Public consultations on the southwest section of the “pink line”, which were to take place in November, have been suspended by Quebec, we have learned The Press from several sources close to the file. The Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM), which oversees the file, and the City of Montreal had given their approval to the process, but the Legault government vetoed it. The directive comes from the Prime Minister’s office, according to our information.
This intervention takes place in a tense context between the government of Quebec and certain municipal and regional partners in terms of public transportation. At the beginning of the month, François Legault rejected Mayor Bruno Marchand’s tram plan in Quebec and charged the Caisse de dépôt et placement with determining the best structuring transport network project for the capital. It is now the turn of the pink line to slow down.
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The ARTM was supposed to disclose this fall several scenarios of routes and modes of transport for the “great South-West project”, which must connect Lachine to downtown Montreal. Public consultations took place in the spring and others were to begin on November 20 based on the different options proposed.
The timetable now appears uncertain. No date for resuming consultations has been set. Both the City of Montreal and the ARTM say they were assured that the consultations would move forward at an unspecified later date.
“Public consultations will take place,” assures Simon Charbonneau, director of public affairs at the ARTM. “With our partners, we are currently analyzing the calendar possibilities in order to be able to communicate when the public consultations for the Greater South-West project will be held. »
Routes still awaited
The structuring project under study corresponds to the second phase of the pink line dreamed of by the Plante administration since 2017. The first phase, a metro which was to connect the city center to Montreal-North, was abandoned in 2021 in favor of the Eastern Metropolitan Express Network (REM), still on track.
In 2019, the Plante administration offered 800 million in federal money to the Quebec tramway project – now compromised – in exchange for equivalent funding from the Legault government to build a section of the “pink line” between Lachine and the downtown.
The ARTM received 20 million from Quebec in 2021 to conduct studies and consultations in order to present the best options for the greater South-West, which includes the boroughs of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Lachine, LaSalle, Le Sud-Ouest, Verdun and Ville-Marie as well as the municipalities of Dorval, Montréal-Ouest and Westmount.
The City of Montreal and the Lachine borough have in the past expressed their clear preference for a tramway that would run along the railway right-of-way on Victoria Street.
Last June, the ARTM affirmed The Press do not rule out any option1. She was to present “between two and ten”, both for the modes and for the layouts, in September. This information from the opportunity file has still not been made public.
“All public transportation projects must be accelerated in Quebec, and we are reassured that public consultations surrounding the pink line can resume,” wrote in an email to The Press Catherine Cadotte, press secretary in the office of Mayor Valérie Plante.
She adds that “the pink line, like the Eastern structuring project and the blue line, are the projects which must continue to be developed as a priority”.
Silence in Quebec
The Prime Minister’s office did not respond to our questions to know the reason for its intervention in the pink line studies and to know if the file could possibly fall into the fold of the new agency that Quebec intends to create after the holidays to manage major public transport projects.
“It is planned that public consultations will be held and they will take place soon,” Ewan Sauves, press secretary to the Prime Minister, simply wrote by email, emphasizing that the Great South-West project is included in the Quebec Plan infrastructures.
Everything indicates that the new structure to which part of the Ministry of Transport’s responsibilities will be entrusted will be closely linked to CDPQ Infra, a subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt responsible for the construction of the REM.
In Quebec, in addition to taking up the tramway file, the project manager must also propose a third link scenario. Since 2020, CDPQ Infra has also been studying structuring transport network options for Longueuil – probably an east-west extension of the South Shore branch of the REM. The file is progressing at a snail’s pace.
Remember that the Caisse subsidiary withdrew from the REM de l’Est in May 2022 after the abandonment of the section in the city center, due to lack of social acceptability.
In interview with The Press Start of the week2, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Geneviève Guibault, maintained that the Quebec government lacked expertise in public transportation projects. It thus opened the door to a greater contribution from CDPQ Infra to the detriment, in particular, of the ARTM, which oversees the opportunity file in the greater South-West.