North and west REM branches to begin carrying passengers in October

The head of CDPQ Infra, the company overseeing the construction of the Réseau express métropolitain, better known as the REM, says the north and west branches of the project will be up and running by October 2025. 

Jean-Marc Arbaud said in an interview with Radio-Canada that trains will begin running between Deux-Montagnes, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue and downtown Montreal in March or April for testing. 

Later, in the summer, that testing will see the whole network shut down for six weeks, a CDPQ Infra spokesperson said on Thursday. 

Once that's complete, trains should begin carrying passengers along the entire REM route — except for the link to the airport — in October. 

Arbaud said the airport link is on track for the end of 2027. He said that the airport station is out of the control of CDPQ Infra because Aéroports de Montréal, the corporation in charge of the airport, is building it. 

Arbaud said the project needs about 100,000 travellers per day to be financially viable. 

He said that to get there, the REM will have to be reliable and fast. Arbaud said he knows it will be competitive — or faster — than the current time it takes a car to drive from one of the station's endpoints to downtown Montreal.

WATCH | The next steps in the project: 

New branches of Montreal’s light-rail system to open this fall

8 days ago

Duration 2:13

The REM developer says the branch that runs north from Central Station to Deux-Montagnes, Que., and the branch that runs through Montreal’s West Island will be ready to carry passengers by Oct. 2025.

And he said they are working on reliability. So far, snow has caused some problems. Since Dec. 1, the South Shore REM branch has had nine interruptions of 20 minutes or more, including three shutdowns within 24 hours at the beginning of February. 

"That's the last point we have to sort out if we are to provide a service that passengers have every right to expect," he said. "All our contractors are well aware of this, and we monitor it on a daily basis."

The cost of the REM has climbed from $7 billion estimated in 2018 to now $9.4 billion. But Arbaud noted that the cost is actually about half or a third of other major public transit projects in the rest of Canada.