The organization Vivre en ville is making a new proposal for the Projet structurant de l’Est (PSE), formerly known as REM de l’Est, suggesting the extension of the green and blue metro lines to Faubourg Contrecoeur and adding a section of the tramway to downtown Montreal.
A few months ago, Vivre en ville asked Marco Chitti, a visiting researcher at the Marron Institute for Urban Management at New York University and lecturer at the Université de Montréal, to look into the issue of mobility in the east end of the island of Montreal.
In light of its report, the organization unveiled a new proposal Thursday that its director Christian Savard believes will offer more options to residents of the east. “What is needed is a global solution for the east,” he said, emphasizing the importance of focusing on different modes of transportation.
As a first step, the organization suggests “short” extensions for the green and blue lines that would converge at the “Faubourg Contrecoeur hub”, which would result in the addition of three stations and five kilometres of tunnel.
Link to city center
Living in the City takes up the idea of the tramway as proposed by the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM) last May, but makes some modifications.
The organization is therefore retaining the northern branch of the PSE, which crosses the green and blue metro lines to reach Rivière-des-Prairies.
However, he is putting forward the idea of having the tramway branch off from the Pôle Faubourg Contrecoeur along the Hochelaga or Souligny axis to the west, rather than along Sherbrooke Street. “This would have the advantage of serving the south of Mercier and not doubling the green line on Sherbrooke,” Vivre en ville emphasizes in its proposal.
A branch of the tramway could then run along Notre-Dame and René-Lévesque streets towards the west to reach the city centre.
In the east of the island, to reach the Exo station in Pointe-aux-Trembles, Vivre en ville suggests two solutions: that the tramway runs along the Sherbrooke Street axis, which is faster, or that it takes a route further south to serve residential areas.
As for the tunnel planned by the ARTM towards Repentigny, Vivre en ville believes that this section and improvements to the Train de l’Est towards Mascouche should be the subject of more in-depth consideration.
Reconciling different options
This proposal differs considerably from the one that Christian Savard had presented with Christian Yaccarini, CEO of the Société de développement Angus (SDA), in August 2022 when they favoured in particular an underground light rail line to the city centre via Rosemont. Mr. Savard believes that the plan suggested in 2022 was the best, but he maintains that it was deemed too expensive to hope to see it realised one day.
The organization therefore continued its reflection by examining the ARTM project and giving a mandate to researcher Marco Chitti. “We are reconciling a few different things that have been brought into play in recent years,” emphasizes Mr. Savard.
He also took up the idea of a tramway along the Notre-Dame street axis, a project that had been discussed for decades and that François Legault had even taken up again in 2018, in the middle of the election campaign.
“I don’t claim that it’s the perfect solution, but I think we’re raising the level of ambition enough to make people think,” says Christian Savard.
Vivre en ville did not provide a cost estimate for its proposal, but Savard argues that the proposed metro extensions are short distances and likely to have a significant impact on mobility in the east end. “The little extra bits make all the difference and we need to plan for them now,” he says. “We’re going to start building metros again, with the extension of the blue line. But now, we must never stop building them. That’s the modesty of the extensions.” [de métro] which makes me feel completely comfortable proposing this.”
The Vivre en ville plan will be presented as part of the consultations on the draft Urban Planning and Mobility Plan (PUM) conducted by the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM). The hearing of briefs will begin next Tuesday. It should be noted that the PUM of Valérie Plante’s administration aims in particular to deploy 184 kilometres of tramway by 2050.