Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon provoked derision recently for vowing to derail the federal government’s “nation-building” high-speed train project if he is elected premier and suggesting Ottawa should instead just hand over the money to fund other infrastructure.
“I can’t justify to Quebecers that their money would be invested in a colossal project that, according to studies, would have little impact on road traffic and strongly risks becoming an enormous financial fiasco,” St-Pierre Plamondon said of Alto’s plan to build a high-speed rail line connecting Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, with a stop in Laval and a route that is raising ire among farmers in Mirabel, who are still bitter their land was expropriated for an airport in the 1970s.
St-Pierre Plamondon’s reasons for opposing the rail line are predictable. Basically, he doesn’t want it to strengthen Quebec’s ties to the rest of Canada because all he wants is sovereignty.
And his demands are unrealistic. The federal government isn’t just going to cut Quebec (or any province) a blank cheque from the $60 billion to $90 billion estimated cost of the high-speed rail line to spend how it pleases.
But motives and unlikelihood aside, the PQ leader may have a point.
What if instead of spending all that money on intercity transportation, the federal government invested in expanding public transit within regions? Perhaps that suggestion isn’t any more practical than St-Pierre Plamondon’s pipe dream, but it’s worth examining more closely anyway.
Alto forecasts 24 million passengers will use the high-speed train each year by 2055. That seems generous because 18 million people live in the corridor now and 24 million could by 2041.
Given travellers already have other options — including Via Rail, slow though it may be in comparison; flying, either out of Trudeau or the Metropolitan Airport in St-Hubert, even if that’s carbon-intensive; or driving, if they can stomach the traffic — how many times a year are most people going to hop the fast train to another city? There will surely be some frequent voyagers, but for most people it’s probably going to be once or twice a year — at best.
Public transit already serves far more people in the metropolitan area of more than four million residents every single day, and it has the potential to reach many more.
The ridership of the Société de transport de Montréal is about 1.7 million each day, with 1.1 million passengers using the métro on an average weekday.
Even before the new Anse-à-l’Orme branch of the REM opened last month, the light-rail network was serving an average of 78,000 riders a day between Brossard and Deux-Montagnes. It also hit a record high of 104,000 daily passengers during the Montreal Canadiens’ playoff run.
More than seven million passengers rode Exo commuter trains in 2024, while 16 million used the agency’s buses in suburbs from Terrebonne to Ste-Julie (though the REM may cut into those numbers).
And yet, road congestion is still hellish because too many people don’t have access to transit or can’t get where they want to go in a reasonable time. The schedules or routes can be limited, and there are still many deserts in the city as well as suburban communities that are vastly underserved.
With so much need and untapped possibility, investing heavily in public transit would get more people on board, more often. It could provide a greater return on investment, and be even more transformative for commuters, the economy and the climate than a high-speed intercity train.
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Let’s dare to imagine what up to $90 billion in funding for new public transit might do in Greater Montreal.
A new tramway from the east end to downtown is under discussion and badly needed. Teenagers in the borough of Rivière-des-Prairies—Pointe-aux-Trembles recently told a consultation it is easier to drive to Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières than to get to Université du Québec à Montréal. It’s a similar slog from Montreal North.
Lachine and LaSalle are also cut off — but more desperate. A tramway to Lachine was quietly dropped from the Quebec government’s infrastructure plans, even though 20 per cent of Montrealers live in the zone and the population is only set to grow.
Laval Mayor Stéphane Boyer is already seeking a commitment from the Quebec government to put the boring machine now digging the tunnel for the Blue Line extension to use extending the Orange Line to his city.
There have been calls for years to continue the Orange Line from Côte-Vertu to Laval, to take some pressure off the Montmorency branch. It should be expanded to Bois-Franc to connect with the REM at a bare minimum. But developers are eager to build and densify along a new métro corridor within Laval.
Reliability problems with the REM last winter aside, it’s a game changer for many Montrealers. So why stop there? Why not push it farther to the fast-growing Vaudreuil-Soulanges region in the west or beyond Brossard to other South Shore communities?
There have been calls for years to extend the Yellow Line of the métro into Longueuil. More recently, there’s been a push for a tramway on Taschereau Blvd.
And, hey, what about former Montreal mayor Valérie Plante’s signature Pink Line? It would cut a diagonal across the city from Montreal North to Lachine. It’s still a worthy proposal, even if Plante’s gone from office.
There are things that would be nice to have. High-speed rail is certainly one of them. But there are other initiatives that are needed and useful.
I started at The Montreal Gazette in 2000 as an intern. Since then I have covered the National Assembly and courts, worked on the assignment desk and written editorials, before debuting as city columnist in 2017.
ahanes@postmedia.com