Dorval Mayor Edgar Rouleau points to the city’s intermodal station from a site near Trudeau Airport, two locations that are only 700 metres apart.
“Two drives from Tiger Woods could travel that distance,” Rouleau told reporters, speaking in French.
Yet although the new REM light rail system will connect to the airport, neither is currently planned to connect to the intermodal station — an oversight he’s hoping to convince officials to remedy.
According to the study, some 200,000 additional passengers would gain access to public transit should the connector be built, accounting for a cut in commute times by as much as an hour.
This is especially acute for commuters who need to work in places like St-Laurent, said François Pepin, the researcher who presented the study.
“The trip between the intermodal station and the Technoparc would be say, less than 10 minutes,” he said.
REM officials wrote an email to Global News saying that the federal government is studying the possibility, and that the REM believes it is a “potentially interesting” idea.
One lingering question, however, is cost. Rouleau said he didn’t know how much such a tunnel would cost to build.