The postponement of the southern branch of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) to the spring of 2023, which was confirmed on Friday, will inevitably lead to new cost overruns, admits CDPQ Infra, which nevertheless believes that it has made “major progress” in recent years. years, in a pandemic and inflationary context.
Posted at 11:07 a.m.
“It is clear that there are cost increases. […] There are financial impacts on which we will update around the commissioning. We will show you the rigor and the way in which we managed all the issues related to cost, particularly training and the lack of manpower,” mentioned the President and Chief Executive Officer of CDPQ Infra, Jean- Marc Arbaud, at a press conference on Friday.
According to the latest news, the REM managed by CDPQ Infra – which excludes the segment to the east, now managed by Quebec and Montreal – is valued at more than 7 billion. The organization did not wish to indicate on Friday of what order the new cost overruns will be.
Thursday, The Press had already revealed that the commissioning of the southern branch of the Metropolitan Express Network (REM), scheduled for 1er December, will be postponed to spring. Given the scale of the operation required to bring this mode of transportation into service, CDPQ Infra prefers to play it safe. The leaders of the subsidiary of the Caisse de depot et placement du Québec want in particular to avoid at all costs a repetition of the disaster experienced by the Ottawa light rail in the winter of 2020.
Mr. Arbaud also recognized from the outset that “the commissioning [du REM] would have taken place in the middle of winter, which is far from ideal for the partners, the users, and for the fact that people monopolize the project”. Implementing the network in winter could nevertheless have been possible “if the dynamic tests could have started earlier”, he said.
Citing the pandemic, inflation and supply issues that caused several delays, Jean-Marc Arbaud then assured that these new delays were not caused by his teams. “We hadn’t foreseen the war in Ukraine either and the consequences that it had,” he explained.
“We spent two out of four years, half the time, trying to move forward with this exceptional context. And the project is there, ”he illustrated. “I don’t think so,” he added, when asked whether we should expect further delays in the future, for the South Shore or for other sections.
At his side, Julien Hurel, senior director of REM transport systems, for his part admitted that his group “actually may have been a little optimistic” in wanting to deliver the system in early December. “The decision we take is to say that we must not screw up, that we cannot have a plan B”, he hammered.
Half of wagons received
In itself, all of the 16.6 km of rails and electrical systems of the south branch of the REM have been installed, detailed the vice-president of the REM project, Denis Rivard. The stretch’s six stations, meanwhile, are “98% complete,” he said, planning to complete them entirely in December. However, it is on the side of the trains received that it stumbles: for the time being, only 54 of the 106 wagons necessary have been routed, that is to say a little more than 50% of them.
A system such as this is designed for users and for the long term, for years, hence our decision. We want to be absolutely certain that the reliability is there, that the trains operate at the highest level.
Jean-Marc Arbaud
He also said he was “empathetic” to the many residents of the South Shore who believed they could count on the REM quickly to avoid roadblocks, at a time when Quebec will soon be closing three of the six lanes of the Louis- Hippolyte-La Fontaine, and this, until the end of 2025. “Unfortunately, it is not realistic to open the system before having passed a certain number of stages which are fundamental. […] We work for users. And we have to deliver a system, ”the president nevertheless persisted.
Remember that the southern branch of the REM, which connects Brossard to Montreal’s Central Station via Île des Sœurs, was originally scheduled to be inaugurated at the end of 2021. The schedule was later postponed to spring or summer 2022. Since last January, CDPQ Infra has been talking about commissioning in the fall of 2022. This is therefore the third postponement for this section.
This additional time should allow the network operator to hire the strategic employees who are still missing due to the labor shortage. The job sites of subcontractors Alstom, SNC-Lavalin and GPMM are posting about fifty positions to be filled in connection with the REM.
With Maxime Bergeron and André Dubuc