Is mayor-elect’s vision for a new métro realistic?
Expert weighs in on expected costs, likelihood of provincial, federal funding
Valérie Plante said Monday she intends to stick to a campaign promise to start building a new 21-kilometre extension of Montreal’s métro by 2021.
Speaking to reporters on the steps of city hall the morning after being elected mayor of Montreal, Plante said her first term as mayor will be dedicated to studying and getting financing for what she has dubbed the Pink Line, and she expects the new line can be built during a second term, with construction completed in 2028.
“In the first mandate, it will be everything related to doing the financial framework around it, and making sure that the technology we talked about is appropriate and working well,” Plante said.
Plante drew ridicule from opponents during the campaign for her promise to build a new métro line, but experts are unsure whether Plante is wearing rose-coloured glasses or if her proposal is grounded in reality.
First proposed during her leadership campaign last year, Plante has called for a line to cut diagonally between the Blue and Orange Lines. It would start at the northeastern tip of Montreal North and cut through St-Léonard, Villeray— Saint-Michel—Parc-Extension, to Rosemont—La-Petite-Patrie, Plateau-Mont-Royal to downtown. From there, the line would move above ground for eight more kilometres through downtown to Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and on to Lachine.
Plante said that new technology, like tunnel-boring machines has made it cheaper to build subway tunnels.
Plante’s estimated tag of $5.9 billion for the Pink Line (or $280 million per kilometre) doesn’t seem out of whack when compared with some of the métro systems that have been built around the world, experts said.
Ahmed El-Geneidy, an associate professor at McGill’s School of Urban Planning, said to get a sense of how much it would cost per kilometre of the Pink Line, the 2007 extension of the Laval métro extension is a good example. That project cost $745 million for 5.2 kilometres, or about $167 million per kilometre, adjusted for inflation. By contrast, estimates done by the Quebec government show the proposed extension of the Blue Line by 5.5 kilometres would cost about $3 billion, or $545 million per kilometre. If that figure were applied to the Pink Line, it would work out to $11.4 billion.
El- Geneidy said he has not studied the new technology that Projet Montréal is proposing to use, so he can’t comment about how much it would cost. However, he noted the project depends heavily on federal and provincial funds, and there are already several multibillion-dollar transit projects that are also priorities, so he’s wondering if there will still be money left over for the Pink Line.
The federal and provincial governments have each pledged $1.283 billion to fund the Réseau électrique métropolitain, an electric light-rail across the Champlain Bridge, linking the South Shore, downtown and the West Island. The provincial and federal governments have also pledged to fund the Blue Line extension, with new provincial Transport Minister André Fortin saying last week he hoped to begin expropriations next year.
“Plus they have delayed the replacement of the old (MR-73 model) of métro trains, so they’ll have to find a couple of billion for that sometime soon,” El-Geneidy said. “Can we afford to build (all of these projects) at the same time? I don’t know.”
In Ottawa on Monday, federal Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly said her government is open to talking about funding new transit projects like the Pink Line.
Plante isn’t the first mayor to promise newer technology to build a métro line faster and cheaper than the norm. The last person to do this was Jean Drapeau in 1960, and he then oversaw the construction of Montreal’s métro network. Drapeau delivered on his promise; at the time it was inaugurated, Montreal’s métro system was one of the least expensive métro systems to build because construction crews tunnelled through the ground, as opposed to the then-traditional cut and cover method, which requires displacing electrical wires and sewage pipes. The initial 26-kilometre network cost $213 million to build. With inflation factored in, that represents $1.6 billion, or roughly $61.5 million per kilometre in today’s dollars. Montreal paid the bulk of the price tag for the métro’s first phase.
Obviously, a lot has changed since the 1960s to make construction of a subway network far more expensive, not the least of which is labour laws, safety measures and the required studies.
But El- Geneidy said with chronic congestion on the existing métro network, there is a need for a new line, and the Pink Line would be a boon to the underserved northeast of the city. However, he said that whatever is built should be done in accordance with a regional plan for public transit.
Craig Townsend, an associate professor in the department of geography, planning and environment at Concordia University, said he would like to see Montreal pay significantly more for transit, both to run the day-to-day budget of the Société de transport de Montréal and any future projects. For the most part, the city pays about onethird of any major transit projects.
“Politicians are proposing things that they are not proposing to pay for,” Townsend said. “It’s a little bit misleading what they are doing.”