(Quebec) The preparatory works for the tramway began with the good weather in Quebec, even if the City still does not know the final cost of the project and even though members of the opposition repeat that the route could be amputated.
Workers were busy Thursday on rue Canardière, blocked to traffic. The works must allow the passage of the tramway at this precise location between the Vieux-Limoilou and Maizerets districts.
Yet the unelected leader of the second opposition said several times this week, citing an anonymous source, that the project of about twenty kilometers would be amputated by six of them. Mayor Bruno Marchand’s office categorically refuted Patrick Paquet’s comments in an email to The Press.
“It’s a scandal,” shouted the head of Équipepriorite Québec on Monday on Radio X. The party, which has two councillors, is the only one at city hall to oppose the most important project. of infrastructure in the history of the capital.
The host Dominic Mrais added. Citing also an anonymous source, he assured that the project announced at 4 billion would ultimately cost 10. To reduce the bill, the City would be reduced to sacrificing the tunnel between Upper and Lower Town.
QUEBEC CITY IMAGE
The route of the Québec tramway must cover 19.3 km.
“The preferred scenario is to stop at the Grand Théâtre. We’re cutting the tunnel that’s worth 2 billion. We are at 8, ”he said on the air. In its first phase, the project would therefore only be present in Upper Town, let go of the facilitator, ie “from IKEA to Cartier”.
And yet, on Thursday, they were there, in Lower Town, these workers preparing Canardière for the arrival of a tram that would not come in the end?
The mayor’s office brushed aside these rumours. “There is no question of cutting the route of the tramway”, assured in an email the press attaché of the mayor Bruno Marchand, Thomas Gaudreault.
“The groups that oppose the project like to invent all sorts of rumors from ‘reliable sources’, but they have no confirmation. Same thing for the price. This false information circulates while the final envelopes are not even opened. »
The mayor’s office accuses the leader of the second opposition of saying “one thing and its opposite on the airwaves”.
The leader of the official opposition, who supports the project, wonders about the exit of Patrick Paquet. “I don’t think our job is to play politics with anonymous sources,” Quebec First chief Claude Villeneuve said this week.
“It’s unlike anything I can get for information and the status of the project when I left the tramway construction committee last October,” he says. I really want to believe that things may have changed since then, but that would be an exorbitant change. »
The final price still unknown
If the rumor machine is racing, it is partly because of the opposition campaign led by Priorité Québec. It is also because of the delays that add up around the tramway, first announced in 2018 by Régis Labeaume.
Initially promised for 2026, then 2028, the City is now talking about commissioning in 2029.
The total price of the contract is also unknown. Ex-mayor Labeaume spoke of 3.3 billion in 2018. The last amount mentioned by the City was 3.9 billion.
But in an inflationary context where the price of projects explodes (Ile aux Tourtes bridge) and others are abandoned (third link), it is certain that the final cost will be higher.
Quebec agreed in February with Alstom for the purchase of 34 trains at a cost of 569 million. The City initially thought of paying 400 million.
The City is currently negotiating with two consortia for the largest contract of the project, namely the infrastructures, including the 1.8 km tunnel which must link the Upper Town to the Lower Town.
“It is the City that should eventually make an update, because the last public costs announced were 3.9 billion. Until further notice, it is the price that circulates,” said Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault recently.
Quebec was to file its case with the government in May. It will finally be at the beginning of summer. It is at this time that we will know more about the final cost of the tramway.
“It is impossible for anyone to know the final costs of the project. It would be risky to go with several rules of three as the second opposition has done on several occasions since the appointment of their new leader, ”added Mayor Marchand’s cabinet in its response to La Presse.
“It is therefore normal for us to refute this information that is completely false and based on absolutely nothing factual. »
With Tommy Chouinard, The Press