Quebec Follows The Vancouver Model Of Transit Planning
The Vancouver Model Of Transit Planning:
If you build with light-metro, make damn sure you don’t build LRT anywhere near it
In Quebec, Montreal’s REM Lobby, including the Caisse and city, provincial and federal politicians could not afford to have LRT interfere with their light metro propaganda campaign and made sure Quebec City’s $3.3 billion transit plan was nixed. This is exactly what happens in Metro Vancouver when any LRT plan is put forward.
A quick reminder of the Quebec City plan; for $3.3 billion one got 3.5 km of tunnel, 23 km of LRT, 2 lines totaling 15 km of electric powered BRT, 16 km of fully segregated Bus Lanes and a massive update and upgrade to Quebec City’s Express Bus Network.
In Vancouver $4.6 billion buys you 12.8 km of light metro.
If one does build with LRT near a light-metro one would find very quickly:
- Light metro costs much more to build than LRT
- Light metro costs more to operate and maintain than LRT.
- The long term (50 year) costs are more than double than LRT.
- Light metro lacks the all important flexibility in operation that makes LRT successful.
- LRT has a proven ability to attract the motorist from the car.
The good burghers of Quebec City just found out with their failed attempt to build with light rail, if light metro is being built in their province, in no way LRT will be built.
Quebec City’s tramway plan goes off-track
By Kevin Dougherty. Published on Nov 10, 2020
A proposed $3.3-billion tramway plan for Quebec City roads has gone off the rails.
Although “desirable,” the plan in its current state “should not be authorized,” concludes a 441-page report released Tuesday by Quebec’s Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE), which conducts environmental assessments of major projects in the province.
BAPE hearings were held this summer to seek public comment on the ambitious plan for Quebec City’s tramway project.
“We are not going to (approve) the project,” Quebec Transport Minister François Bonnardel told reporters on Tuesday. “Can it be improved? I say yes,” he said, promising “the best project for the people of Quebec City.”
Bonnardel added he’ll be meeting with Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume to discuss changes to the plan, which won’t cost more than the $3.3 billion already budgeted for it.
By easing urban congestion, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, and maybe helping politicians win elections, the tramway is seen in Quebec as a better way to move people around.
But the BAPE evaluation found that fewer than 10 per cent of trips taken in Quebec City are on public transit.
As well, transit use dropped by 4.2 per cent between 2011 and 2017, while in the same period, car trips rose 12.9 per cent.
Furthermore, with more people working at home during the pandemic, the report suggested that transit options be re-evaluated.
The BAPE report recommends more frequent bus routes, and a subway line with two cars per train, due to the city’s small population.
The greater Quebec City region has a population of about 800,000.
A tramway may be appropriate in the city centre, the report said, but in outlying areas, where the population is less dense, buses might be better.
The BAPE report also said planners considered a monorail.
Some people who attended the BAPE hearings said building the tramway would involve removing or trimming more than 5,000 trees in a city with just 32 per cent tree coverage, less than the desired 40 per cent.
In August 2019, in the lead-up to the Oct. 21 federal election, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau announced in Quebec City that Ottawa would contribute $1.2 billion of the $3.3-billion cost of the provincial capital’s proposed tramway project.
That investment, along with Ottawa’s assurances of more federal contracts for the Chantier Davie Canada shipyard in the nearby town of Lévis, may have helped Treasury Board President Jean-Yves Duclos win re-election in his Quebec City riding in a tight race with a resurgent Bloc Québécois.
Of Quebec City’s seven federal ridings, two are Liberal, three Conservative, and two more are Bloc Québécois, making it a likely election battleground.
After the federal election, in his first meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau, Quebec Premier François Legault asked for federal funding of four more tramway projects in: Montreal’s east end; Gatineau, across the river from Ottawa; the Montreal suburb of Longueuil, and south of Montreal between Chambly and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu.
Ottawa has also committed $1.3 billion to the $4.5-billion extension of Montreal’s blue Métro line.
The Legault government considers the electrification of transit, powered by Hydro-Québec’s surplus electricity, key to meeting its commitment to a 37.5 per cent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030, compared to 1990 levels in the province.
Mayor Labeaume, meanwhile, sees a successful tramway project as the signature achievement of his mandate, overshadowing the $400 million spent on a National Hockey League arena, which was finished in 2015 and still doesn’t have an NHL home team.
Labeaume dismissed the BAPE evaluation as “erroneous, biased, short-sighted, and filled with incoherence.” While 68 per cent of briefs presented at the hearings were favourable to the plan as it was presented, the evaluation sided with its opponents, he said.
The mayor called the evaluation a “back to the future” document, because it called for more frequent bus routes, an approach he rejected in 2017.
“Quebec City is the only city in the country with over 500,000 inhabitants that does not have a rapid transit system,” Labeaume said.
He ridiculed the BAPE suggestion for monorail, as it’s not consistent with the city’s historic character. And building a subway for two-car trains, as one study suggested, would require the same tunnelling as for a six-car train, he added.
Well said.
Reminds me of surrey bc, where a good lrt plan that was nearing construction was cancelled by a brainless, gutless and overly political mayor, in favour of a short skytrain extension.
The National Post story does not say that the quebec city lrt is cancelled, it just says that the provincial transport minister will not approve it “unless there are improvements”.
But i get your point.
The good news, I totally understand why the B.A.P.E. Agency REALLY wants the design fixed. It doesn’t go to the right suburbs! The B.A.P.E. Agency decision is also non binding. The R.E.M. network now under construction, spectacularly failed its ruling by the agency and nothing happened. You can’t allow one failed project to proceed and block another, even in Quebec.
The bad news, all the fixes the B.A.P.E agency recommends, I guarantee will significantly increase the total cost and scope of the project. Their first big mistake was calling it a tram and not LRT. Messaging is everything when it comes to these projects.
Zwei replies: le Tram, we don’t use the European term.