The new Île d’Orléans bridge will cost approximately 2.7 billion, or 1.850 billion to build it and 845 million to demolish the current bridge built in 1935, a 90-year-old infrastructure that has become unsafe. Since 2008, governments have injected 38 million for its repair.
An expensive investment, you say? No! Rather, a courageous vision of the future that sets the table for multiple mobility and economic development projects that will far exceed access to Île d’Orléans and its 7,000 inhabitants!
No need to be a great visionary to understand that this new bridge will serve as a keystone with a possible 3e link with the south shore of Quebec thanks to the construction of another bridge at Beaumont located east of Lévis. Wishful thinking, you say? Let’s wait to see things more clearly, hoping that the report from the subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) Infra scheduled for the month of June, on the future of structuring transport in the Quebec region, confirms this vision of the future.
Bypass
The hypothesis of connecting the new Île d’Orléans bridge to the south shore of Quebec would indeed represent a keystone allowing the national capital region to have a real bypass route to the east. How? On the one hand, by facilitating all transits between the North Shore, Saguenay, Beauce, the USA, Bas-St-Laurent and the Maritimes, which will thus be able to avoid congestion in the future the Pierre-Laporte bridge. On the other hand, this new road access will spark a gigantic industrial boom around the future Davie shipyard naval complex.
Indeed, the purchase, in particular by the government of Quebec, of the former land of Rabaska, a gas terminal which never saw the light of day, could serve as an expansion for the largest shipyard in Quebec which recently obtained a contract for the design of a naval fleet of seven icebreakers valued at more than $8.5 billion from the federal government.
In short, the Île d’Orléans bridge represents an investment in the future, not only for its residents, but also for the economic future of the greater Quebec region.
Region lacking infrastructure
Let’s not forget that the Quebec region surely holds the Canadian, if not world, record for delays in its public and road transport mobility infrastructures. Examples of legendary procrastination? In addition to the Île d’Orléans bridge, whose construction was repeatedly announced and postponed over the last 10 years, let us think of the Quebec bridge, whose purchase and maintenance by the federal government is going around in circles in a endless negotiation with Canadian National (CN).
This bridge represents another keystone for the development of a regional public transportation network with the tramway project, the postponement of which has paralyzed the economic development of the National Capital Region for nearly 15 years.
Let’s act now for the future, thinking of future generations in the greater Quebec City region who deserve to finally have 21st century infrastructure.e century.
Jean Baillargeon, Strategic communications analyst and consultant
