The government is beginning the international search for a partner to design and implement the third link promised by the CAQ before its accession to power in 2018. A “very important” step taken at a time when the precise contours of the project remain largely unknown.
On Friday, the government therefore launched a line in the water for 30 days to see if international consortia wanted to take it up and participate, in collaborative mode, in the design and implementation of the project. “A very concrete step”, according to the Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault, likely to reassure the skeptics.
“Obviously, we know that there is still skepticism among the population given the tribulations that this project has experienced,” she conceded at a press conference. We have a demonstration to make that we are resolutely committed to realizing it once and for all, the third link. »
Interested partners now have 30 days to raise their hands. The government will then sort through the bidders and conduct interviews with the aim of appointing the chosen one by 2025.
By 2027, “it will be irreversible”
The signing of a first contract will, however, have to wait until 2027. In the meantime, even if a vote could change the party in charge in Quebec, Deputy Prime Minister Geneviève Guilbault says she is convinced that “by now, it will be irreversible.”
“We cannot subordinate the necessary rigor, in this type of project, to electoral considerations,” said the Minister of Transport at a press conference. We will have penalties if we put an end to this, because serious consortia will have been formed, teams will have put together files, candidates will have made proposals and will have qualified. »
In six years, the government has presented both the largest tunnel in the world and a twin-tube. He moved the third link near Île d’Orléans, then from downtown Lévis to that of Quebec. He buried his promise of a motorway link to better resurrect it after a crushing defeat in Jean-Talon. In total, since 2018, it has spent $34 million on studies around the project – without the contours of the third link, today, emerging with any more clarity than six years ago.
Vagueness still surrounded the project on Friday at a press briefing. It could be a bridge or a tunnel. It could appear next to the Pierre-Laporte and Quebec bridges or in the city center of the capital. It could accommodate a tram or not. “We should still not lock up potential interested candidates,” argued M.me Guilbault, in something too precise. »
The only known criterion, at this time, is that trucks will have to circulate there in the name of “economic security of eastern Quebec”. The number of lanes, the height of the possible bridge, the space to be given to public transport and the maximum budget to be imposed remain, for the moment, under study – although the passage of cruise ships, which currently requires at the moment an air draft of at least 74 m in height will be taken into consideration.
More details will follow.