Desperate motorists are turning to social networks as a last resort to plan carpooling, for lack of other options a few days from the major construction site of the La Fontaine tunnel between Montreal and the South Shore.

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“If at least I can pick up two people in my car, we will have access to the reserved lane,” explains Valérie De Beaumont.

The nursing teacher at Collège de Maisonneuve has created the Facebook group Covoiturage Sainte-Julie for people like her, who cannot avoid the tunnel to get to work.

Six days after its creation, the group already has nearly 75 members who will organize themselves to ease the hell of the work.

For his part, Sylvain Perreault has exhausted his options before creating a carpooling group from Repentigny.

“I tried all the buses, all the carpooling sites that could get me to my job. My plan B, I did not find it”, despairs the saw operator.

He has not yet found anyone to accompany him to Longueuil every morning at dawn.

"Options, there are almost none", confirms on the phone Marc-Antoine Ducas, founding president of the Netlift platform, dedicated to carpooling for companies.

A few days before the work, his phone does not ring off.

"It's a tsunami. The companies were waiting for an announcement that never came. It's one to midnight and all we have is a "What's your plan B?" campaign. “Laments the entrepreneur, who has received more than a dozen calls this week alone.

A missed opportunity

The Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain provides people with parking spaces dedicated to carpooling, but the online platform that allowed them to find fellow travelers is no longer in operation.

The new application that will do so will not be ready before February 2023, said spokesperson Simon Charbonneau.

The tunnel work would have been an opportunity to test carpooling on a large scale in the Montreal region, believes Jérôme Laviolette, doctoral candidate at the Mobility Chair of Polytechnique Montreal.

He points out that clustered platforms have been tested in the Paris region to allow people to maximize options near their point of departure and arrival.

"That's the point. On a link like the tunnel, there is a high density, a high volume. But on either side, destinations and origins can be completely scattered,” he says.