Steamroller

Since her election and her appointment as minister, Chantal Rouleau, in public, on many subjects, often seemed amorphous.

Minister Delegate for Transport and responsible for the Metropolis, she used to take refuge in ready-made phrases. The days when, in 2012, she made herself known as a whistleblower borough mayor seemed a long way off.

But for the past two days, the Eastern REM (Metropolitan Express Network) project seems to have had the effect of an electric shock on her. The minister is downright furious.

Reviews

It’s not just in Quebec where a $10 billion transportation project (the third link) is making headlines and sparking outcry.

For weeks, the “REM de l’Est” – also valued at $10 billion – has drawn criticism from citizens for its ugliness, but also from the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM), not to mention the Société de Montreal transportation (STM).

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante said she felt “backed against the wall”; she would like to be consulted more.

The reviews are serious. The ARTM, whose mission is to plan public transit in greater Montreal, concludes that the REM de l’Est will enter into “problematic competition with two major services of the existing structuring network”.

The STM maintains that the REM de l’Est “will have a major impact on the structure of the bus network, the ridership of the STM in the East and on the extension of the blue line”.

Admittedly, Montreal is a tower of
Babel for transport. Because of its size of course, but also because of the proliferation of local stakeholders, structures and potentates.

The SRB Pie-IX project illustrates this perfectly. Launched in 2009, it was to be put into service quickly… According to the latest news, we will still have to wait until next fall before we can embark on it!

It was partly in the hope of countering this force of metropolitan inertia that the Couillard government entrusted the Caisse de dépôt with the REM project.

Was it the right model? The Caisse first has performance objectives. These, one has the impression, come before urban planning. And even before taking into account the needs and interests of public transport users.

However, Minister Rouleau brushes aside the criticisms, however extensive, of the ARTM and the STM.

It is content to exalt the so-called miraculous qualities of the Eastern REM. His tone with almost North Korean accents gives his flights a touch of involuntary humor: “society project”, “the whole world has its eyes riveted on this project”, “incredible development possibilities”, etc.

M^me Rouleau is not wrong to point out that the Liberals have not achieved much for transportation in 14 years in Montreal, nor that we must curb the increase in the car fleet, an objective that can only be achieved by entanglement of several “structuring modes”.

But she should take the criticism seriously. And try to rally transport players in Montreal.

For now, it seems deeply closed. Even when she attempts a touch of humour: “To put water in your wine is an expression that I don’t really like, because water in wine isn’t really good. »