CP Rail strike puts Montreal commuter trains on ice
Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT) is using buses to help replace the passenger train service
About 19,000 commuters in the Montreal area were scrambling to find a way to get to work or school.
As part of the CP Rail strike that began yesterday, there was no AMT commuter-train service today on the Vaudreuil-Hudson, St-Jérôme and Candiac lines.
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The Agence métropolitaine de transport (the commuter train transit authority known as the AMT) has a contract with CP Rail for those three commuters lines. Canadian National engineers drive the trains running on the other AMT lines.
To help ease the burden on commuters, the AMT said it would run 60 buses along those lines to help ensure commuters get to work on Monday.
Details of the alternative transit plan can be found on the AMT's website.
But the transit authority said it would take 700 buses to provide the same level of service the commuter trains fulfill.
“Some people will need to take their car this morning or go with other workers in their car,” AMT president Nicolas Girard told CBC Montreal’s Daybreak.
“I think the situation right now is unfair, is unacceptable and I think our customers are being held hostage.”
One woman told CBC she left an hour earlier than usual to get to work on time by bus.
The AMT was denied an injunction on Friday to keep its commuter trains running. Girard said the AMT would try for another injunction again Monday.
Back-to-work legislation expected
The federal government was set to introduce legislation today to end the CP Rail strike.
The strike began after contract talks failed to reach an agreement before a midnight Saturday night deadline.
The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union represents 3,300 locomotive engineers and other train workers at the railway.
In a statement issued Sunday morning, the company said it would deploy management personnel to operate a reduced freight service on its Canadian network.
Quebec Transport Minister Robert Poëti said Monday legislation forcing the employees back to work should be introduced "as soon as possible."
Poëti said employees working on commuter trains shouldn't be allowed to strike.
"Why can we not consider that service an essential service? And it is," he told Daybreak.
"We don’t use these trains for fun."