The Legault government unlocks 275 million to advance its project as a third highway link between Quebec and Lévis. In total, the site could cost almost 10 billion.
Last week, the Minister of Transport Geneviève Guilbault said she needed these sums to continue the project. She obtained the agreement of her colleagues from the Council of Ministers just before the start of the summer vacation.
In its brief, the Ministry of Transport estimated that the most recent version of the project must cost between 5.3 and 9.3 billion, an amount that does not include environmental studies, land purchases or expropriations. The final invoice will therefore be more important. The final invoice will therefore be more important.
The project consists in building a highway in trench on the side of Lévis, which will turn into a bridge, then into a tunnel crossed the High City of Quebec. The least expensive scenario would then be to cross the Saint-Sauveur district with a new motorway to land on the Pierre-Bertrand boulevard. It would cost between 5.3 billion and 8.2 billion.
A second scenario, oscillating between 7.1 billion and 9.3 billion, would require a tunnel of almost 4 kilometers, then works to connect to the Robert-Bourassa motorway.
The CAQ has long procrastinated about the third link. After the widest tunnel in the world, the Bitube, the public transport tunnel and the idea of a bridge to the east, the tunnel bridge is the most recent version. But some supporters, such as the mayor of Lévis Gilles Lehouillier, already wonder why, the bridge option to the East has been dismissed for budgetary reasons when the planned amount was similar.
On the Legault government side, we insist that the 275 million is not “a new expenditure”, and that this amount “has been registered since 2019 at the Quebec infrastructure plan”.
The acceleration of expenses surrounding the third link project also has a political scope. Minister Guilbault hammers that she wishes to make the project irreversible, and take measures to “protect” it, so that it is built, regardless of the result of the general elections of 2026. If another political party forms the government and puts an end to the project, it will be exposed “to important penalties”, warned the minister in June.
With the collaboration of Henri Ouellette-Vézina, The press
