Tabled last January, the interim report of the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM) on public transit in Montreal’s east end raised great expectations. There was, however, generally little concern that further work would focus exclusively on the Eastern REM, which the document published in recent days revealed, even if it is capped with the title Structuring project for the east of Montreal (PSE).
We learn that the mandate of the working group, steered by the ARTM and bringing together the Ministry of Transport, the City of Montreal and the Société de transport de Montréal, is to propose a new version of the project to the government. In other words, it was about advancing the planning and design of the best automated light rail system project.
Stuck by this narrow framework, the working group immediately carried out a rigorous analysis of the CPDQ Infra project. This shows that the project, although reviewed following numerous criticisms, still has very serious shortcomings and that some of its characteristics, in particular its aerial component, would have major urban and environmental impacts, which, moreover, cannot be significantly reduced considering the nature of the environments impacted and considering what the REM de l’Ouest teaches us. We thus give reason, and this twice rather than once, to the opponents of the first hour.
Once this work was completed, it remained for the committee to draw logical conclusions. For the working group, there is no possible hesitation, the REM de l’Est must be entirely underground. The bill for the base scenario and the preferred variant would amount to a minimum of 35.9 billion dollars. The – rather unpleasant – surprise is general.
For François Legault, this is unacceptable. For the Prime Minister, the task force would not have respected its mandate: “This is not what we had asked the committee, he maintains. We had asked that there might be a small part that was underground. This reaction was predictable, since it was ensured that the committee’s mandate did not coincide with the ARTM’s mission, which is to plan and coordinate the provision of public transit on a metropolitan scale. We therefore believed that we had framed the mandate narrowly enough to know the outcome in advance.
In other words, the CAQ government wanted and thought to obtain a tinkering with the CPDQ Infra project, even if it clearly has, as we now know, significant shortcomings, including with regard to the evaluation of its cost, estimated at 10 billion dollars.
The government therefore intended from the outset, and once again, to short-circuit the normal process of planning a transport infrastructure to impose a mode – an automated light rail – that no serious analysis endorses.
It took him badly. Because, contrary to what the Prime Minister maintains, the committee did respond to the order, within the narrow limits imposed on it. The rigor simply did not allow the expected tinkering. But what is surprising, on the other hand, is that the report dismisses the need to review, in the light of the analysis of needs and anticipated demand and reflections on the role that public transport should play with regard to the future of Eastern Montreal, the chosen mode.
Nothing, in fact, justifies immediately disregarding another mode or a combination of modes, if only to be able to compare the projects, both from the financial point of view and with regard to the satisfaction of needs and the potential for modal shifts.
But, considering the precarious status of the ARTM, which is clearly not in the good graces of the Legault government, perhaps we bet that the estimated cost of the REM de l’Est will oblige political decision-makers to recognize the merits of examining an alternative that would better meet the needs of Montreal East and our financial capacity. The Prime Minister’s reaction – a sweeping condemnation – suggests that this bet, if bet there is, is far from won.