This is the story of the guy who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day all his life. Both of his lungs are cancerous. He is in pain and can no longer function. Everyone around him, all the specialists tell him that he must change his habits, quit smoking, exercise. But he doesn’t want to know anything. He likes smoking too much. Change is too difficult. He goes to see his doctor and asks him to solve his problem. The latter, seeing the opportunity to gain notoriety, offered to transplant a third lung. Well, the Third Link Project is exactly that.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
The Quebec region is sick from its dependence on the automobile and urban sprawl. We no longer count the opinions of experts who say so, explain it logically, with supporting figures. But no, change is too difficult. So the current government is proposing to add a third link to it. Not knowing how to justify it, he even created a new indicator, the PPM1. An insult to intelligence, nothing less!
We could look at this with a certain detachment (and make fun of it as we did in Bye-bye 2021) if not for the astronomical cost.
As if our smoker had a third lung transplanted at the expense of health insurance. All Quebecers will have to assume the cost of this project and its harmful effect on the environment.
Not to mention the negative impact on the common effort to achieve our greenhouse gas reduction targets. Last week, the Minister of Transport presented us with a new version with two tubes which would be less expensive, at 6.5 billion. First of all, I don’t believe for a moment that this represents the real cost of such a project. In my experience, the main factors driving up the costs of public infrastructure projects are poor risk assessment, contingencies and additions to needs during the project. Think about it, building an 8.3 km tunnel comes with a pretty high risk profile. So if the Ministry is ready to invent PPM indices to make us swallow this project, to exclude the cost of work to join the current motorway network to this tunnel, what about the contingency provided for in this budget at 6.5 billion? I am convinced that this project, if it goes ahead, will end up above 10 billion.
Ten billion! With a rising interest rate, let’s say 3% to be on the safe side, this would amount to paying $300,000,000 in interest only, without repaying the principal, per year. How many years to repay? 25 years ? 50 years ? Payments over 50 years would amount to $390 million per year. Imagine putting that money elsewhere.
For example, supplying air purifiers to the 3,000 educational institutions at all levels in Quebec at $10,000 per school would amount to $30 million2. That’s about 5% of the payment for the first year only. Then, with the other 360 million from year 1, what do we do? How many schools are being renovated? How many hospitals? How many buses are we adding in Greater Montreal? Every year, for 50 years!
Ultimately, it’s a matter of choice. What can be done to solve this traffic problem? We should start with a logical analysis of the problem rather than providing the solution requested by certain commentators on Quebec radio. We will certainly find public transport solutions for a fraction of the cost. It will require changing some habits, yes. But we got there. Most governments in developed countries and cities have understood this and act accordingly. So, if our government continues to persist with this project, we may have to make another choice when we are asked to do so in a few months.