Monday, August 02, 2021

QUEBEC INC.
'It hurts everyone': The Caisse's silent takeover of Montreal transit planning

Alarmed observers say the pension fund building the REM has essentially taken over from the ARTM, the regional planner created by the province just four years ago.

Author of the article:Jason Magder • Montreal Gazette
Publishing date:Aug 02, 2021 •

“It’s inconceivable in any metropolis around the world that you have two essentially competing systems of mass transit," says former Westmount mayor Peter Trent 
PHOTO BY JOHN MAHONEY /Montreal Gazette

Longtime observers of public transit say they are alarmed by what they see as a usurping of transit planning in the region by the province’s pension fund.


Since the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec was first asked to examine the possibility of building a transit project in the region by the Couillard government in 2015, critics say it has become the the only body capable of planning and executing large transit projects. That’s a problem because the pension fund is more concerned with its return on investment than on the long-term health of the transit system. In the meantime, the true regional planner, the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain, has become a rudderless ship, they say. Commuters will suffer in the end with a badly planned and poorly integrated transit system.

The CDPQ is in the process of building a nearly $7-billion driverless light-rail network, which will begin in phases starting next year to connect the airport, the West Island, the South Shore, the North Shore and the downtown core. It is also planning the REM de l’Est, a $10-billion light-rail network that would run from downtown to Rivière-des-Prairies and Montréal-Nord, a project that could begin construction next year.

However, the Mascouche train line — the newest commuter line on the island that opened in 2014 at a cost of $700 million — was already compromised by the first REM when it took over the Mount Royal Tunnel last year, and cut off the commuter train’s direct route downtown. Now, it may be rendered obsolete if the REM de l’Est is built as planned, said Sylvain Yelle, the general manager of Exo, which runs the commuter train lines. Yelle said two of the proposed network’s branches would serve areas that currently use the Mascouche line and expressed surprise Exo was left out of the planning of the REM de l’Est

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An artist’s conception of the REM’s Côte-de-Liesse station, where passengers on the commuter train from Mascouche, seen at the right, will have to use the REM to get to and from downtown because the commuter trains cannot use the Mount Royal Tunnel. PHOTO BY CDPQ INFRA

“Maybe we should have (figured out how to integrate the Mascouche line) before presenting REM de l’Est,” he said.

In a recent open letter, Yelle urged the province not to simply invest in shiny new REM projects, but also to work on improving existing services, like the commuter train network.

Florence Junca-Adenot, an urban-planning associate professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal, said she is concerned by the amount of freedom the province has given to the Caisse to build and propose projects. That has allowed the CDPQ to plan the REM de l’Est without consultation with other transit bodies. The result has been a bad plan, she said: the proposed route that would run parallel to a portion of the métro’s Green Line and the bus rapid transit line currently under construction on Pie-IX Blvd. And she believes it would effectively kill the Mascouche commuter line.

“What is the use of having projects competing with each other? It hurts everyone,” she said. “It diminishes resources.”

Former Westmount Mayor Peter Trent agrees. He served as a member of the board of the Société de transport de Montréal, but resigned last spring because of his opposition to how the STM has been left out of transit planning, as he explained in an open letter.

“I have a real problem with what’s going on right now, with no co-ordination,” Trent said. “It’s inconceivable in any metropolis around the world that you have two essentially competing systems of mass transit.”

Trent added that he’s also concerned that the ARTM has not been able to get any transit projects built since it was created.

“Liberals stuck us with the ARTM and I don’t believe it’s working,” Trent said. “If you look at the board of the ARTM, there is no one who knows anything about public transit.”

Junca-Adenot argues if the ARTM had been permitted to have its say, perhaps more priority would have been given to the 5.5-kilometre extension of the métro’s Blue Line to Anjou, which has been delayed since the 1980s and still has no official start date for construction.

“Public projects like the Blue Line have a sequence of steps they have to follow, while CDPQ Infra has been allowed by the government to bypass (some of the) steps,” Junca-Adenot said. “It’s a double standard; the Blue Line could be built just as quickly if it were allowed to skip steps too.”

Both Trent and Junca-Adenot agree that transit should be planned over a long-term period, and the best mode should be chosen for the right reasons. They worry that because it’s a pension fund, the CDPQ is more concerned with a return on investment, rather than optimal service.

“A transit network is a like a body with organs in good health,” Junca-Adenot said. “We have to plan according to the needs, and it has to be fluid and integrated.”

She said a glaring example of dysfunctional planning is the failure by the province to extend the western branch of the métro’s Orange Line by one stop so that it can be linked to the Bois-Franc station of the REM currently under construction.

“Any idiot can understand that this is needed,” she said.

Speaking for CDPQ Infra — the infrastructure arm of the CDPQ — Jean-Vincent Lacroix said he has heard such criticism before, but it is unfair to blame the Caisse.

“We have to remember that CDPQ Infra works on the basis of requests by the government,” Lacroix said. “We’re not a planner. We’re there to respond to the needs identified to us by the government. Our role is to propose solutions for transport that we judge could be profitable (for us).”

He added that CDPQ always works with the ARTM to outline a project beforehand, then presents it to the public for input. The goal is for the projects to integrate with the existing transit networks, not kill them.

“In the end, it’s the government that decides whether or not to go ahead with the projects,” he said, adding that each solution proposed by the REM is evolutionary, which means it is subject to change dramatically during the consultation process.

Lacroix said while the government has allowed the CDPQ to acquire lands more quickly than previous projects, in doing so, it changed the law for all future transit projects.

Matti Siemiatycki, an associate professor of geography and planning and the head of the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, said it’s important for planning to be done correctly the first time, and that means giving the public a role.

“Planning a transit project is a new role for a pension fund,” he said. “Whoever is taking the lead, when this scale of public money is involved, it’s critically important that communities are engaged and the process is transparent and accountable.”

Lacroix agreed, and said that’s why the REM goes through a rigorous public consultation process. However, he said it’s also important to take note of the CDPQ’s track record: it has been able to propose and build the largest transit network in the province’s history over a short period. If inaugurated on the current target date, it will have been less than 10 years from proposal to realization to build the first phase of the REM, while other transit projects have languished on the drawing boards for decades.

“When we proposed the REM, we had been waiting for more than 30 years for a transit solution for the South Shore,” Lacroix said. “The same goes for the airport. For the east part of Montreal, there has been a historic demand to serve this area.”

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