The director general of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), Luc Tremblay, leaves the ship. He will resign from his post in April, after a 28-year career with the organization, when it finds itself in a “critical financial situation”.
Posted at 10:22
Updated at 10:44 a.m.
This was confirmed by various sources at The Press from the start of the day. In a press release issued shortly after, the transport company confirmed that “Mr. Tremblay advised the Board of Directors today that he did not wish to renew his contract which expired on December 31.” As 2022 is “a year of preparation for the next organizational strategic plan 2030, which will define the next ten years”, it was “agreed to start on April 2”.
In the meantime, a hiring process will be launched to replace Luc Tremblay. The latter had been General Manager of the STM since 2014. He has been employed by the STM for almost 25 years. Chairman of the STM pension plan committees during his career.
His departure comes a few months after that of the former big boss of the STM, Philippe Schnobb, who had given up his seat at a time when the organization was seeking, as is still the case today, to bring back a critical mass of workers in its metro and buses.
More recently, in mid-January, the transport company also said it was in a “critical financial situation”, admitting that it did not know how it could end the year. At the center of the problem: “a drastic, dramatic drop” in network traffic, a direct consequence of the pandemic, then described Eric Alan Caldwell, the new chairman of the company’s board of directors.
A “totally disconnected” structure
Seeming to settle his accounts, the main interested party recalled Wednesday in a statement that the STM “must play a leading role in the fight against GHGs and currently has several levers in hand to be the spearhead in this area”, deploring that However, two fundamental elements are missing to unlock the full potential of the STM: “an overhaul of public transit funding and effective metropolitan governance”.
The financing structure, which dates from the 90s, is completely disconnected from the new needs for our sector. The ambitions for public transport are simply no longer in line with the resources.
Luc Tremblay, outgoing general manager of the STM
He denounces in passing that metropolitan governance is currently “dysfunctional in several respects and is slow to deliver the benefits that should be associated with it, which has the effect of hampering the growth of public transit in the region”.
Éric Alan Caldwell, he indicated that “Mr. Tremblay can leave with his head held high”. “A tireless worker, he led the STM through several major transformations. […] Under his leadership, the STM succeeded in acquiring unprecedented operating capacity (arrival of 300 buses, new Azur trains), improving the condition of its infrastructure and significantly increasing the level of customer satisfaction. “, he argued.
According to the data presented to elected municipal officials, ridership on the STM network has slowly picked up since last winter. It was down “only” 40% at the start of December 2021 compared to December 2019, its best performance since the start of the pandemic. At the start of January 2022, compared to equivalent days in 2019, attendance was down by 66%.