After months of tests, Montreal’s multi-billion-dollar light rail system, the REM, launched Monday morning, but with a major delay occurring just hours after the system started operating.
The first train rolled out of the Brossard station at 5:30 a.m., headed for Central Station in downtown Montreal. The ride takes 18 minutes from start to finish.
For the first few hours, the train was running smoothly, with curious and excited passengers ready to ride the new service.
But at 8 a.m., the trains had stopped running. Officials say there were two problems that caused the whole system to shut down.
The first: the train’s driverless emergency brakes kicked in on the Champlain Bridge, and the train stopped in its tracks. An engineer has to physically mount the train to override the system. It was then driven to the Nun’s Island station, where passengers disembarked and took a bus the rest of the way to Montreal.
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The second and bigger problem saw a main switcher at the South Shore Panama station stop working. That caused the shutdown of the entire system until it could be fixed.
“It’s our first day. We said it would be a bumpy road; it’s a new service,” said Jean-Vincent Lacroix, a REM spokesman.
“We will do everything we can to make sure that kind of incident is isolated, are not frequent, but we knew when we launch a project like that it could occur.”
It took the REM one hour and 15 minutes to get the service up and running again.
Lacroix said within 30 minutes of the train stalling, a contingency plan kicked in. Twenty buses on the South Shore were on standby to shuttle passengers from the Brossard station to downtown Montreal.
“We were ready. It’s unfortunate it’s on the first day but we were ready,” said Maxime Laliberte, a spokesperson for the Reseau Transport de Longueuil. “We always have drivers on the side waiting in case there are issues. There are approximately 20 buses going station to station.”
Joseph Freire had travelled to the Brossard station to take the new train to Montreal. Instead, he was forced to take a bus.
“This morning I was pretty excited to take the REM to this station but unfortunately it happens,” Freire said.
The unfortunate start cast a pall over the REM’s launch. It follows a successful weekend where the REM offered free rides to passengers. Officials say 128,000 people took advantage of the free rides, far exceeding their expectations.
The light rail is the biggest public transport project in Montreal in 60 years. The opening of the REM Monday morning marks the end of the first phase of the project, with five stations opening between Brossard and downtown Montreal. The light rail will replace the current bus service that runs from the south shore to the island.
The REM will run 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Trains will run every three minutes 45 seconds during rush hour, and every seven minutes during off-peak hours.