‘We had higher expectations’: Montreal’s REM plagued by outages

The company responsible for operating the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) is apologizing to users who were left out in the cold Tuesday morning.

The system was shut down during the morning rush hour again — the 17th outage since the Deux-Montagne line opened just two months ago.

It’s another in a series of bad weeks for REM users. As temperatures plunged to -15 C Tuesday morning commuters arrived to find yet another system-wide outage.

“We’re very disappointed. We had higher expectations,” said Philippe Jacques, a spokesperson for Trajectoire Quebec, a citizen mobility association that advocates for public transit services.

Jacques says riders are starting to lose faith in the $9.4-billion project.

“We’re now at 17 shutdowns over the last two months. So it’s twice a week … It’s fast, there’s a lot of frequency, but it needs to be reliable.”

One commuter who wrote to CTV News said passengers were crammed into train cars like sardines for hours. He said it took two-and-a-half hours to get from Roxboro to downtown.

“Let me be clear that this is unacceptable for us to let users waiting outside during cold winter, especially without knowing no information on what is going on, then we are very sorry for that,” said REM spokesperson Maxime Laliberté.

He said as more of the network becomes operational, new issues are being discovered.

“Of course, we ask them to keep faith in us. We adapt every day. For example, the problem that occurred yesterday is already fixed.”

Laliberté said Tuesday’s interruption was caused by water infiltration on two of the trains. The system automatically shut the trains down and employees had to manually remove them from the tracks.

“Users should not be concerned about REM service,” he maintained.

However, Jacques expects some users will be turned off by the frequent delays and says the system needs to start working smoothly, fast.

“It’s still a huge game changer when it’s working,” he said. “So it needs better efficiency. But we think people will come back to the REM, but now the REM has to deliver the promises.”