In northern boroughs, métro news gets mixed reactions
After decades of broken promises, Julio Garcia said he doesn’t believe a Blue Line métro extension will ever come to fruition.
“We’ve heard lots of promises but have not seen any reality. I don’t really believe them, because politicians will say one thing and then they change their minds,” said Garcia, a retiree who has lived in Montreal North for the last 30 years. “It’s good news, because this area is not served very well by public transit. It would have been good for our children to get downtown to go to school, and even for us when we worked downtown.”
Garcia was reacting to Monday ’s announcement that the federal and provincial governments have agreed to go ahead with a longawaited 5.8-kilometre extension of the Blue Line east to Galeries d’Anjou. Five new stations will be added to the line by 2026, along Jean-Talon St., according to the $3.9-billion plan.
Standing outside the Bonanza supermarket on Jean-Talon St. in St-Léonard, Garcia said he remembers hearing promises about the Blue Line since Yves Ryan was mayor of Montreal North between 1963 and 2001. In fact, an Anjou station for the Blue Line first appeared on planning maps around 1986 when the métro network was still in expansion mode.
However, while in-town transit was all the rage in the 1960s and ’70s, cost overruns, several transit strikes and the growing political power of the suburbs meant the métro’s expansion fell out of political favour. Instead of extending to Anjou, the provincial government funded a three-station extension to Laval, which opened in 2007.
BOON FOR THE AREA
LaSalle resident Rino Verdino welcomed the news Monday, saying it will be a boon for the area.
“It’s good for people who live around here even though it won’t help me much,” said Verdino, who drives to the area to do his groceries. “I know people who come to this area from Côte-des-Neiges and they take the bus, so it will be very good for them. It will cost us money, but we waste so much money for so many things, at least this is a good thing to spend money on.”
While Verdino may not use the métro to commute to the area, several people on the bus lines on Jean Talon St. and Pie-IX Blvd. cheered the news of the métro’s extension.
“It’s great because it will get me to work much faster,” said Caci Clarke, who commutes daily from downtown to the area near JeanTalon St. and Viau Blvd.
Clarke, who moved to Montreal two weeks ago from Newfoundland, said the métro will significantly shorten her commuting time, which now takes an hour and a half.
“It will give people lots more choices to go further, instead of taking the bus.”
CONSTRUCTION ANXIETY
At the corner of Pie IX Blvd. and Jean-Talon, where one of the five stations will be located, Lyes Zine, who has lived in Montreal his whole life, said having the Blue Line extend to Galeries d’Anjou will be useful for him because he often takes the bus to that area from his home near the Pie-IX métro on the Green Line.
Waiting for the No. 139 bus on Pie-IX, Zine said he worries that in the seven years until the extension is built, traffic will get worse on Jean-Talon.
“The negative thing here is that the construction is all going to be on Jean-Talon,” Zine said. “There’s already a lot of congestion and we’re going to add construction to all of this? We’ll see what happens.”
Rivière-des-Prairies resident Nancy Daddi said even though she rarely takes the Blue Line, the announcement was good news.
“It will probably take a lot of people off the Radisson station on the Green Line that I take all the time,” Daddi said. “It’s always good to have good public transportation. I’ll probably end up taking it quite often.”