The REM’s non-compete clause will wreak havoc on Montreal public transit

It seems like rarely a week goes by without some news about how the REM is either falling short as a transit service or otherwise disrupting people’s ability to move around the city. We should prepare ourselves for a rough summer and fall, as the REM’s many drawbacks and poor design choices begin to make themselves felt across the rest of Greater Montreal’s public transit systems.

I’m not generally pessimistic, but I’m starting to wonder whether the REM will ultimately be a leading cause of the collapse of public transit in Montreal. I say this because of a key feature of the REM, one that never quite got the scrutiny it deserved:

It’s a private, for-profit system that eats away at public transit funding, saps consumer confidence and is designed not to complement public transit, but compete with it. 

Technical problems leading to service interruptions still seem high for a light-rail system that, while new, should be out of its initial teething stage. In addition, the REM will be out of service entirely for six weeks as well as weekends this summer, because of tests and trials that are apparently related to the eventual opening of the REM’s Deux-Montagnes and Anse-à-l’Orme lines. It’s not clear to me what exactly needs to be worked out, as the REM’s South Shore branch is supposedly completely separate from the other lines.

This closure isn’t the only bad news: it’s now no longer clear whether those two lines (which are already behind schedule) will open as planned in October. CDPQ-Infra President and CEO Jean-Marc Arbaud told Radio-Canada’s Patrice Roy back in February that that they would, but La Presse reported in late May that CDPQ-Infra has doubted for months this could be achieved. 

Technical problems, service disruptions, missed deadlines and blown budgets are par for the course when it comes to the REM — this is literally all we have known since day one of the train Montreal never wanted. And it’s not like we weren’t warned: many of the REM’s current problems were identified by experts and analysts years ago and promptly ignored by politicians who didn’t want expertise to get in the way of their legacy-making. What’s done is done: the REM has (mostly) been built and will operate about as well as any light-rail system designed for tropical climates could possibly run in a city where winter lasts for nearly half the year. Many people will choose not to use the REM, either because of expense or because of its unreliability, and my guess is eventually the CDPQ will try to sell it to the province for less than it cost to build because they’re not making their annual guaranteed return on investment. 

The REM will be infamous, at least among Montrealers and urban planners, as a case study in how not to build mass transit systems.

While there’s basically nothing to be done about that — we’re quite literally watching a slow-motion train derailment on a massive scale — Montrealers need to know about another problem related to the REM that’s not nearly getting enough attention.

The REM has a non-compete clause with the public transit systems operating in Greater Montreal. Public transit agencies have already been adjusting bus routes and schedules to accommodate this, but as La Presse recently reported, the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain (ARTM) asked the STM on behalf of CDPQ-Infra (emphasis mine) to suspend the project on account of the fact that CDPQ-Infra isn’t certain when the two western branches of the REM are going to be inaugurated. CDPQ-Infra immediately denied this was the case, despite the fact La Presse had a copy of the communiqué, and said only that they wanted to discuss a gradual deployment of new bus lines, rather than have them all ready to go the day the new REM lines open.

If you’re thinking, “Gee, it’s almost like CDPQ-Infra isn’t really coordinating with the ARTM or STM,” I think you might be on to something. The REM wasn’t designed by any public transit agency, nor with their input, even though public transit assets were handed over to CDPQ-Infra for their exclusive use.

Had the REM been a public project — one designed with the input of either the STM or ARTM — it may have been easier to integrate bus service, though I doubt the STM or ARTM would have come up with this whole ‘non-compete clause’ because they would never have imagined the REM as competing with any other public transit system. That’s because they’re motivated by moving as many people as possible throughout the metropolitan region without using cars. The CDPQ is motivated by profit. Redesigning bus routes not only to serve REM stations, but further to ensure that they don’t compete with the REM, is no small undertaking. And to their credit, it seems like the STM took this responsibility seriously, and that CDPQ-Infra (once again) dropped the ball.

All of this was done not with increasing public transit use in mind, but to ensure the REM’s profitability. 

Remember, the REM isn’t a public transit system (like the STM), but a private, for-profit transit system owned by CDPQ-Infra that the ARTM pays to use. So Quebec taxpayers paid for the REM’s construction upfront (both through provincial and federal taxes), pay for its operation through the ARTM (which is funded with provincial taxes) and pay again for the abysmal service it provides with the fares they purchase.

Bus services are supposed to be re-organized to ferry passengers onto the REM, rather than provide an alternative, thus guaranteeing a steady stream of passengers and revenue to the CDPQ. 

Public transit works best when it serves the public interest, and serving the public interest means offering multiple ways to get from points A to B. This was what made the STM and the former Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT) work so well: in a word, redundancy. Citizens had options when it came to getting around town, and the greater the number of options, the greater potential number of transit users.

The REM is ruining all that.  

The regular service interruptions and breakdowns that plagued the REM this and every other winter got Brossard Mayor Doreen Asaad thinking that maybe they should resurrect the bus lines that were cancelled to ensure the REM kept sending money to the CDPQ.

Though CDPQ-Infra did acknowledge that bus service was a necessary ‘plan B’ for their unreliable REM, the shuttle bus service connecting downtown with the South Shore was predictably cancelled at the beginning of May, with Jean-Marc Arbaud saying that REM service had become more predictable and therefore the shuttle buses were no longer necessary.

Three weeks later, CDPQ-Infra announced they’d close the REM for six weeks this summer, plus weekends, to conduct further tests. The ARTM is promising to resurrect the shuttle buses that Arbaud swore were no longer necessary.

And keep this in mind, too: CDPQ-Infra isn’t supplying the shuttle buses nor paying to operate them when the REM is down. That’s the ARTM, which is using buses drawn from the STM, RTL and exo fleets, all of which are public transit services.

It would seem as though there is no limit to the many different ways we can all pay for the REM’s innumerable shortcomings.

The City of Montreal’s silence on this issue is deafening. While the majority of the REM’s current users may not be Montreal residents, it’s clear that the REM isn’t living up to expectations and is negatively impacting public transit throughout the metropolitan region, both in terms of imposing a reorganization of transit services as much as sapping the public’s confidence in mass transit.

This is a problem for more than a few reasons, not least of which is that the province and the CDPQ screwed over Montreal and its suburbs and locked us all into a privatized transit scheme that doesn’t live up to expectations. The bigger issue is that the REM is actively undermining public transit at precisely the time in which public transit use should be increasing. A McGill study estimates public use of the STM’s bus network is only at about 80% of the pre-pandemic level, while an ARTM study from last fall indicates that the number of public transit riders hit its worst decline in 35 years. This is a vicious circle: fewer riders means less revenue and calls from the provincial government to tighten the belt and cut more services. The STM recently estimated that as many as half their stations are in bad shape, but there’s no clear indication of where repair money is supposed to come from. Worse still, the metro network is increasingly being used as a de facto homeless shelter, leading to a further strain on public resources while disincentivizing public transit use. 

Clearly this is an untenable situation, and I would argue it’s Montreal’s responsibility to act. The city can start by contesting the non-compete clause and shelving the bus-route restructuring project until the REM is fully operational. The city should work with the other communities of the metropolis to encourage the ARTM to support them in fighting the non-compete clause, and further to ensure that bus services continue to run in parallel with the REM as a regular service, not as a band-aid solution to anticipated service disruptions. If the experience of South Shore commuters is any guide, it will be years before the REM’s bugs are all worked out. If alternatives are maintained, it will soften the blow and maybe won’t lead to any further decline in transit use. It will also ensure there are other ways to get commuters to the metro. 

In the longer term, the City of Montreal will have to work out some kind of agreement with the province to ensure all transit services are adequately funded and not competing with one another. This, too, is a project where the mayor of Montreal can and should lead a coalition of suburban mayors from the metropolitan region, as it’s an issue central to the quality of life of city dwellers and suburbanites alike. Everyone needs to be encouraged to leave their cars at home and use public transit as often as possible, just as the province will have to be encouraged — by any means necessary — to either adequately fund public transit in Greater Montreal, or give us the right and means to do it ourselves. ■

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Read more editorials by Taylor C. Noakes.