(Quebec) The new third link, whose budget is 6.5 billion, will allow the towns located east of Lévis to develop and attract residents, says the Legault government. This urban sprawl will be difficult “to endorse”, estimates the mayor of Quebec Bruno Marchand.
Posted at 1:10 p.m.
Updated at 5:18 p.m.
This is what Transport Minister François Bonnardel said Thursday during a press conference to present the new version of the motorway tunnel project, in which Prime Minister François Legault did not participate. The minister has confirmed that the huge two-storey tunnel valued at 10 billion announced in May 2021 is falling by the wayside. Unlike the old version, which provided for two reserved lanes, we will focus instead on “dynamic management” leaving one lane for public transit during rush hours.
But what especially attracts attention is the arguments presented by the government to justify the project. Mr. Bonnardel and his colleague Geneviève Guilbault, minister responsible for the Capitale-Nationale, do not want to talk about urban sprawl. Instead, they use the terms “revitalization” and “rebalancing land use planning”. But their objective is to allow increased development east of Lévis.
“There are laws to protect agricultural land […], but one day, these cities have the right to raise their hands. There are mayors who don’t necessarily want densification, and who say: “I would just like that, to have the possibility of having 40 more houses.” Revitalizing the area east of Lévis is an important balance to find for the next few years,” explained Transport Minister François Bonnardel. “It’s a fashion, to densify sectors,” he added.
Concerns in Quebec
The mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand, was not reassured by the presentation. “Rebalancing means developing the east as we developed the west. So that means more urban sprawl. »
I have nothing against the fact that families want to settle where they want. The issue here is the impact it has on transportation and on GHGs, which prevent us from reducing our GHG emissions in order to reach our targets. [climatiques].
Bruno Marchand, Mayor of Quebec, following the press briefing
Mr. Marchand, who did not applaud at the end of the presentation, told the media that “it is certain that we will have difficulty endorsing a project that would add urban sprawl”.
This overhaul of the highway tunnel project between Quebec and Lévis, a CAQ election promise, was made necessary by “galloping inflation” and the labor shortage, said Transport Minister François Bonnardel.
Instead of a single giant six-lane tunnel, with a 10 billion bill, this new version instead offers two tunnels, four lanes and a 6.5 billion bill.
IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT
The 8.3 km route between Autoroute 20 in Lévis and Autoroute Laurentienne in Quebec is the same.
Montreal Bridges
Few new facts were made during the announcement, as the mayor of Quebec pointed out. “Today we are presented with a vision. We’re going to need evidence, we’re going to need facts, we’re going to need data. Much remains to be demonstrated. We will applaud this project when they are able to answer our questions,” he said. Mr. Bonnardel had no new study to provide to the media.
It is not possible, for example, to have in hand the study which allows François Legault to affirm that “the waiting time within ten years will be higher in Quebec than on the bridge [Samuel-De] Champlain or on the Jacques-Cartier bridge in Montreal”.
The government document reads more like an advertising flyer. It is argued that Longueuil would not be the same if the Jacques-Cartier Bridge and the metro had not been built. The government has even created a new indicator, the PPM: the number of “bridges per million inhabitants”. Montreal and its 18 bridges are big winners, with 8.7 bridges per million. The metropolitan region of Quebec, which is not on an island, would therefore be in deficit with its 2.44 PPM. In this comparison, the Ministère des Transports does not include the population of the cities of Longueuil, Laval or Brossard, for example, but that of Lévis in Québec.
Engineer Bruno Massicotte believes that the new version is preferable to that presented in 2020, with its single tube of 19.4 m. “No one had done that on Earth,” said Mr. Massicotte, who produced a study in 2016 on the Quebec-Lévis tunnel at the request of the government. However, the expert from Polytechnique Montréal believes that a bridge would be the best solution for the third link, and that urban sprawl is inevitable with this infrastructure. “It will promote urban sprawl on the South Shore. That is unavoidable. »
Opposition criticism
Opposition parties criticized this new proposal, not always for the same reasons. The deputy of Québec solidaire in the riding of Jean-Lesage in Québec, Sol Zanetti, accuses the ministers of the Legault government of lying by asserting that the third link will not encourage urban sprawl.
PHOTO FRANCIS VACHON, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Sol Zanetti, MP in solidarity with Jean-Lesage
“They have managed to make a project which is even worse than the previous one, a project which, to save money, will slash the only business which had a quarter of a thousandth of a fraction of common sense, the transport together,” he said.
At the other end of the spectrum, the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, Éric Duhaime, prefers to build a bridge to the east, less expensive than a tunnel. “The real news is that they’re going to delay the project even further. We won’t be able to drive in this twin-tube, if it is built one day, for another 10 years. It’s not a twin tube, it’s starting to look like a thingy,” Duhaime said.