16 December 2008
Those 10 Missing Trains?
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AMT trains at the Lucien l'Allier
station.
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Montreal Quebec - When the Metropolitan Transit Agency
announced last October an increase in service on four suburban train lines in the Montreal region, it promised West Island commuters
an additional 20 departures a week on the Montreal-Dorion/Rigaud line starting in January.
But when the new schedule was released last week, there were only 10 additional departures on that route - two each weekday, with both
operating outside of rush hour.
The MTA said it wasn't able to follow through with its promise because it was only able to negotiate an additional 10 departures with
Canadian Pacific Railway, the company that owns the track and uses it for freight traffic.
"It is CP's line and they have the priority," said Martine Rouette, a spokesperson for the MTA. "If we added more than
10 departures it would have required major investments in infrastructure on our part. In the short term, that's not possible."
Under the new schedule, which starts on 12 Jan 2009, an additional train will leave Vaudreuil at 6:40 a.m. and another
will depart from Montreal at 4:20 p.m. each weekday.
Rouette said the trains will leave at those times because they were the times they could negotiate, adding that they get requests from
commuters for more service outside of rush hour. "We get requests from people who need service outside rush hour like students or
people who work in the hospitals," she said. "Our objective was to increase service globally."
The MTA's commuter service in the West Island is limited because of the amount of freight traffic on the line.
Seven commuter trains now run from the West Island to downtown during the weekday morning, at intervals of 15 to 25 minutes.
Since January, ridership on the suburban train network has increased about five percent, partly due to the high cost of gas this year.
Overall, 76 new train departures will be added to the four suburban lines starting 12 Jan 2009 at a cost of $13.6 million
a year.
To increase service, the MTA has leased rail cars and locomotives from New Jersey Transit and has negotiated an increase in its use of
Canadian National and Canadian Pacific tracks.
In the long term, the MTA hopes to improve commuter rail service from the West Island by working with Aeroports de Montreal to develop
a passenger corridor on a train line running from Ste. Anne de Bellevue to Dorval to downtown Montreal.
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