CDPQ Infra and the REM | Each his trade…

Everyone has their own job, says the proverb, and the cows will be well looked after. The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is a remarkable manager of our collective “nest egg”. But its subsidiary CDPQ Infra is proving that it is not very good at managing a public transport network.

Problems have multiplied since the REM came into service. And CDPQ Infra has none of the reflexes that we have the right to expect from a manager of a network like REM.

It is not normal for us to learn in The Press – a week after the fact – that the paramedics took more than 25 minutes to rescue a passenger who was experiencing health problems. Especially when the ambulance sent to the scene had no way of accessing the train, even after contacting a REM official.

It is not normal that when there are outages, it is users who have to use their cell phones to obtain information. Nor is it normal for the causes of breakdowns which begin in the middle of the afternoon to only be explained in the evening.

Faced with such events – because there have been others – CDPQ Infra’s reflex is to minimize the seriousness by speaking of “communications problems”. In reality, these are security issues.

When a train stops without warning for several minutes in the middle of the Samuel-De Champlain Bridge, not informing passengers as soon as possible can, in fact, lead to serious problems. We cannot exclude that passengers might panic and try, for example, to leave the train and go directly onto the track, where they would certainly be in danger.

Normally, the operator of a public transport network puts the safety of its passengers as a priority, with its corollary which is to communicate quickly and transparently with users and the public.

CDPQ Infra too often has the opposite reflex: we say as little as possible and as late as possible. Because the habits of the house are to protect the reputation of the Fund more than the safety of the public.

The Fund must live with its choices. Having driverless trains may be justified for financial reasons, but certainly not in terms of the safety of passengers who cannot count on a manager on board. All the more reason to get quick answers.

We cannot seriously give the excuse of a break-in period. It is inevitable that there will be glitches in the first weeks of activity for a project like the REM. What is not normal is that we have not planned – or are unable to use – intervention protocols for situations where the safety of passengers is at stake.

This is why the REM has not yet succeeded in gaining a reputation for being a safe and reliable means of transport among potential users. Especially since the first winter has not yet begun and we have not yet seen how train cars – manufactured in India by the lowest bidder – will react in reality, even if they have been tested in laboratory.

Many of these problems come, in large part, from the corporate culture at CDPQ Infra. The project was designed in isolation, exclusively internally, and without even trying to integrate it with other modes of public transport.

It must be remembered that the very first version of the REM contained no link with the metro. A modest integration with existing public transport networks will only be considered, and reluctantly, later.

There will finally be a connection at the McGill and Édouard-Montpetit stations (still under construction), which explains that users arriving at the Central station will continue to walk for a good quarter of an hour in a labyrinth before reaching the Bonaventure metro station.

But from the beginning, the primary objective of the Caisse de dépôt in proposing the REM was never to serve the public, it was to obtain a return through the fees paid to it by the Quebec government.

The Fund also relied on its reputation for delivering the REM “on time and on budget” to sell its model internationally. With what we know today, it will be much more difficult.

Which means that we must now consider the possibility that the Caisse decides to activate a clause in the contract concluded with the government of Quebec at the start of the project, in 2018, and which provides that it will be able to sell the REM at the end only five years old. To anyone, in fact, even a foreign investment fund.

This is an option that we can no longer exclude if ridership is not there and other cost overruns that the Caisse must assume continue to darken the financial balance sheet.