The passage of the underground tram must extend over 600 meters, to join the Grand Théâtre to the Saint-Roch exchange hub, otherwise the network will find itself with its hands tied to adapt its offer in the coming decades, claims the organization Vivre in the city.
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The current route of the project provides that the tram trains will be underground from the Grand Théâtre to the bottom of the Côte d’Abraham.
The trains will leave the mouth on the outskirts of Jean-Paul-L’Allier park, and then take rue de la Couronne.
Photo Simon Clark
The second part of the BAPE’s public hearings, which aim to collect opinions and recommendations on the Quebec City tram project, continued on Tuesday evening.
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However, the organization proposes rather that the route pass under the Saint-Roch district, to go to rally the pole of exchanges.
To do this, the tunnel would have to be extended by about 600 meters, specifies the general manager of Vivre en Ville, Christian Savard.
He will assert this position on Wednesday as part of the second part of the public hearing on the construction of the tram.
Without this change, Mr. Savard says he is “worried” about the network’s sustainability and its effectiveness in serving major events such as the Quebec City Summer Festival.
According to him, a single mouth at the foot of the Côte d’Abraham would create “a bottleneck”, which would prevent any improvement of the network to adapt to the development of the city and traffic, among others.
“If there is a place where we can end up with a situation like an orange line, it is this place”, indicates Christian Savard, in reference to the strong saturation observed during the rush hours on this line of the Montreal metro.
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Cost not assessed
The price it would cost to take a new direction is not assessed. “It is certain that we would exceed the current envelope,” admits Mr. Savard, however.
The cost is one of the aspects on which the commissioners of the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment (BAPE) hung on Tuesday during the presentation of the engineer Robert Vanderwinkel.
Commissioner Pierre Renaud and President Corinne Gendron in particular questioned the estimates for the cost per kilometer of the one who is campaigning for the project to be transformed into a metro in its entirety.
“It’s going to be a colossus, but one that has a foot of clay for now. […] As long as we are building a tram that will cost billions, we have to make the right decisions immediately, ”answers Christian Savard on the subject of the cost overrun to be expected if his proposal were adopted.
Vivre en Ville proposes that automobile traffic remain closed on rue de la Couronne, supposed to accommodate the tram, to instead make it a “transit mall”. We want to share the artery between buses, cyclists and pedestrians.
Abandonment of the criticized trambus
The public hearings were also marked Tuesday by many criticisms about the abandonment of the trambus project.
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“This is a significant loss” on the projected service, and the trambus “should be maintained,” pleaded Émilie Frémont-Cloutier of the Collectif for affordable and accessible transportation in Quebec.
According to the Trajectoire Québec organization, “the budgetary straitjacket imposed on the project by the political authorities affects its quality,” argued its president, François Pépin.
– With the collaboration of the QMI Agency
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