REM IS GAINING GROUND
jean-marc ArBAud, Henri poupart-lafarge, valérie plante, marc garneau, Philippe couillard And michael sabia take part in A sod-turning Ceremony on thursday to inaugurate the $6.3-Billion réseau express métropolitain. The light-rail network is the largest
The largest public transit project in the province’s history is officially underway.
The $6.3-billion Réseau express métropolitain broke ground Thursday afternoon, at a ceremony held in the shadow of what will be the light-rail network’s Griffintown station near tracks currently used for commuter trains on the Mont-St-Hilaire line. The project will be managed and majority funded by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec — the province’s largest pension fund manager — though the provincial and federal governments will pay a little less than half of the final price tag.
“We will start work almost immediately,” said CDPQ CEO Michael Sabia said at the ceremony held at the New City and Gas building. “There will be a project bureau with 800 people working downtown, and there will be several hundred people working on the ground this spring, and in the end of June, there will be thousands of people working on the construction.”
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard said the project will be a boon to riders, but will also show off Quebec know-how. He said he is impressed with a short two-year turnaround from idea to ground breaking on this project.
“This is a signal sent everywhere that Quebec is ideal for investment, and ideal to make an ambitious project progress very quickly,” Couillard said.
The driverless, electric lightrail network will cross the new Champlain Bridge to link the South Shore to downtown’s Central Station and Central Station to Deux-Montagnes, north of Laval. Two other branches will run off the Deux-Montagnes Line at Highway 13, leading to Ste-Annede-Bellevue and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Dorval. The network will run 20 hours per day, with trains running every 2½ minutes during peak periods and every 15 minutes during non-peak periods. The target date for the South Shore branch to begin operations is the summer of 2021, and the other branches will come online within a year.
Not since construction began on the Montreal métro more than 50 years ago has a public transit project of such scope been built in the city. The REM will have 26 stations and span 67 kilometres. By comparison, the first phase of the métro cost $213 million, in 1967, roughly $1.6 billion in today’s dollars, for 26 stations over 26 kilometres.
The Caisse would not say how the construction process would impact commuters and drivers, especially those using DeuxMontagnes, the region’s most-used commuter line.
So far, commuters have only been told the construction process will force weekend service on the line to be interrupted every weekend starting April 27, and stretching into the summer. More complete details about the construction plan are expected to be unveiled in the next two weeks.
The Caisse said the project will generate 34,000 jobs during the construction period and 1,000 permanent jobs afterward. About 100 of those jobs will be created in a global centre of excellence that train manufacturer Alstom will establish in Montreal. The centre will use digital technology and artificial intelligence for use in Alstom projects around the globe. Roughly 65 per cent of the project’s expenses will be local.
The consortia building and operating the train network was announced in February after a rigorous process that took several months and required the network’s route to be altered, and its estimated price tag to be increased.