AMT to order 23 new cars
It will take about two years for the double- decker cars to be delivered
The Agence métropolitaine de transport will order 23 doubledecker train cars, some time during the next three years.
Fanie St- Pierre, a spokesperson for the agency, said this is a revival of a call for tenders that was abandoned last year because the agency couldn’t afford the $ 88- million price tag.
The AMT’s next capital works budget, from 2015 to 2018, will have a provision to purchase the doubledecker train cars. It will take about two years for the train cars to be de- livered once the call has been issued.
New double- decker cars would be welcome news for the roughly 30,000 people that take the Deux-Montagnes train line daily. However, the new cars might not be destined to serve that line.
The line — which accounts for half the AMT’s total ridership and about the same percentage of its revenues — has been suffering from overcrowding, with trains at 92 per cent of their total capacity, according to the latest figures available from the AMT. The line also saw a 1.6 per cent drop in ridership in 2013.
St- Pierre said it’s not yet clear if the new train cars would all go to the Deux- Montagnes line, or even if any of them would be used on that line. She said the train car order is not with any specific line in mind.
She would not say how many double- decker train cars it would take to completely outfit Deux- Montagnes, but she added that simply adding the cars would not be the solution to overcrowding on the line.
The AMT would need to undertake improvements to its maintenance centres, increase the number of parking stations, and introduce rail improvements to double the track along the 7.4 kilometre corridor between Pierrefonds and Bois-Franc in order to add departures. Those projects are still on the AMT’s wish list with no projected date for completion.