The manager of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), CDPQ Infra, will have to quickly “turn things around” and make improvements to its communications when its light rail is broken down, municipal elected officials are demanding.
“Clearly, there is an improvement to be made in communications. It is unacceptable to leave citizens in the dark about the reasons for the outage and its duration. There really is a change in direction that must be taken, and quickly,” denounced the mayor of Longueuil, Catherine Fournier, on Tuesday.
At his side, the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, then affirmed that “every time there is a breakdown, it is problematic”.
“It has an impact on workers, students and many people who rely on public transportation. […] People want to make this modal shift, but they must have options, it must be quick and financially accessible. We have to develop projects, but also take care of what’s happening,” she said.
The two mayors were reacting to a series of new breakdowns that have occurred in recent days in the REM. Monday, in the middle of rush hour at the end of the day, dozens of passengers were once again trapped in the cars for more than two hours, between Montreal and Brossard.
By email, CDPQ Infra clarified on Monday that it was “technical problems with the computer system” which caused problems and caused “errors at the control center”.
Two outages occurred on Monday in the same day, since the service had also been stopped in the morning due to the same problem for which fixes did not resolve the situation. Tuesday morning, a new outage also occurred, but no cause was disclosed.
Each time, a simple message is broadcast on X and on the train, talking about a slowdown in service or a technical problem, but no other details are really given to users.
“We are still in a running-in period, but this is a problem that we encountered for the first time today,” explained the vice-president of public affairs of CDPQ Infra, Philippe Batani, in interview with The Canadian Press.
Last Friday, many REM users were also stuck in trains stopped between two stations for more than 30 minutes. The REM manager then specified that an “emergency brake” had been activated on a train between Central Station and L’Île-des-Sœurs. The emergency brake would have been activated “due to an overly sensitive detection system”, it was added.
On social networks, the frustration of users has been palpable to say the least for several days, with many deploring that no information is transmitted to them in real time during an outage. “No messages, no support, no one to help. What do we do ? “, asked one user, for example.
With The Canadian Press