Quebec Premier François Legault made it sound so easy when he announced in Quebec City this month that his party’s election promise to build a commuter tunnel under the Saint Lawrence River was as good as done.
“We’re delivering the goods,” Mr. Legault said. “We have fulfilled our promise.”
If that promise from the leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec had been limited to nothing more than making a politically timed announcement aimed at car-loving suburban Quebec City voters, then, yes, by all means, mission accomplished.
But if the promise was to improve transit in and around a city that is slightly smaller than Winnipeg, to meet the needs of commuters instead of pandering to their votes and to do so in a cost-effective way that doesn’t favour the car at exactly the wrong moment in history, then he sailed well wide of the mark.
Instead, Mr. Legault has etched his name on the kind of politically motivated project that could one day be remembered as his grand folly. It’s the 1976 Olympic Stadium, but for SUVs.
The so-called Third Link will travel 8.4 kilometres under the river, connecting the suburb of Lévis on the south shore with the provincial capital and its suburbs on the north shore.
The cement tube will have three lanes in each direction: two for cars and one reserved for buses. The tunnel will take at least a decade to complete, although shovels will be in the ground in 2022, an election year. The price tag is estimated at $10-billion, give or take. Probably give.
Despite the high price, the likelihood of cost overruns due to its complexity, and widespread opposition in central Quebec City – whose voters do not vote CAQ – Mr. Legault’s project is an easy sell to his base of considerable support in suburban Quebec.
The Quebec City metropolitan area is striking for the fact that, while it straddles both sides of the Saint Lawrence, its two bridges across the river lie less than 200 metres from each other in the region’s western end.
But whatever the accident of history or geographical imperative behind the fact the old Quebec Bridge and the more modern Pierre Laporte Bridge are so close together, Quebec City commuters are not particularly hard-pressed.
Statistics Canada says that, in 2016, Quebec City area residents who travelled to work by car spent just 21 minutes commuting, compared to 24 minutes in Calgary, 25 minutes in Ottawa, 27 minutes in Montreal and Vancouver, and 30 minutes in Toronto.
And in Quebec City, as in other Canadian cities, public transit riders had travel times that were almost twice as long.
The idea of spending $10-billion-plus on an underground artery that will pump 50,000 vehicles per day across the river – that’s the government’s estimate; critics say it will be far fewer – mostly to reduce a 21-minute car commute is ludicrous.
The cost estimate itself is dubious. Mr. Legault said the tunnel will cost between $6-billion and $7-billion to complete, but added that there would no doubt be overruns of up to 35 per cent; hence the $10-billion price tag.
If the project’s booster is already preloading the cost overruns, then the wise observer will add in the overrun on the overrun. There is almost no chance the final bill will be just $10-billion, all to shorten commutes for a relative handful of drivers.
It’s even doubtful that commutes will, in fact, get shorter. The phenomenon of “induced demand” is well known to urban planners: If you build more roads, and those roads are free, then more people will choose to drive on them. Whatever relief is provided by adding a lane, or burrowing under a river, is quickly absorbed by an increase in traffic, and you’re back to where you started.
Mr. Legault’s tunnel is an idea straight out of the 1950s. It ignores the need to reduce dependence on the car. It ignores opposition in the neighbourhoods where the tunnel will deposit thousands of drivers. It ignores the fact that the tunnel will encourage developers to build far outside the city. And it ignores the exceptionally high cost.
It’s a naked vote-buying boondoggle that is the exact opposite of the kind of infrastructure project Canadian taxpayers should be financing.
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