Icy Friday morning greets angry commuters and NDG residents

MONTREAL WEST — Michaela Mailly is a student at Royal West Academy, and like many she takes the AMT train into school. Friday morning, as she trudged into class, she said she was going to be tardy. Her train was 45 minutes late as a result of a water main break that disrupted commuter rail service.

“They kept saying it was delayed, that was it,” she said. “I’m late again.”

Many commuters like Mailly said they weren’t told enough about what was happening as their ride slowed to a crawl.

“At first they told us it was 45 minutes, then another 20 minutes, then 15,” said another student, Sunny Pal. “I mean, we’re already an hour late to school.”

Students weren’t the only disgruntled passengers.

“We were on the train, the train stopped for about a half-hour, 45 minutes, no major explanation,” said Michael Wexel, who works in Montreal West. “We just waited there in Lachine.”

AMT spokesperson Fanie St-Pierre said the agency updates its Twitter feed regularly with updates and encourages users to consult that as a source of information. She added that one set of tracks remained open throughout the water main break, but all of the rail traffic had to be routed through the one set of rails, causing delays of up to an hour. The AMT re-established service before the afternoon commute.

Another set of commuters from a community down the tracks from Montreal West also struggled to commute.

“I woke up in the morning to go to work and now I don’t know what to do,” said Major Abraham, a taxi driver whose cab was trapped in the ice. He was still trying to dig his car out of Belgrave Avenue in NDG at 10 a.m. when he spoke to Global News.

He was supposed to start work at 7 a.m.

According to residents who live along Belgrave, the main break was like a deluge of water that swept down the road.

“It was like a river,” said Max Viviani, who saw water seep into his basement. “You had to see this to believe it.”