Alexandre sirois
Press
Q. Why are people against the development of bridges and roads, like the third link in Quebec? In the future, we know that the electric automobile is going to become the norm and we are still going to need roads, right?
Luc B.
R. Do you remember Field of Dreams, a cult movie for baseball fans?
The story is simple: a man decides, against all odds, to build a stadium in Iowa. Is that a ghost told him that if he built it, the amateurs would come. And it works !
In the case of roads, exactly the same is happening. Studies have shown that if we build new ones, people will come. En masse. So the congestion problems we hoped to solve will come back, too.
For a metropolitan region, building new road infrastructure, however ambitious they may be, is therefore always a headlong rush.
The third link? “It is as if a pulmonologist offered his smoking patient to put a third lung on him so that he smokes more instead of helping him find ways to reduce his consumption of cigarettes”, wrote our colleague Laura last May. -Julie Perreault.
It is rather on public transport that it is necessary to bet.
That’s not all. An important question that also comes into account is that of land use, explains Geneviève Boisjoly, assistant professor in the department of civil, geological and mining engineering at Polytechnique Montréal.
“The car, whether electric or not, consumes a significant amount of land compared to public transport (metro, bus, etc.) or active transport (cycling, walking, etc.),” she says.
There are therefore also issues of optimizing the (limited) space of our metropolitan regions, protecting the environment or the safety of citizens (more roads and more vehicles means more accidents, wounded and dead).
Not to mention the costs associated with new road infrastructure. Our budgets are also limited! The tunnel linking Quebec to Lévis would cost, according to recent estimates, almost $ 10 billion.
Finally, the third link is combined with urban sprawl (loss of agricultural land, loss of biodiversity, etc.). And even if electric cars become the norm, that won’t change that, alas.