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Users of the Brossard branch of the region’s newest transit network will have to pay the price for the bulk of the year while the REM’s next two branches are painstakingly tested.
CDPQ-Infra — the subsidiary of the province’s pension fund that owns and operates the light-rail network — announced Thursday the plans to bring the next two branches into service, with a target date for the fall of 2025.
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Because of delays in completing work in the Mont-Royal tunnel, the REM began its testing phase on the Anse-à-l’Orme branch in August and on a portion of the Deux-Montagnes branch as well. To avoid using the tunnel, CDPQ-Infra had to build a control centre, which acts as the system’s brain, in St-Eustache. However, for the entire system to run from one end to the other, builders must complete a mind meld so that all the functions of the system are housed in the Brossard control centre. That process will be completed by April.
The work will require the network to close early in January and then be cut for entire weekends from February to April on the whole Brossard branch — which runs from Brossard to Central Station. Then in April, service will be interrupted on weekends and evenings starting at 9 p.m. Finally, for the last phase of testing, when trains are running from one end of the network to the end of each branch, all service for paying customers will halt for a period of four to six weeks. The timeline for that closure is the summer period, with the plan being to relaunch the network in the fall of 2025. The trains will be replaced with shuttle buses for the duration.
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At Central Station on Thursday, several REM users expressed dismay at hearing about the upcoming outages.
“I’ll have to use my car more often,” said Christopher Kopylov, who works as a chef in Brossard and lives downtown. “I had stopped using my car because of the convenience of the REM.”
The REM’s new price tag is $8.34 billion, up 4.9 per cent from the last update, which CDPQ-Infra says is a respectable $125 million per kilometre and well within industry standards. By comparison, Toronto’s Eglinton Crosstown light-rail project, which is still under construction, has an estimated price tag of $674 million per kilometre.
REM interruptions next year
- January: Service ends at 11:30 p.m. Saturdays, starts at noon Sundays
- February-March: No service on weekends
- April-June: No service after 9 p.m. weekdays, no service on weekends
- Summer: Complete closure of network for 4-6 weeks (dates to be determined)
jmagder@postmedia.com
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