East of Montreal is getting impatient with the slow construction of the REM. About fifty business personalities, public officials and committed citizens are urging the government to speed up the construction of “an Eastern REM” that passes through the city center. Without this connection with the center of the metropolis, the east of the city will find itself in an economic cul-de-sac, they argue in a joint statement released on Tuesday.
The western portion of the REM will come into operation in a few weeks, while its eastern portion remains at the planning stage. The new route of this “Eastern REM” will be made public in mid-June by the new project leaders, a consortium led by the ARTM. However, no direct link with the city center seems to be under consideration. Easterners will have to go by metro, it seems.
A REM that bypasses the city center is only a “half-project”, protests at the Duty one of the leaders of this outcry, Christian Savard, of Vivre en Ville. “It is not up to the service, the Caisse de Dépôt project, the pink line project. »
Cutting short this equivalent of the REM in the West is “as if we were casting in concrete the inequity between East and West,” he adds. Such an investment which is counted in billions of dollars, “it will not come back, or it will take decades before it comes back”.
Some 450,000 Montrealers live east of Papineau Street, according to estimates by Christian Yaccarini, president of the Angus Development Corporation, and prominent voice of this impatience. “There are 40,000 square feet of vacant land in Montreal East and it will grow without public transit. »
An economic brake
Many entrepreneurs and business people are worried about this abandonment of East Montreal, first and foremost Jean-Denis Charest, President and CEO of the East Montreal Chamber of Commerce.
The advantage of the West Island, already rich and affluent, will be reinforced by the current REM project, he says. “It creates a competitive disadvantage for East Montreal. »
“We were clear from the start. We had issued 5 extremely important criteria to ensure that a structuring project in the East meets all expectations. And the first is a direct link with the city center. »
Citizens’ groups are adding their voices to the chorus of criticism. Compulsory use of a “car-solo” in Montreal is nonsense, says Jonathan Roy of the Pointe de l’île neighborhood table. “In Pointe-aux-Trembles, you have to have a car if you want to get by,” he laments, pointing to the only four Bixi stations in his neighborhood. “We are 25-30 minutes from Honoré-Beaugrand if all goes well. It doesn’t make people change their practice. The REM is an opportunity for us to develop the neighborhood. »
Connecting East Montreal to downtown was among the first version of the project presented by the CDPQ. The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Geneviève Guilbault, suggested that a direct link from the REM de l’Est to the city center could see the light of day in a subsequent phase of the project.