MONTREAL — Montreal’s Réseau express métropolitain light rail line experienced a problematic start to regular operations on Monday, as service was halted for more than an hour during the morning rush hour because of a pair of issues.
The line was shut down from 8 a.m. until about 9:15 a.m. because of a track issue “that needed a field team to repair it,” CDPQ Infra spokesman Jean-Vincent Lacroix told the Canadian Press. Shuttle bus service was set up — as it will be whenever REM service is interrupted for more than 20 minutes during peak periods, or 30 minutes in off-peak times. But commuters faced long lines to board crowded buses across the Champlain Bridge into the city, the news service reports.
Global News reports that an earlier problem saw the emergency brakes set off on one of the automated trains on the Champlain Bridge. An engineer had to board the train to override those brakes; the train was then moved to the Nun’s Island (Ile-des-Soeurs) station at the north end of the bridge, where passengers boarded a bus to complete the trip to Central station.
Lacroix asked for passengers to be patient.
“This kind of situation can occur when we launch a network of this magnitude,” he told the Montreal Gazette. “We didn’t want this to happen today, of course, during rush hour. We had a perfect weekend with a ton of people riding. Now we’re asking people to be understanding.”
CDPQ Infra, the construction arm of provincial pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, built and will operate the system, designed and built as a for-profit investment — unlike the vast other rail transit systems, which are government-driven, public-works projects.
No information on first-day ridership was available as of late Monday.
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