Experts fear the proposed REM will weaken East End transit

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A longtime transit expert says REM de l’Est planners should go back to the drawing board because the proposed $10 billion light rail project would compete with and weaken existing services.

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Florence Junca-Adenot, associate professor of urban planning at UQAM and first head of the Agence métropolitaine de transport, has analyzed the proposal in recent weeks and concluded that there are major flaws in the proposed route. It would start in the center of Central Station, run along Notre-Dame St., and link up with Pointe-aux-Trembles in the east and Montreal North in the northeast.

“Normally, when you build a new project, it should increase the use of public transport and meet the needs of commuters. In this case, the REM de l’Est doesn’t do any of those things,” said Junca-Adenot.

Using publicly available data from the region’s Origine-Destination survey published in 2018, it found that among East End residents served by the project, only 13 percent commuted downtown every day before the pandemic. Among them, 82 percent took public transportation to get there, so there is not a large number of people who would make the switch to transit with the REM de l’Est. Most East End transit users travel between destinations in their region, Junca-Adenot said, and the project does little to improve those connections.

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By contrast, the stalled extension of the metro’s Blue Line by 5.5 kilometers to Anjou would serve many more people and prompt many more to leave their cars at home, he said.

Among the 133,000 people that the REM de l’Est expects to serve, 94 percent are already regular users of the Green Metro Line and the Mascouche train line, and are expected to use the SRB Pie-IX bus network now in construction, Junca- said Adenot. The REM de l’Est would run parallel to these services and thus compete with them.

“The modification announced last month to take the Souligny avenue aggravates the situation; there is no longer an interconnection with the metro,” he said. “This type of route would weaken the existing transit network by eliminating its riders and the fares associated with those riders, thereby forcing transit operators to cut back.”

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Junca-Adenot added that according to current agreements for REM in the west, bus routes must be replanned to serve the new rail network. Because buses at the eastern end already serve the Green Line, Junca-Adenot is concerned that when the project is underway, they will be diverted from the metro to serve the REM.

Marc-André Carignan agrees. A writer specialized in urban planning, he said that transit planners have not asked the right questions when it comes to the REM de l’Est.

“We’ve been talking about improving transit in the East for decades,” he said. “People are now saying this is the best project we’ve ever seen for the east, but is this really the best project for the east, or is it just better than what’s been proposed in the past?”

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Carignan believes planners should reconsider the downtown portion of the route, which would save significant costs. Maintaining the connection to the subway should be a no-brainer, he said.

“The strength of any public transportation system is interconnectivity,” he said. “Disconnecting it from the subway creates an isolated corridor and a lot of people don’t need to go downtown every day. They go more north and south, east and west within the eastern end.”

Junca-Adenot is also concerned that, at a time of financial stress for transit systems, the REM de l’Est would come with such a high price tag that it would force transit agencies to cut back or cancel other planned improvements to the net.

For example, the original REM is estimated to cost $438 million per year to operate, based on an agreed rate of 72 cents per passenger kilometer to be collected from the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain. Although the REM de l’Est fare has not yet been announced, Junca-Adenot fears it will cost much more, because it is more expensive to build and proposes to serve fewer passengers.

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“The bill will be double,” he said.

Junca-Adenot said ARTM should have already stepped in to propose a route that would strengthen rather than weaken existing transit structures.

“You can’t decide on a project by figuring out which route would be the most financially advantageous,” he said. “They should have worked to complement existing services, not compete with them.

“It is clear that it will divert money from other projects.”

For the transit lobby group Trajectoire Québec, it is alarming that the project no longer connects to the Green Line. CEO Sarah Doyon said her group originally asked REM’s builders, CDPQ Infra, to move the project from Sherbrooke St. to the existing Souligny Ave. rail corridor due to residents’ complaints, but added that cutting the link with the metro is not a good idea.

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“For us, it is a big inconvenience to lose the connection to the Green Line,” he said. “It seems very troublesome.”

Doyon said that Trajectoire Québec has been requesting a year to see studies on the impact the REM de l’Est would have on the number of passengers on the SRB Pie-IX, the Green Line, the Mascouche train line and an extended Blue Line.

While all three critics say there are problems with the REM de l’Est project, they all believe it can be improved and should not be ruled out. But with limited budgets, decision makers need to make sure the money is spent wisely.

“It is possible that some users will go to REM, and if there is a substantial gain in time, it is worth it,” Doyon said. “But we also need to ask ourselves if it’s worth developing a heavy transit project parallel to an existing heavy transit service.”

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