Montreal Gazette

Train corridor to nowhere

Transport Quebec paying for unneeded $136-million project

- ANDY RIGA ariga@montrealga­zette.com twitter.com/andyriga

Remember the Dorval Circle ramps to nowhere?

For an encore, Transport Quebec is paying for a $136-million train corridor to nowhere.

When it was planning the $3.7-billion Turcot reconstruc­tion project, Quebec included a rail corridor between the South-West borough and Montreal West.

The corridor, including a concrete tunnel under a highway ramp, was to accommodat­e commuter trains and an airport shuttle, with tracks running near the Falaise St-Jacques, Canadian National freight tracks and Highway 20.

Problem is, the province just chose a different route for the long-awaited airport shuttle and improvemen­ts to West Island train service.

The $5.5-billion Réseau électrique métropolit­ain, announced in April, will link the South Shore, the West Island and Deux-Montagnes to both the airport and downtown Montreal. The new plan does away with the idea of linking the airport and downtown via trains running along Highway 20.

Instead, trains will use the Mount Royal tunnel and part of the DeuxMontag­nes train corridor, with the airport shuttle branching off toward Trudeau, and a West Island train branching off and running along Highway 40 to Ste-Anne-deBellevue.

That means a Turcot airport/ commuter rail corridor is no longer needed.

Since CN’s freight tracks had to be moved due to the new Turcot’s configurat­ion, Quebec is paying to relocate them. As part of that contract, Quebec also agreed to pay for an adjacent rail corridor.

Transport Quebec spokespers­on Sarah Bensadoun said it’s impossible to break out the cost of the five-kilometre commuter/airport rail corridor from the rest of the Turcot project.

She would not comment on a document obtained by Radio-Canada indicating Transport Quebec budgeted $136-million for the corridor.

The rail corridor was conceived as a whole so it’s difficult to calculate such a figure, Bensadoun said. The foundation­s for tracks and overhead structures were designed to include both the CN freight trains, which will definitely roll along the corridor, and passenger trains, which may never use it.

Though no airport/commuter tracks will be installed, Bensadoun said the land for the corridor will remain in place for a possible, unspecifie­d future public transit project.

At the Dorval Circle near Trudeau Airport, work on two new ramps was stalled for years due to bickering between Transport Quebec, CN, Canadian Pacific and two nearby hotels.

Now, under a plan announced on May 2, about 10 per cent of one of the unfinished ramps will be demolished. The cost of demolishin­g and rebuilding part of the ramp is included in a $344-million contract to rebuild the interchang­e, now scheduled to be completed in 2019.

In another embarrassi­ng twist, in March Transport Quebec was ordered to pay a hotel more than $5.7 million for expropriat­ing part of its parking lot for the Dorval Circle makeover. The new ramps will provide direct links between the airport and Highways 20 and 520.

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