Minister Chantal Rouleau has ruled: the new “REM de l’Est” will be a “light train” which will run “largely” by air in the East. He “must” also go “deeper into Rivière-des-Prairies”. However, the work team mandated by Quebec still has six months to present its recommendations to the government.
In a debriefing interview with The duty, the Minister responsible for the Metropolis and Delegate for Transport announced her plans for the new section of public transport. Last month, his government entrusted the reins of the project to an interdisciplinary working group, formed by the City of Montreal, the Ministry of Transport, the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) and the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM). ). It has the mandate to make, by the end of the year, recommendations on the route, on the mode to be used and on the connections to the existing network.
However, Chantal Rouleau already has a good idea of the final project. “It’s not a tram, it’s not a metro, it’s a light train,” said the elected CAQ member in an interview given on board the river shuttle that connects her riding of Pointe-aux- Aspens in downtown Montreal.
Despite public concerns about the possibility that the REM de l’Est will travel at height, it will be “largely” aerial on the section that joins Pointe-aux-Trembles. “On the ground, it doesn’t work. […] A tram would go as fast as the bus that travels rue Notre-Dame. It does not work,” said the minister, who will run for the next election in just three months.
Even before the task force presented its scenarios to the government, Ms.me Rouleau also insists on the need for the REM “to be well connected to the metro lines” and “to go deeper into Rivière-des-Prairies, because people want it”. In May, the director general of the ARTM, Benoît Gendron, said in an interview with The duty that it was “too early to say what will be[it] the solution “.
“We want this project. And the ten billion, we will put them, “said Mme Roll. Discussions with the federal government have yet to take place, she adds.
Review the ARTM?
After four years in office, the outgoing minister also agrees that the funding of public transit in the greater Montreal area must be rethought. An in-depth revision of the ARTM is not excluded.
She admits that certain practices of the organization responsible for financing public transit in the greater metropolitan area needed to be reviewed. “Perhaps the next government will be able to make decisions on how we can improve, optimize…” said Ms.me Roll.
Born in 2017, the ARTM turned five last year. And these five years have not been without history. In a report tabled in the National Assembly, the Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, criticized in May the “abrupt management” and the “organizational opacity” which reign at the ARTM.
“It lacks a little transparency, there is a small problem of governance, summarized Chantal Rouleau. Perhaps precisely because it is an “authority”: “listen and do what I tell you”. »
“When you talk like that to the STM, it doesn’t work. Not with the [Société de transport de Laval]the [Réseau de transport de Longueuil]Exo,” she added.
In May 2021, the STM had particularly harsh words for the organization that oversees it as part of the five-year review of the Act respecting the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority. “The ARTM does not seem […] ready to publicly defend the issue of underfunding, which is already widely recognized by all government authorities,” read a document prepared by the Montreal carrier.
The pandemic has dug a hole in the finances of public transit organizations in the greater Montreal area. In the last week of May 2022, ridership on the STM network was at 62% of pre-pandemic figures. Mme Rouleau assures that “scenarios” will be submitted to carriers so that they can get their heads above water.