The elected officials of the Montreal city council will consider next Monday loans totaling $150 million to allow the City to develop bike paths and pedestrian crossings adjoining the Metropolitan Express Network (REM), in particular.
These expenses will be spread over five years, between the spring of 2022 and December 2026, indicate the decision documents of the next meeting of the municipal council, which will take place next Monday. These concern the first phase of the light rail project, which will eventually link the city center and its southern suburbs to the west of the island of Montreal, with a stopover at Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau airport. An antenna will also come to serve the west of Laval, in the midst of a real estate boom.
As part of this project, the City of Montreal aims, among other things, to “connect each of the sectors on either side of the route” of the light rail project, which will have 19 stations on the island, by offering travel on foot and by bicycle. Part of the planned $150.3 million will therefore be used to design “new bike paths” along the REM route. The central city will assume about a third of these expenses; the rest of the bill will be paid by the agglomeration of Montreal.
“Connection or development work on the sidewalk, pedestrian crossing, roadway, traffic lights, lighting, landscaping and replacement or improvement of the water and sewer lines of the secondary network will be required all along the route”, lists among others the City of Montreal.
The latter also mentions the planting of trees as part of the work and the creation of “wildlife passages” in the nature parks located along the western branch of the REM “to ensure that animals can cross the corridor” safely.
“The City will benefit from the presence on the site of NouvLR [le consortium responsable de la construction des infrastructures du REM] to carry out its work at the same time in order to avoid intervening a second time in the same sector”, add the decision-making documents. In all, the REM will cover some 50 kilometers on Montreal territory, hence the scale of infrastructure spending planned along the route crossing eight boroughs and five related cities of the metropolis.
City of Montreal documents also show planned expenditures of $20.9 million this year for this project, an amount that should double next year, as the REM construction site progresses in the west. of the island. The completion of the light rail project in this sector is scheduled for the end of 2024, except at the Montreal airport site, for which the schedule is to be announced this fall.
Once its construction is completed, the REM will have 26 stations crossing 67 kilometers in the metropolitan area.