REM operator told to step up as it drops out of South Shore transit project
CDPQ Infra president says service problems are unacceptable
With Montreal's light-rail train network coming off a streak of four outages in as many days, Quebec's transport minister is calling on the group overseeing the service to step up its game.
Last Wednesday, the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), which connects downtown Montreal to the city of Brossard on the South Shore, shut down for 45 minutes in both directions during afternoon rush hour.
On Thursday, the service slowdown was due to a problem with one of the landing doors at a station. The next day, a broken piece of equipment was to blame.
On Saturday, a de-icing operation on the Champlain Bridge halted the REM service for two hours.
There have been many service slowdowns on the REM since it launched, including a rocky inaugural week.
On Monday, the office of the province's transport minister had a message for CDPQ Infra, which is the REM's developer and a subsidiary of Quebec's pension fund manager, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.
In order to encourage people to leave their cars and use public transit, "our public transit networks need to be working," reads a statement from the office of Quebec Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault.
"The problems from the last six months need to be taken seriously," the minister's office wrote.
Since last summer, there has also been frustration about sloppy communication during outages, something CDPQ Infra vowed to improve last month.
'Unacceptable' service slowdowns
On several occasions, the group behind the REM has said that such a large public transit system is bound to have some issues after launching.
The winter season was always expected to be the new service's biggest test.
So far, the month of January has been challenging, said Jean-Marc Arbaud, the president and CEO of CDPQ Infra.
He said some of the service interruptions have lasted too long.
"To me, it's unacceptable and the number of problematic events like these, long outages like these, should be close to zero. We should not be having any of them," Arbaud told Radio-Canada.
He said staff's inexperience with the training system is partly to blame. He said this week's outage that was caused by a a faulty landing door was prolonged by a mistake made while restarting the service.
"We're fully aware of of the inconveniences that this can cause for users," Arbaud said regarding the service slowdowns.
CDPQ Infra withdraws from South Shore transit project
Doreen Assaad, the mayor of Brossard, applauded the statement from the transport minister's office.
Commuters were patient in the beginning, but now many of them are losing trust in the service, she said.
She said Brossard commuters are also frustrated because the launch of the REM meant existing bus lines linking the city to Montreal had to be discontinued.
"At a minimum, we were sold on something that was going to be reliable, comfortable and fluid and that's not the case," Assaad.
"So people are telling me 'Doreen, please say something' because they're going back to their cars."
CDPQ Infra was also involved in a potential transit project on Montreal's South Shore that aims to create a direct link between Brossard and the neighbouring city of Longueuil along Taschereau Boulevard.
It's still unclear what a potential project could look like.
On Monday, Assaad and Longueuil Mayor Catherine Fournier issued a statement asking the provincial government to take over the project. After a meeting last Friday with CDPQ Infra, they decided that things are moving along too slowly for their liking.
"We were a bit flustered," Assaad. "I thought that CDPQ Infra was going to present the findings, provide us data and consult on what we want to see there and it just didn't happen that way at all."
Assaad acknowledged that the REM service's mishaps also contributed to her and Fournier's decision to ask Quebec to step in.
After the mayors voiced opposition to having CDPQ Infra guide the project, the corporation told CBC late on Monday the project was no longer a priority and that it was not actively working on it.
"A [separate] project on the South Shore would require mobilizing teams that are not available at this time," the company said, adding that studies that have been carried out so far would need to be updated since so much has changed in recent years.
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With files from Radio-Canada