A topic that has been generating a lot of debate lately: why a tramway in Québec City?

An efficient public transit system improves people’s quality of life. It allows older adults to travel comfortably, enables people with reduced mobility to get around more easily, offers a viable alternative to those who, by choice or necessity, do not own a car, and allows people with strong environmental values to live in alignment with their convictions. And what about young people, who are acutely aware of the ecological footprint of their lives on our planet? What will we have to offer them in the years to come—more bus routes perpetually battling ever-increasing traffic?   

The tramway lays the foundation for a high-performance public transit system. It is often described as structuring. What does that mean? Imagine Québec without the St. Lawrence River. Imagine that, instead of the St. Lawrence, there were only a small river. What would happen? Widespread flooding. The tramway is somewhat like the river: a high-capacity collector that gathers multiple transit lines feeding into it. Just as the river influenced the development of major cities, the tramway will be a driver of urban development.

One does not need to travel far to see how essential a structuring network is to a city’s development. A tramway, like any rail-based transit system, is not an object simply dropped into the city like a car or a bus. A tramway is integrated into the city in the same way as a sidewalk—it is an intrinsic part of it. A tramway is the city.

Mobility should be a right—a right for everyone. The tramway will be the first building block of a structuring public transit network in Québec City, a network worthy of a city that looks to the future, a city that thinks big and looks far ahead. The tramway is not an end—it is a beginning.