Crucial vote on holding the train: Here’s what’s going to happen on the tram

On Thursday, Marchand’s management announced that the executive committee had recommended awarding the contract to build the streetcars to French multinational Alstom for $569 million, or 43% more than Quebec City expected. What then?

• Also read: Tram preparations: More complex parking during FEQ

• Also read: Tramway: 43% more expensive than what Quebec City had planned for the trains

• Also read: Daheime claims the tramway will cost between $6 billion and $8.2 billion

The state of the forces in the city council

The executive committee’s recommendation must be endorsed by a majority of 22 elected municipal officials in the city council on Tuesday.

Unless there is an unexpected absence, Mayor Bruno Marchand’s team will be able to count on the votes of its ten representatives. But this will not be enough to reach the required majority.

He will vote against Équipe Priorité Québec’s two councilors, Stevens Melanson and Eric Ralph Mercier. Independent consultants Jean-François Josselin and Bianca Dossault confirmed yesterday in register They would do the same. For her part, Jacqui Smith, president of Transition Québec, did not call Newspaper.

Mathematically speaking, the mayor’s team will likely need the support of Quebec City first to pass this decision-making summary.

Thursday, Claude VilleneuveAnd The opposition leader at City Hall insisted he supported the tram line. But he noted that it would be “difficult” to vote in favor of the agreement, which contained “a lot of concerns”. Is it a false suspense or a dead end that endangers the gigantic project?

Alstom’s “pride”.

asked yesterday by NewspaperAlstom said it was “very proud to have been chosen as the Quebec City partner for this landmark mobility project for the Capitale-Nationale region.”

According to spokesperson Michel Stein, “The offer made will make it possible to offer the city and future service users a product of high quality and reliability, designed in our head office in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville. And assembled. In our factory in La Pocatière, drawing on our world-renowned engineering expertise and our unique industrial capabilities in Quebec.”

Cautiously, the French giant states that “Quebec City must go through all stages of official municipal approvals before signing a contract.”

Monday Committee of the Whole

Planned for a long time, a full commission on the tram will take place on Monday.

We know it will start at 9 a.m., but the city hasn’t provided many details on how it will happen or how long it will take.

“The event will be an opportunity for all residents to learn more about the development of the project, the progress of the procurement processes related to the selection of private partners ‘train cars’ and ‘infrastructure’, the project completion schedule. Quebec trams as well as the media activities spread out,” we announced on March 10. .

the interview

On Thursday, the Tramway Project Office disclosed, for the first time, data on tram maintenance for the first 30 years after its commissioning (now scheduled for 2029).

Thus, we learned that the contract signed with Alstom was worth $768 million and that Réseau de transport de la Capitale (RTC) would foot the bill.

Last year, RTC maintenance staff lamented the fact that they had been excluded from the tramway project by regretting that this task had been outsourced to the private sector. Yesterday, Quebec City confirmed that maintenance will always be done by the private partner.

On the other hand, “certain activities related to operation (not maintenance) which were found in the specification of the call for proposals were transferred to the responsibility of the RTC”, supporting the municipality by giving an example of getting in and out of the oars in the shed.

For its part, the Maintenance Staff Union was not available yesterday for comment.

Annoying work

Tram preparatory work continues and will clear parking lots in central neighborhoods this summer, which could complicate things during the summer festival, the city agrees. The perfect recipe for a “messy” summer, the opposition claims.

“It’s bad planning. What’s the rush?” asks the leader of the Second Opposition, Patrick Paquet, who believes the work could have been done in stages.

The leader of the Official Opposition, Claude Villeneuve, for his part believes the city wanted to take a heavy toll with work piling up this summer in the city centre. “We understand the merits of each intervention, but the whole business, I’m afraid, presents a very disturbing business card to people who want to visit Quebec.”

Meanwhile, in the Chaudière sector, the ground clearance for the future garage, a former landfill, has been completed. In addition to the waste and contaminated soil, 70 metric tons of tires had to be removed at a cost of $6 million, or $300,000 more than expected.