Réseau express métropolitain | En construction

[HousesForMontreal]

Although I applaud the builder's ambition to turn REM into subways for all the sprawling suburban areas outside of the Montreal island, they do need to realize that outside of Montreal island, the REM IS going to be still another commuter rail albeit a faster, cleaner and a more frequent one but NOT a subway. You are going to need to build huge parking spaces to entice people from the suburbs to use the REM. Buses are not going to cut it. And there is a reason for that. This is NOT Europe; this is North America; this is Canada, the 2nd largest country in the world. You don't have everything all clustered together like in European cities; everything here is sprawling out. So the public transit that you build needs to be sensitive to that unique land space characteristics. Outside of the central Montreal island even including Ile des Soeurs, the housing density is lower and houses are bigger and buildings are further apart with less people living in each of them and thus roads are longer with intersections further apart. That's just the reality of how suburbs are. With longer streets and intersections further apart, there is only so far and so much that human feet can travel especially when you have small children who tend to live more in the suburbs because they would have more space to play. And at the same time since you have more private homes, you are going to have less accessibility to the buses which is usually is the shuttle between the subway stations and people's individual homes in the city. You simply cannot have ten thousand buses going every 6 minutes pass people's bedrooms through their backyard 24 hours a day in the suburbs. It just doesn't work that way. So that leaves only ONE transportation choice: cars. That's the only means people will use to get to the REM and from REM IF they are conscious about the environment and really see a benefit in their commuting.

Even with adequate amount of park & ride space at REM, you would be lucky if you can get people to at least be willing to ditch their cars in the parking lot letting them freeze in the winter and boil under the sun in the summer all day while they are packed like sardines in the REM to get to work and still have to transfer onto the subway and/or walk afterwards to their workplace once they get to the city when they are so used to just sitting in the comfort of their car albeit in a road rage but all the way to their workplace. The amount of parking space in the suburbs for REM and the zero parking space for Ile des Soeurs right now is way too inadequate. For Ile des Soeurs, in the summer, people might be more enticed to bike or walk or take the bus to the REM station. Once winter hits and that's for 8 months out of a year, that REM station at Ile des Soeurs will sit empty. For the rest of the suburb areas with just several hundred parking space planned at each of the REM station planned, forget it. They will just all sit empty, way under-capacity. All the investment that has gone into the construction of REM will not get recuperated, not until more parking space is built.

And I do not know why they are so reluctant to construct these parking space which is so vital to the success to REM in the suburbs. You are not going to turn the REM into subway just because you think you can make people take the REM without using cars. People who live in different areas of the city have different needs. If people see that it's not convenient for them to take a certain public transit venue, they just won't take it. And besides, building those parking space is not that difficult. Just build multi-level parking garages, either above the ground and/or underground. That's it. The cars would be shielded from the elements of the weather and people would be more willing to park and ride and everybody wins! The sooner those builders realize this, the better we can all benefit.