AMT doesn’t want to share study about electrifying its network
Montreal’s train authority says it wants to keep a study about electrifying its network a secret, in part to avoid raising expectations among commuters about improved service.
Despite the fact that the railways that own the train tracks have firmly said they will not allow their infrastructure to be electrified, the Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT) is fighting a Gazette request to have the study made public.
It hired a law firm to fight The Gazette’s appeal of the AMT’s refusal to disclose it.
Testifying at an access-toinformation commission hearing this week, the AMT employee who oversaw the study said it contains information such as how much faster trains could run.
Releasing that information to the public could “generate unrealistic expectations,” said Patrick Charpentier, who left the AMT in January.
Commuters might, for example, expect schedules to change after electrification, he said. If that doesn’t happen, they might be disappointed, he added.
Part of the hearing was held without the presence of The Gazette, in order for access commissioner Hélène Grenier to hear testimony regarding the study’s details.
The Gazette sought the document via Quebec’s access-to-information law in 2011. The taxpayer-funded, $1.1-million study was completed in 2011.
The document, which is about 300-pages long, looked at the cost, the advantages and the technical challenges of electrifying, as well as its impact on commuters, greenhouse gas emissions and noise pollution.
The AMT saw electrification as a way to cut long-term costs, improve service and reduce pollution.
Only the AMT’s Deux-Montagnes line is electric.
It would cost a minimum of $1.5 billion and possibly as much as $3 billion to electrify the other four, diesel-powered lines, the AMT has said.
The AMT only owns seven per cent of the tracks its trains use; most of the rest are owned by Canadian National and Canadian Pacific.
In October 2012, CN and CP told The Gazette they would not take part in electrification, effectively killing the proposal.
At the time, CN said it had “advised the AMT over a year ago that it could not entertain this project. Since then, CN has further considered the impact of AMT’s project on its operations and determined that the two oper- ations (electric commuter trains and diesel CN freight trains) could not realistically coexist and advised AMT accordingly.”
As for CP, at the time the railway said it had studied and rejected the AMT proposal.
“At the end of the day, the (electrification) proposal would have required significant changes” to CP infrastructure, including the raising of overhead structures, such as road overpasses.
During the two-day accessto-information hearing this week, Alexandre-Philippe Avard, a lawyer representing the AMT, argued that electrification is still a possibility.
Avard argued that making the “highly confidential” study’s detailed findings public could jeopardize future negotiations with CN and CP.
He said only a handful of AMT employees have seen the report, which was not shared with CN or CP.
Representing The Gazette, lawyer Mark Bantey told the commission that it’s in the public interest to make the document public, noting the AMT has not shown how doing so now would affect it, financially or otherwise.
The study could allow taxpayers to judge for themselves whether electrification is feasible or desirable.
It could also shed light on the soundness of the AMT’s decision to spend $308 million on 20 special dual-powered (electric/diesel) locomotives to be ready for the transition from diesel.
The locomotives are more than twice as expensive as diesel-only locomotives.
Bantey argued that, since key facts and figures from the document were leaked to La Presse, the “analysis around those numbers should now also be made public.”
As evidence the project is dead, Bantey pointed to an interview last fall in which Paul Côté, then chief executive of the AMT and now a special adviser there, declared that CP had rejected the idea and that CN did not even return AMT calls. Facing that rejection, Côté said, the AMT cancelled plans to spend $55 million on electrification engineering studies.
Asked about those statements, the AMT’s Charpentier testified that Côté’s “comprehension of the electrification issue is limited.”
Côté is a respected railway industry veteran, having worked at CN before moving to Via Rail, where he worked for 32 years, including a fiveyear stint as CEO.
The commission did not indicate when it would rule on The Gazette’s appeal.