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QUEBEC — The Legault government intends to give the green light to a multibillion-dollar tramway project in Quebec City but also keep alive the dream of an additional automobile link between the capital city and South Shore Lévis.
Initially reported by FM93 radio, other media picked up on the news Wednesday, with Premier François Legault and Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault set to make the announcement at a Thursday afternoon news conference.
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The moves are widely seen as the government’s attempt to patch up relations with voters in the Quebec City region following Legault’s decision to break a 2018 election promise to build an automobile and public transit tunnel between Quebec City and Lévis.
At the time, the government said studies of traffic movement in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many public servants got used to working from home, no longer justified such costly infrastructure.
That broken promise sparked a Coalition Avenir Québec byelection loss to the Parti Québécois in October 2023 in the riding of Jean-Talon, leading to a massive slide in public support for the CAQ across Quebec.
Legault tried to resurrect the project, which fuelled further cynicism.
The government now plans to announce it is giving the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility a mandate to relaunch studies into a new link, a third bridge for the region that will cross the St. Lawrence River somewhere between L’Île d’Orléans and the Port of Quebec, Radio Canada said.
The other two bridges are the 53-year-old Pierre Laporte Bridge and the historic 107-year-old Quebec Bridge, which is being given a facelift.
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No price tag is attached to the plan, but the government intends to invoke economic reasons and public opinion to justify the project. There has also been internal CAQ caucus grumbling from Quebec City region MNAs who fear they will bear the wrath of voters in the 2026 election.
Guilbault herself made reference to a highway link in an X post on Wednesday. She said it was “irresponsible to only have a single link allowing the transportation of goods in eastern Quebec.”
She was reacting to leaks of a fresh study on the region’s mobility needs produced by the Caisse de dépôt et placement’s public transportation and infrastructure branch, CDPQ Infra.
Released Wednesday, CDPQ Infra’s 15-year CITÉ Plan for Quebec City does not recommend such a highway link, arguing it would at best save motorists about five minutes travel time.
Having studied six possible highway corridors along the St. Lawrence River, CDPQ Infra concluded such a link would be limited to rush hour use and would result in a “shift of congestion.”
The study did not examine the issue from the point of view of a possible closed Pierre Laporte Bridge.
CDPQ Infra does, however, recommend a tunnel between Quebec City and Lévis, but for a tramway only. The $4-billion link would depend on the demographic growth of Lévis and would not go ahead before 2035.
Overall, CDPQ Infra — after six months of study — has come up with a $15.5-billion integrated mobility plan for Quebec City. It totals 95 kilometres of new tramway and bus corridors.
It proposes two new tram lines with 40 stations connecting Quebec City and its central sector from east to west as well as to the north. The tramway network would cost $7 billion and be open 20 hours a day.
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