The commissioning of the southern branch of the Metropolitan Express Network (REM), scheduled for 1er December, is postponed to spring, has learned The Press from several sources. CDPQ Infra, owner of the REM, will confirm the information this Friday morning in a press meeting.
Updated yesterday at 9:40 p.m.
Given the scale of the operation required for the commissioning of this mode of transport, CDPQ Infra prefers to play it safe and postpone the opening to the spring, several people familiar with the matter tell us. The leaders of the subsidiary of the Caisse de depot et placement du Québec want to avoid at all costs a repeat of the disaster experienced by the Ottawa light rail during its first winter of operation in 2020.
CDPQ Infra must confirm any postponement to the main transport organizations on the South Shore with a minimum of 30 days notice, i.e. October 30 at the latest. A few days before this deadline, it is still “no sound, no image”, a source familiar with the matter told us earlier this week. Another source pointed out that “everything points” to a postponement of the entry into service, a few days before the deadline for the notice.
The additional time should notably allow the network operator to hire the strategic employees who are still missing due to the labor shortage. The employment sites of subcontractors Alstom, SNC-Lavalin and GPMM are posting about fifty positions to be filled in connection with the REM, including about fifteen involving the integrated control center, the nerve center of an automated train operating without a driver like the REM.
Carriers prepare
Despite the uncertainty surrounding the official launch date, the two transit companies that operate dozens of bus lines on the South Shore – exo and the Réseau de transport de Longueuil (RTL) – are working to respect the deadline of 1er December which held up to this day.
“We are working with the date of 1er December, and our responsibility at exo is to ensure that we will be ready at that time,” said Catherine Maurice, head of media relations at exo.
The carrier will redirect at least eight bus lines that depart from remote suburban towns, such as Chambly and Carignan, to the Brossard REM station. The “titanic” overhaul of the entire exo network has been underway since 2019, specifies Mme Mauritius.
The change will be even greater for the RTL, which carries 1.74 million passengers a year on its buses. The transport company will modify the route of some forty bus lines to redirect them to one of the REM stations on the South Shore.
No more buses will be able to cross the Samuel-De Champlain bridge towards the island of Montreal after the commissioning of the REM, under the exclusivity granted to CDPQ Infra by the Quebec government.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
No more buses will be able to cross the Samuel-De Champlain Bridge to the Island of Montreal after the REM is put into service.
Employees are installing new bus stops all over the South Shore these days, as noted The Press Wednesday. More than 2,300 stop signs have been changed or added just for the RTL, confirms its general manager, Michel Veilleux.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
An RTL employee, Benoît, was installing new signs at various RTL stops on Thursday.
Remember that the southern branch of the REM, which connects Brossard to Montreal’s Central Station via Île des Sœurs, was originally scheduled to be inaugurated at the end of 2021. The schedule was later postponed to spring or summer 2022. Since last January, CDPQ Infra has been talking about commissioning in the fall of 2022.
A particular context
This new postponement of the structuring network will come at a very bad time. Many residents of the South Shore believed they could count on the REM quickly, because Quebec will soon close three of the six lanes of the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel, until the end of 2025.
The Press also reported on Wednesday that automobile traffic on the Jacques-Cartier and Samuel-De Champlain bridges was already higher than before the pandemic, and that the start of the megaconstruction site of the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel would cause even more congestion. According to several experts, the situation could indeed cause saturation points to be reached on all the crossings between the South Shore and the Island of Montreal in the coming weeks.
“From the point of view of users, it is certain that it is extremely disappointing, another postponement of the REM”, concedes the director general of the organization Trajectoire Québec, Sarah V. Doyon, which represents the interests of commuters throughout the Quebec. “The construction site in the tunnel will put enormous pressure on the infrastructures of the South Shore, that’s obvious. The REM would have been such an attractive solution in this context,” she insists, betting on the “opportunity” represented by the potential modal transfer currently.
We were repeatedly promised a project on time and within budget. A new postponement, it will certainly be a think about it for the next projects of the genre.
Sarah V. Doyon, Director of Trajectory Quebec
In early September, an accident involving a maintenance vehicle occurred near the future Île-des-Sœurs station, causing a temporary interruption of work on the REM site. According to our information, the case also caused slight delays. No one was injured during the event, but it caused significant material damage to the station.
The holder of the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape at the University of Montreal, Shin Koseki, also believes that a new postponement of the REM would be “very unfortunate” in Greater Montreal. But he remains optimistic.
“You have to remember that we are really talking about an infrastructure that is thought out for thousands of users, and which will be sustained over tens, even hundreds of years,” adds Mr. Koseki.
Once completed, the REM will have 67 kilometers of rails between the South Shore, downtown, Montréal-Trudeau Airport, the West Island and the North Shore. This $7 billion+ project will be one of the largest automated light rail systems in the world.
With the collaboration of Julien Arsenault, The Press