At first, it might seem like a small change of nothing at all. A modification of the 4 km route of the Eastern Metropolitan Express Network (REM) to better serve Tétreaultville and avoid Sherbrooke Street East. So far, nothing to complain about.
Posted on January 30
But what CDPQ Infra – the subsidiary of the Caisse de depot et placement that builds the REM – never bothered to say out loud was that this meant the abandonment of the connection between the REM and the green line. metro at its eastern terminus, Honoré-Beaugrand station.
One of the too rare connections with the existing public transport network disappeared without explanation, and CDPQ Infra did not even bother to mention it. Which says a lot about its long tradition of transparency, but that’s another debate.
The abandonment of this connection means for public transport users in the east of Montreal a loss of convenience and the obligation to go downtown in REM cars, we will see later why.
Many buildings and services are directly connected to the metro, but not to the REM. If you want to go from Pointe-aux-Trembles to the Grande Bibliothèque, UQAM, Place des Arts or any place further west, the access will no longer be direct. You will have to leave the REM and its station at height and walk a few hundred meters outside.
This is called a load break. Always to be avoided since it reduces the attractiveness of public transport. It is an essential convenience that is taken away from users: they will no longer be in a network with interconnections, but in a kind of one-way street.
Why is CDPQ Infra doing this? Because REM’s business model encourages it to keep its passengers inside its cars for as long as possible, even if a change of carrier would have been easier for them.
We have not yet negotiated the fee that CDPQ Infra will receive for the East REM, but for the West, it will be 72 cents per passenger-kilometre.
This business model means that the Caisse will receive a lot more money if users stay on board the REM for a longer part of their journey, regardless of what would be most practical for them.
Dropping the connection at Honoré-Beaugrand means forcing passengers to stay in the REM until downtown, regardless of what service they would prefer.
One might even wonder why the REM goes downtown since the metro already does.
The REM de l’Est will have two other connection stations with the metro, at Assomption (green line) and at Lacordaire (blue line under construction). But these two stations are located on the north-south axis of the REM, this antenna which follows boulevard Lacordaire before going to Montreal North.
These two stations will, in fact, make it possible to add passengers to the REM from the metro, unlike Honoré-Beaugrand who would have taken them away.
In short, everything is to the Caisse’s advantage. The Montreal metro, which remains the backbone of public transport in Montreal, is treated as a competitor from whom we want to take away market share. Which is precisely not the logic of what should be an integrated network of public transport.
This comes at a time when the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) finds itself in a “critical financial situation” and needs a new financing structure, says its general manager, Luc Tremblay, who will be leaving the company in a few weeks.
Among the factors that could make the STM’s situation even more critical, there are precisely all the advantages granted to the REM in terms of expropriation and the transfer of bus lines to its stations. Since the beginning of this project, everything has happened as if we wanted, in Quebec, for the REM to succeed and we would not be sorry to see an STM weakened.
But one of these days, the Caisse will have to present a balance sheet, which boasted at the start of the project of always being “on time and on budget”.
However, to speak only of the REM of the West, the project will not be finalized until the end of 2024 instead of 2022 – more than eight years after the initial announcement.
For now, cost overruns are estimated at around 30%. This when more than half of the route (39 of the 67 kilometres) already consisted of existing public transport rights of way – such as the Deux-Montagnes railway line or the reserved lane for buses in the middle of the Highway 10.
It is in this promoter that the government of Quebec always trusts, even when the time comes to plant its horrible concrete pylons – even if they were prettier – on René-Lévesque Boulevard.