Prime Minister François Legault on Tuesday raised the possibility of reopening the 3rd Link file in Quebec, as he feared “losing Quebec for good” after his crushing defeat in Jean-Talon.
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In an interview on the program Le Bilan, the mayor of Lévis, Gilles Lehouillier, reiterated that the decision to cancel the project “was made on the basis of fragmentary studies” and that certain options could have been better studied.
The Mayor therefore believes that it would be wise for the CAQ to return to the starting point and consider the road component again.
“We need to return to the consensus we had on the capital’s express network and propose new scenarios,” he said. “We finished the project, but ultimately we found that we had the same flow rates as before the pandemic, not counting trucking.”
The mayor believes that certain “formulas” that would have allowed the development of such a project while reducing infrastructure costs were ignored.
“Could we imagine a bridge?” he asked himself. “During the work, why didn’t we think about connecting it to the Île d’Orléans bridge?”
Consider that 70% of citizens in the region supported the motorway connection.
“If you have been elected for two terms to carry out a project, you have to keep it,” explains Mr Lehouillier. “The government has been promoting the project for seven years and we have gotten into people’s minds to convince them that it is important so that people believe these arguments.”
The Prime Minister, who since the spring had seemingly focused on a project entirely dedicated to public transport, reiterated that he now had to “listen to the population”.
Watch the full interview with the mayor of Lévis in the video above.