculate. He’s thinking about his balance sheet and he’s not wrong. If he gets paid for his third link, it’s all profit for him, at zero cost. »
“You have to be careful, retorts Steve Dorval. Lévis does not ask for a tunnel, Lévis supports the government in its project to make a tunnel. For Lévis, there are only gains. »
Increasing the kilometers of asphalt could prove to be counterproductive and aggravate the congestion that Lévis wishes to relieve. A study by Transportation for America published in 2020 lists multiple examples in the United States. The city of Jackson, Mississippi, thus extended its highway network by 63% between 1993 and 2017, a period during which its population grew by only 9%. Result: congestion increased tenfold by 317% during this period.
“People are capable of changing their habits,” concludes Université Laval professor Jean Dubé. “The proof is that elsewhere in the world, when freeways are removed, congestion decreases. »