Critiques & Responses

The most common objections — and our straight answers.

An ambitious project draws legitimate questions: about cost, safety, geology, public health and who it is really for. Here are the criticisms that come up most often, and an honest answer to each one — backed by figures and analysis pages.

Question

Wouldn't it be smarter to put this money into infrastructure for cars?

This project was in fact designed for motorists. Our goal is simple: take 100,000 users off the roads and move them underground, so as to relieve congestion on the surface — cars, buses, and even bikes, which are then less in the way.

No other project frees 100,000 users from the roadway for as little as about 10 billion dollars. It is, deep down, the motorists' own dream: fewer people in front of them, without taking anything away from the road.

Question

Is it safe?

Yes — and even safer than the street, especially for vulnerable people. The network is under 24/7 camera monitoring, permanently lit and continuously travelled by patrols, all sheltered from heavy vehicles.

In case of fire, smoke-lock chambers and evacuation shafts to the surface are provided roughly every 300 m, and emergency stations (with WiFi and 911 access) every 100 m. The detail of each device is on the Safety page.

Question

In the event of a major Hydro-Québec outage, does the network go down?

No. A gas generator immediately takes over and keeps the network running.

Gas isn't eco-friendly, we grant you that. But even on a backup generator, the network remains more eco-friendly than the alternative: thousands of users coming back out and getting into their cars. And this generator is only used as a stopgap, until the power comes back.

Why not batteries instead? They are ideal for a short outage, but during a major, prolonged outage, gas remains the best solution: it lasts as long as you keep feeding it fuel. In backup mode, we don't run everything either — only the critical systems stay active: ventilation and reduced lighting (about one light in four), enough to ride and evacuate safely.

Question

Isn't it too expensive?

Yes, it is expensive — but a cost means nothing on its own: it has to be compared to the benefits and to the alternatives. And to relieve congestion on so many roads, no other option is cheaper: not a metro, not a tramway, not a new bridge, not widening the highways.

The Comparison page puts the figures side by side, and the Costs page details the calculation.

Criticism

“Québec's geology isn't suited to boring…”

In reality, a tunnel boring machine digs through practically any ground. Some terrain makes progress slower and more costly, but it doesn't stop it. And the geology of the Québec City region is nothing extreme: we are in rather soft rock of the St. Lawrence Lowlands, not the Canadian Shield — except for the northern part of the city.

This type of sedimentary rock resembles formations (like the limestone of the Nashville region) where digging goes well, and where The Boring Company's Prufrock machines have shown they progress without major difficulty. As a precaution, we nonetheless apply a markup factor for our type of ground — already built into our calculations. See the Geology page.

Criticism

“Before talking about cost, we’d need a geological study and drilling…”

Absolutely — and that’s exactly what the project plans for. Nobody claims you can bore 150 km without investigating the subsurface: a drilling campaign and a geotechnical study are essential, and they are already in the budget. They appear in the “BAPE, geotechnics, permits, consultations” line of the realistic scenario, on the Construction costs page. So it is not a forgotten item that would “blow up” the bill: it is planned and provisioned.

More importantly, a proper investigation isn’t done all at once — it proceeds in stages, as on any major tunnel:

1. Reconnaissance and corridor selection. A first set of boreholes (rock abrasivity and strength tests) surveys the ground and rules out difficult zones before the route is fixed. This is an advantage unique to a network: unlike a tunnel under a river, which must cross one specific point, our route can be adjusted if a borehole reveals a bad zone.

2. Design campaign. Once the corridor is chosen, a denser investigation (closely spaced boreholes and geophysics between them) refines each segment for construction.

3. Continuous probe drilling, ahead of the boring machine, during excavation — so there are never any surprises.

Set against the project’s ~11.2 G$, this investigation remains a small item: it is never what decides financial feasibility. The geological detail is on the Geology page.

Criticism

“The Boring Company's ambitions aren't always realistic on price…”

That's fair — and we took it into account. We did not adopt their most optimistic scenario: we even modelled a scenario with no improvement at all in cost or productivity.

And even in that unfavourable case, our project remains cheaper than all the other modes considered. The detail is on the Construction costs page.

Criticism

“The project is too dependent on The Boring Company…”

No — and we have quantified it. The Boring Company is our reference assumption because it offers the best cost per kilometre, but the project does not rely on it. Tunnel boring is not a proprietary technology: conventional hard-rock machines — gripper, single- or double-shield — have been used around the world for decades. It is an older and more proven technology than The Boring Company’s, not less.

So we modelled the full scenario in which a level of government rules out The Boring Company, for whatever reason. The result: the cost rises from ~11.2 G$ to a range of 16.5 to 22.4 G$. That is more expensive in capital — but even at its worst, the project stays cheaper per user than a car, and than the RTC, and in a class of its own against the region’s other megaprojects.

One last point in our favour: a competitive tender among several bidders, rather than a single supplier, fits Québec’s public procurement rules better. The full scenario, quantified and compared, is on the Without The Boring Company page.

Question

Shouldn't we invest in healthcare instead?

Investing in healthcare is essential — no one says otherwise. But what our system most cruelly lacks is prevention.

And among the metro, the tramway, the car and the bus, our network is the only one that keeps people healthy, by getting them to do moderate exercise every day. We keep being told that people no longer move enough and that this is disastrous for health: our project goes in exactly the right direction.

Criticism

“The network will only serve cyclists who are already fit.”

False. With electric-assist bikes and a route with no stops at all, riding becomes child's play — even for someone who isn't fit. And anyone who, on the contrary, wants to get back in shape can still choose a classic bike.

Better still: teenagers without a driver's licence will be able to get to school safely, without a parent having to drive them.

Criticism

“What about parents with young children?”

Teenagers, for their part, gain autonomy thanks to the network. For younger children, a parent can use an electric-assist bike fitted with a child trailer at the back.

We own it: this isn't suited to every family. But the goal was never to bring 100% of the population into the network — only about 10%.

A criticism that isn't here? This citizen project moves forward thanks to the hard questions. If you see a flaw, an assumption to verify or an angle we forgot, write to us via the Contact page — the best objections make the project stronger.