Officials at the réseau express métropolitain (REM) boast a strong on-time performance record since the fully-automated and all-electric train service launched at the end of July between downtown Montreal and the South Shore.
But for many, the problem isn’t on board, it’s at the parking lots.
The 227 free spaces and 77 paid spots at the Panama station fill early in the morning. People looking to park later in the day often use an adjacent lot, but it’s private and reserved for authorized vehicles only.
“We didn’t know that,” Raymonde Plourde told Global News as she was leaving the parking lot.
Plourde, like many others, would like more legal parking spaces built at the Panama station.
“This is the first time we take the REM and it took us maybe 15 minutes just to find parking,” Omar Masaddi, a REM commuter, told Global News.
A spokesperson for the REM wrote in an email to Global News that people can park at a nearby station, Brossard, where there are up to 3,000 spaces available, or they can use other modes of public transit to access the Panama station.
But some say taking a bus to the Panama station defeats the entire park-and-ride concept and is time-consuming.
“I know it’s helping the environment but it’s 20, 30 minutes more of time to spend on transportation,” one commuter told Global News, who doesn’t want to be identified.
A spokesperson for the mayor of Brossard wrote to Global News saying that the lack of parking remains a big challenge.