The future REM de l’Est “will go to Lanaudière,” Prime Minister François Legault promised Friday in front of an audience of business people from the region, maintaining that the connection to the north will be a “non-negotiable condition.” for the success of the project.
“I want to tell you today that I guarantee you, and this is also a non-negotiable condition, that the project that we hope to submit quickly will go to Lanaudière,” explained Mr. Legault on Friday. before the Chamber of Commerce of the MRC of L’Assomption, the region he represents in the National Assembly as a deputy.
In the preamble, the CAQ leader had mentioned the numerous “debates for collective transport for the east of Montreal”, recognizing however in the same breath “that it is not ideal, the service that we offer to people [de Lanaudière] towards Montreal.
During a press scrum after the event, Mr. Legault clarified that his government was “in the process of reviewing the project in eastern Montreal.”
“It’s important to me that he comes to Lanaudière. The people who work on this, including [la ministre des Transports] Geneviève Guilbault, know very well that the project must have a portion that comes to Lanaudière. We will try to announce this to you as quickly as possible,” he insisted, refusing to go further.
Its release comes almost three months after the presentation of a first version of the Eastern REM 2.0, which has been renamed Eastern Structuring Project (PSE) since the Caisse de dépôt withdrew from the project in May 2022.
In July, The Press had revealed that the committee behind the project recommends a route from Pointe-aux-Trembles to Cégep Marie-Victorin, in Montréal-Nord, with two connection points to the green line, in addition to an extension of four stations towards Rivière- des-Prairies, Laval and Charlemagne. Experts called for a 100% underground route over 34 kilometers, for a total of 29,000 passengers in the morning.
Except that the final bill of 36 billion was quickly denounced by Mr. Legault and Minister Geneviève Guilbault. Quebec officially scrapped this proposal shortly after.
The Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM), which leads the committee behind the REM de l’Est, was also invited by Quebec to find a “financially responsible proposal”. The organization plans to deliver new studies by the end of October. It is from this moment that we should know a little better what the second version of the project will look like.
Expensive in Quebec, but…
From the moment Quebec and Montreal regained control of the project, in May 2022, François Legault and his government had mentioned potential extensions to Laval and Lanaudière as a possibility to be explored very seriously. The extension of the Marie-Victorin route to Laval and the eastern section, towards Lanaudière, had been officially under study for more than a year.
However, in a preliminary report this winter, the responsible committee had rather estimated that extensions towards Laval and Lanaudière would result in “a less significant addition of users”.
Thus, an extension towards Lanaudière from the antenna towards Pointe-aux-Trembles over 19.7 km and 2 stations, as well as 3 existing stations, would increase the number of passengers “from 1900 to a little over 4000”, we read in the report.
“This addition of 2,100 users remains relatively low compared to the other components of the project given the length of the extension to be built and operated,” noted its authors. “It is understood, however, that this scenario only serves to theoretically evaluate the ridership potential in this axis, because the integration of the light train mode cannot technically be achieved with the current commuter train infrastructure,” we remember.
The committee, however, spoke of an “interesting potential” for the extension of the antenna towards Repentigny-Lanaudière, maintaining that the conversion and integration of the exo5 line train into the REM de l’Est, assuming the use existing stations, would “double the number of users from 1900 to more than 4000”, an absolute addition of 2100.