RTM unveils improvement plan, offers Discounts
Authority to spend $450M to enhance, upgrade equipment
Old trains and bad equipment are to blame for the increased number of delays in the region’s trains, says the head of the commuter train authority.
Raymond Bachant, the director general of the Réseau transport métropolitain, said there was inadequate investment in the region’s train network during the last few decades. Now the authority will spend $450 million to improve and upgrade equipment. The plan is a response to a rash of late trains this winter that saw on-time rates dip to about 50 per cent on the Mascouche and Deux-Montagnes train lines during the first and second week of January, according to the RTM’s website.
“It’s clear that no serious investment created those issues,” Bachant said. “I know what is needed, and I want to make sure we have investments supported by the government to fix this problem once and for all.”
Bachant said there are numerous problems with the devices used to keep switches on tracks clear from ice and snow during the winter. If switches jam, train operators have to get out of their locomotives and manually free them, causing delays.
The Deux-Montagnes line, for example, doesn’t have heaters on its switches. Instead, blowers blast cold air on the switches to blow off debris. When temperatures fall well below the freezing point, Bachant said these blowers are ineffective.
“Right now, there are no (heaters on switches on the Deux-Montagnes line),” Bachant said. “When it’s minus 20, like we had in January, it doesn’t work. It has its limits.”
The RTM will add staff to be on standby in strategic locations to free up jammed switches. It will also add heaters, covers or other improvements to roughly 100 switches during the next few months, and identify more switches that may need intervention in the spring.
The changes to the switches were one of several measures outlined in the plan to reporters on Wednesday.
Other measures include building a new maintenance centre to repair and keep up trains on the Mascouche line. The Lachine maintenance centre will also be updated, and the RTM will do repairs on cars for the Deux-Montagnes line. Bachant said a 2015 program to repair the cars was cancelled by the now-defunct Agence métropolitaine de transport because the line will be replaced by the Réseau express métropolitain. While the cars won’t be completely retrofitted, crews will repair and upgrade mechanical and electrical parts of the old MR-90 cars on the DeuxMontagnes Line.
The authority will also buy 20 new double-decker cars. That will ensure there is spare rolling stock in the fleet, Bachant said. However, the new cars won’t be in the fleet for about three years. The RTM has already ordered 24 other doubledeckers, to be in use by the end of 2019 or the beginning of 2020.
Bachant said the Deux-Montagnes line will continue to make use of 10 double-decker cars, used on four train departures per day. That allows the authority to pull out some of the MR-90 cars to repair them.
By 2021, the RTM will be able to increase capacity by purchasing 30 new locomotives that will be able to pull 10 cars, as opposed to the current ones that can only pull six or eight cars at a time.
The RTM will also develop a sort of service guarantee, to be outlined later this year, but commuters who experienced delays this past winter are eligible for a 30 per cent discount on monthly passes, or a Solo card with six free train fares. The RTM said it will outline how people can claim their discounts on its website in the coming weeks.