Astronomical. Colossal. Gigantic. We’ll let you choose your favorite adjective to describe the $36 billion bill for the new version of the REM de l’Est, a 34 km route to accommodate 29,000 passengers a day.
The amount is enough to make you tick. But not the city’s elected officials: the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, finds the project exciting, while that of Rivière-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles, Caroline Bourgeois, believes that “the population of the East deserves an investment commensurate with its needs.
We are well aware that eastern Montreal – very poorly served by public transport – needs a structuring project to stimulate its development.
We are therefore happy to see that the committee mandated by Quebec has done its homework before producing the report that will be presented on Tuesday, The Press unveiled the outlines last Saturday1.
We are pleased to see that the new route will better meet the needs of users and will be more socially acceptable than the first version submitted by the Caisse de depot et placement du Québec, whose massive overhead infrastructure would have disfigured downtown Montreal.
This is why the committee is coming back with an entirely underground REM that won’t damage the landscape with its unsightly catenaries (go see the REM on the Samuel-De Champlain bridge) and that won’t hurt residents’ ears (talk to those of Pointe-Saint-Charles who these days are discovering the drawbacks of the REM de l’Ouest).
An underground REM is very good.
But at what cost !
It is true that the bill of 36 billion for 34 km of underground remains consistent with the cost of extending the blue line, which amounts to around 1 billion per kilometer of tunnel.
Still, 36 billion is not exactly small change! And this amount could rise to around 50 billion, knowing that infrastructure work of this ilk generally causes cost overruns of around 45%.
We are not that rich in Quebec!
Let’s put the numbers into perspective to better measure the magnitude of the bill.
Close to 1 billion, it corresponds to the amount that Quebec would have to pay to upgrade all of its aging infrastructure: roads, hospitals, schools, lark!
Estimated at $35 billion, the maintenance deficit for our existing infrastructures continues to grow. Before embarking on major new projects, money must be saved to fix what is broken, since money and manpower are not unlimited.
A project worth 36 billion, it does not happen alone.
All together, the 10 largest transport companies in Quebec spent $1 billion per year, on average, between 2010 and 2020. This is infinitely less than the REM de l’Est bill, even if it will obviously be spread over several years.
You have to ask yourself if you can afford to devote so many resources to a single project. And who’s going to pay for it?
We cannot force users to increase far beyond inflation, otherwise fares will deter them from taking public transit. We will have shot ourselves in the foot.
For their part, cities constantly complain that they do not have enough leverage to tax taxpayers and provide services to the population.
The fund is also empty in Quebec: the Land Transport Network Fund (FORT) intended to finance the road network and public transport is in the red. We could bail it out thanks to eco-taxation, but the Coalition avenir Québec, allergic to new taxes, prefers to grant tax cuts to citizens.
And it’s not Ottawa that will fully absorb the $36 billion bill.
So who will foot the bill?
East of Montreal needs public transportation to develop its economy and to build new residential neighborhoods that will not be dependent on the automobile.
But with such an astronomical bill, the new version of the REM risks remaining on the service track.