Backstage games, strong emotions, fists on the table, surprise documents… There were more twists and turns this week in the Eastern REM file than in the last four episodes of District 31.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
The advantage: this mini-crisis will have made it possible to identify major problems in the project led by CDPQ Infra. Starting with the absence of the City of Montreal and its mayor at the table where the real decisions are made. The Caisse replies that Valérie Plante already sits on the strategic committee and the committee of experts who must decide on the pace and layout of the project, but we agree that this is not where the crucial decisions are made. .
If the REM de l’Est sees the light of day, it must be done with the participation of Montreal, and not with its agreement. The nuance is important. Even Premier Legault acknowledged this after declaring earlier this week that the ball was in Valérie Plante’s court. After all, it is on its territory that this new infrastructure will be deployed. The least we can do is that Montreal participates in its design.
This new place of decision is to be invented. We will have to find the City there, but also the Government of Quebec as well as the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM) and the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), which have a say in their field of expertise.
The Minister responsible for the Metropolis and the Montreal region, Chantal Rouleau, obviously did not appreciate the rabbit that the ARTM released to her this week by leaking a negative report on the Eastern REM. Mme Rouleau will have to be more unifying, because all these beautiful people must learn to work together.
That said, it is important to come back to this famous report which sowed discord in the National Assembly. Contrary to what Minister Rouleau said, who urged the organization to go back “to do its homework”, the report does not only have flaws. It is the ARTM’s mission to study the efficiency and effect of a new public transport service offer. The problem is that she had to analyze the impact of a possible REM from the East with the data at her disposal, that is, those of the years 2013 and 2018. However, the world has changed since then. And it is likely to change again.
The ARTM could not anticipate the impact of telework on peak hour traffic or on travel during the day now that our schedules are structured differently.
However, we must stop reducing public transport to a simple means of getting to work and consider it as a mode of travel in itself.
As such, the ARTM report can be criticized for being a little too conservative. It does not consider the potential for development in the East or any incentives that would encourage the population to abandon the car over the next few years. Who could have predicted the popularity of BIXI and Communauto 20 years ago? Similarly, the ARTM evokes a possible cannibalization of the green line or the inefficient Train de l’Est by the future REM de l’Est. But here, it is a question of vision. As Polytechnique Montreal professor Catherine Morency says, we never talk about cannibalization when we build a highway a few kilometers from another. The time has come to consider public transport users in the same way as motorists: they also have the right to more than one option for getting around. Climate change forces us to accelerate this reflection and the REM de l’Est, or any other structuring transport project, is a unique opportunity to think differently. This is the philosophy that Projet Montréal is trying to put forward, hence the importance of the mayor taking part in the decisions.
Until Valérie Plante manages to sit down at the decision-makers’ table, the next decisive step will be the tabling of the experts’ report. This committee, made up of about fifteen players in Montreal life – among whom, it should be noted, there are no structural engineering specialists – has the mandate to issue recommendations on the architecture and integration of the project. . This report will surely sound the moment of truth for the Caisse.
What will the institution do if, for example, experts question the choice of an elevated structure in the city center and recommend a longer – and more expensive – tunnel? Will it agree to review the route and carry out feasibility studies?
Remember that at the start, the driving force behind the REM project was CDPQ Infra’s business model. A model that was based on the speed of execution, the efficiency of the system put in place and the control of costs in order to generate profits.
Along the way, it is clear that the REM de l’Est is no longer just a simple transport infrastructure that is deployed blindly in a territory. It must be designed as an axis of planning and development and meet the needs of the population. To get there, you have to slow down. This type of project requires reflection, planning, other studies and a lot of back and forth between the drawing board, all the decision-makers and the population. Ah, and transparency too!
Will the Caisse agree to board this new train, very different from the first, which it would co-pilot with Montreal and Quebec, but which, ultimately, could become an exciting and structuring project for the coming decades? It’s up to her to tell us. And to the Legault government to land a winning project for the east of Montreal that will justify investments of several billion dollars.