Light Rail

All or nothing for Gatineau West plans

In a pre-autumn session update, Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin told the Bulletin that “it’s the whole project or nothing”, when it comes to the Light Rail Transit planned in the west end of the city.

Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin refuses to consider seeing the project move forward if it has to be modified with the hypothetical removal of the section of the route that would serve the Plateau district, “we tried to cut in case we didn’t have all the funding, and it doesn’t work.”

The mayor indicated that changing the planned route would lead to “technological conflicts between trains and buses.” 

“When the train arrives at the point where it crosses to Ottawa, we would have hundreds of buses at that station and it would not be manageable. You can reduce the number of stations to lower the price, but it allows fewer people to walk to get to the train. That would make it a less profitable system. ”

Pedneaud-Jobin said he is confident that the project is one of the priority files for the office of Transport Minister François Bonnardel and says he is ready to “fight long and hard” to obtain all the money needed for the project.

While federal funding has still not been confirmed, the Government of Quebec has indicated that it is prepared to fund 60% of the $2.1 billion project, which, according to the mayor, would “reach the entire western part of Gatineau and solve the transportation problem in this entire sector for decades to come.”