Premier defends REM monopolies after mayor calls for more details
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard has joined Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante in demanding more transparency on the service monopolies obtained by the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), the electric train project that will service the Montreal area between Brossard and Deux-Montagnes.
On Wednesday, the Presse Canadienne obtained a copy of a confidential agreement that calls for the REM to enjoy transit monopolies in several zones in and around Montreal island as well as “feeder” provisions that also compel local transit authorities to steer their clientele toward REM stations.
On Thursday, Couillard came to the defence of the plan, saying the REM needed the monopolies to be successful.
But in a press conference Friday, he echoed concerns voiced Thursday by Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, who is demanding that the Caisse de dépôt — which is overseeing the $6.3-billion project — provide more details.
Echoed, but with a slightly different focus.
“Yes, (the Caisse) should explain itself on that aspect, because, frankly, it’s common,” Couillard told reporters on Friday in Rigaud.
“You can’t create a $6-million project so that a similar company can operate on the same routes. It doesn’t work like that. There’s not a city in the world that does that.”
When the Caisse explains itself, he continued, “it will be clearer.”
Plante has called for the Caisse to come clean on any possible plan for non-compete zones, saying local officials had a different impression of the agreement between the ARTM and REM when they voted in favour of the project.
Plante said the feeder agreement wasn’t as precise as that described in the document obtained by Presse Canadienne, nor were proposed feeder routes limited to the REM.
On Thursday, La Presse reported that the cities of Longueuil and Laval had voted against the REM this week at the meeting of the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM), but Couillard minimized their objections to the REM plan as currently written.
“I notice that (this opposition), it changes absolutely nothing,” Couillard said.
Worries and unknown variables remain, he said, including the operating costs and related transit projects.
However, he swept the concerns aside.
“The REM will be so much better than anything on the table that people will be very happy to have this. It’s a lot better than a bus trip.”
On Thursday, the Caisse released a statement and its map of noncompetition zones. It assured that “it’s not the development of public transport in the zones that is limited. Ultimately what the REM will offer is the link between the zones and downtown.”
Even so, Parti Québécois transportation critic Martin Ouellet decried the monopoly agreement, saying it existed “to make the REM artificially profitable, to transform it into a money making machine.”
Ouellet told reporters that the REM would discourage for decades other forms of public transit from being developed in the Montreal area and commuters would lose out because of it.
PQ MNA Nicole Léger complained that planners felt that getting citizens into REM stations seemed more important than taking them where they wanted to go, and that the existing project ignored the eastern half of Montreal island.
The PQ has already said that, if it forms the next government, it would scrap the REM and introduce instead a system of express buses, tramways and expanded commuter rail service.
The REM is financed by the Caisse de dépôt, the provincial and federal governments and HydroQuébec.
It’s expected to be completed by 2021, with 26 stations serving Brossard, central and western Montreal and Deux-Montagnes.