Environmental groups seek conditions for train plan
The proposed $5.5-billion REM electric train network is a great idea, say three prominent environmental groups, but they cannot support it if it increases urban sprawl and if other long-promised transit projects are abandoned because of it.
Public hearings by the province’s environmental watchdog, Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement, continued Thursday into the Réseau électrique métropolitain, touted as the most significant public transit project to come along since the Montreal métro was built 50 years ago.
The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, through its new subsidiary CDPQ Infra, is proposing to build a 67-kilometre train network that would link the West Island, Trudeau Airport, the North Shore and South Shore to Montreal’s Central Station. The network would link to Montreal’s métro system and run 20 hours a day, seven days a week. The Caisse has invested in similar projects elsewhere, such as the Canada Line of Vancouver’s Skytrain network.
The REM’s four branches would reduce travel time to downtown Montreal from points as far as Brossard, Trudeau Airport, Ste-Annede-Bellevue and Deux-Montagnes.
For example, currently it takes 30 to 45 minutes on average to get from the airport to downtown by car and 45 to 60 minutes by public transit. On the REM it will take 18 to 20 minutes on an express train. Buses leave the airport approximately every eight minutes now, while the REM trains would leave every six to 12 minutes.
CDPQ Infra says the project will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 16,800 tonnes per year because commuters will prefer to take REM trains over their private cars or buses. The trains will be more comfortable, more reliable and faster than other travel methods, CDPQ Infra claims. But three environmental groups — Regroupement des conseils régionaux de l’environnement, Équiterre and Vivre en Ville — told the BAPE Thursday they cannot support the project unless four conditions are met:
The REM network is linked to the Montreal métro at McGill and Édouard-Montpetit stations — two links that CDPQ Infra is already studying — and the orange line of the métro is extended from CôteVertu station to an REM station at Bois-Franc in St-Laurent.
Strong measures are introduced to ensure the network does not increase urban sprawl. (Building too many large park-and-ride stations, for example, can encourage development in far-flung areas, which would promote more driving to the REM stations, rather than less.)
Ambitious, province-wide sustainable mobility programs are adopted, with adequate, recurring funding.
Governments make good on promises to extend the blue line of the métro and improve transit service in the central sectors of the island, including tramway projects.
The groups noted the public transit network has been underfunded for decades. In 2014, Quebec’s transit authorities jointly estimated they needed $14 billion to maintain and develop infrastructure to meet needs by 2020. Since that time, the Quebec infrastructure plan has invested only $2.1 billion in public transit. In the last budget, Quebec planned to invest less than $4 billion by 2020.
“We are sending a signal to the powers that be that this is a very good project but it needs to be part of something bigger in terms of transit and mobility in Quebec,” Équiterre co-founder Steven Guilbeault said.
Quebec can and should be investing more, Guilbeault said. The province’s cap and trade system is funnelling over $500-million a year into the Green Fund, twothirds of which is supposed to be earmarked for programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.
Earlier this week, a coalition of environmental groups, transportation experts and a major union joined forces to demand the project be studied by a parliamentary commission. They are concerned the private nature of the project will mean costs will be much greater and fares for users will be higher, because the Caisse will seek to make a profit. And they are skeptical of the greenhouse gas reduction claims.
Denis Bolduc, president of the Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique-Québec, said the coalition had an expert estimate the emissions that will be created just in the building of the network.
“Producing all that concrete will emit about 1 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, so even if (reduced car and bus use) brings emissions down by 16,800 tonnes a year, we calculate it will take 60 years,” for the system to start paying off in terms of mitigating climate change.