[…] Initially, it was essentially a matter of solving the problem of crossing the St. Lawrence by the Champlain Bridge and the connection between Brossard and the city center, as well as that of serving Montreal-Trudeau airport. In 2014, a light rail service (SLR) is offered by the Agence métropolitaine de transport. The cost of the project—2 billion dollars—the choice of a technology incompatible with those of the other components of the public transit network and the risk that the construction of a terminal station near the intersection of highways 15 and 30 promotes urban sprawl have earned the project severe criticism.
In 2015, the Government of Quebec asked the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, which was financially involved in the Vancouver SkyTrain project, to examine the file for a South Shore-downtown link via the future Samuel-De Champlain Bridge and a service to Montréal-Trudeau airport. This request follows the decision taken by the Couillard government not to assume the financing and implementation of the project in a conventional manner. In April 2016, the government announced the electrical network project (REM) whose design, financing, construction and operation will be entrusted to CDPQ Infra, the Caisse subsidiary created under a law adopted specifically to this end.
The project quickly takes another turn. CDPQ Infra announces the creation of a network that connects Brossard and the city center, integrates the Deux-Montagnes commuter train line, and includes an antenna parallel to Highway 40 in the west of the island and from from which the airport is served. The acquisition at a derisory price of the tunnel under Mount Royal and the Deux-Montagnes line allows CDPQ Infra to take control of one of the most efficient components of the commuter train network. The express network extends over 67 km and has 26 stations.
In 2020, CDPQ Infra announces the construction of the REM de l’Est. This adds 32 km of track and 23 stations to the original project. In February 2022, the Premier of Quebec confirms that an REM branch will be built on the South Shore between Brossard and Cégep Édouard-Montpetit in Longueuil, with a possible extension to Boucherville.
This REM project and its three versions—REM East, West and Longueuil—is in no way the result of integrated planning carried out according to the rules in the field. It is the somewhat improvised result of the Liberal government of Philippe Couillard’s adherence to a neoliberal approach to public governance. Consequence of this improvisation: no critical analysis of the public transport offer, in particular from the point of view of its deficiencies with regard to the mobility needs revealed by the origin-destination surveys, underlies the project and does not make it possible to validate the merits of the projects, both in terms of the routes and the method chosen.
Such an exercise is, however, the raison d’être of the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM). However, the announcement of the REM de l’Ouest short-circuited the organization’s mandate since it brought its initial work a few months ahead of schedule. As for the REM de l’Est, it was announced before the submission of the ARTM’s first strategic plan, a reading of which shows that the authority had clearly not been informed of the intentions of CDPQ Infra, whose project is mentioned only as one hypothesis among others. And the ARTM was no more involved in the South Shore REM, whereas it had been in the boulevard Taschereau tramway project, which suddenly disappeared from the radar screen.
But, as CDPQ Infra is accountable to no one, the organization hovers above the Metropolitan Community, the 82 municipalities it brings together, the ARTM, the STM, the STL, the RTL and EXO. The consequences of the absence of a global vision and the attribution of exorbitant powers to the subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt are numerous and extremely unfortunate.
We can cite the ignorance of the potential connection with the McGill and Édouard-Montpetit stations — finally integrated following numerous pressures —, the rejection out of hand of the project for a connection between Lachine and the city center, decreed not cost-effective, as well as the cavalier way of dealing with the concerns, requests and grievances of municipalities, which are furthermore subject to abusive confidentiality agreements. However, it is the competition between the components of the network in the east end of Montreal, to the benefit of the financial interests of CDPQ Infra, which constitutes the most distressing and worrying confirmation of what constitutes a real diversion of the common good.
The extension of the REM from the East to the city center, the consequent doubling of the route of the green line over several kilometres, the positioning of the other segments of the REM with a view to phagocyting — candidly acknowledged by CDPQ Infra — of the train de l’Est, the blue line of the metro and the SRB Pie-IX and the obligation imposed on the STM to fold its circuits on the REM stations show that the coordination between the actors and the integration of the components of the network public transit touted by CDPQ Infra officials is a fiction. […]
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