The Longueuil Transmission Network (RTL) bus services will have to adapt to the profound impacts of two major transportation projects that will change the travel habits between the South Shore and Montreal in the coming years: the implementation of metropolitan Express Network (REM) service at the end of 2021, and the major refit of the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel, which will run until 2024.
Bruno Bisson
The Press
In addition to forcing the RTL to rethink its mission in the axis of Highway 10, where its buses will no longer have access to downtown Montreal, these major projects "will also promote the modernization of a part of the network that had not been reviewed for 30 years, "says General Manager Michel Veilleux.
Tonight, at L'Ancêtre restaurant in the borough of Saint-Hubert, RTL will resume its direct consultations with users to inform them of important upcoming changes and to know their expectations for local service, in terms of frequency, routes or travel times.
"This week," he explains, "we are going to meet users from the boroughs of Saint-Hubert and Greenfield Park who are going to experience changes quite similar to those in Brossard, where we went in June. "
Instead of crossing the St. Lawrence River and getting to the terminus of downtown Montreal, as they have done since the 1980s, our buses will fall back on the three REM stations in Brossard.
Michel Veilleux, General Manager of the Longueuil Transmission Network
According to Mr. Veilleux, this new primary mission to close the customer base to the EMN's rapid network will allow RTL to redeploy its bus routes in an attempt to offer competitive local travel times in relation to the automobile. The consultations, he says, will help to better understand, and prioritize, the expectations of local customers in terms of frequency, proximity or speed of services, using interactive tools made available to the public. participants.
Two territories
The territory of the agglomeration of Longueuil, covered by the RTL, is literally cut in half by Highway 116, bordered by a major Canadian National Railway (CN) right-of-way. The suburban train of Mont-Saint-Hilaire serves the South Shore at the stations of Saint-Bruno, Longueuil-Saint-Hubert and Saint-Lambert, by taking this railway.
West of Highway 116, the users of the cities of Brossard and Saint-Lambert, as well as the boroughs of Saint-Hubert and Greenfield Park, benefit from bus services which are mainly directed towards Highway 10, in the axis of the Samuel-De Champlain Bridge.
With the commissioning of the REM and the obligation to make a connection to Montreal, more than one third of the 23,000 daily users of the RTL in these sectors could see their rates increase substantially by being imposed a metropolitan fare at the entrance of the REM.
The RTL estimates that more than 8,000 RTL daily commuters travel to and from downtown Montreal by paying only a local transportation rate.
The change from a local title to a metropolitan transit ticket would represent, according to the current rate plan, an increase of almost 90% in their monthly public transportation costs.
Tunnel Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine
In the other service territory of the RTL, the concerns of the population are far from the REM, geographically. In Vieux-Longueuil, in the sectors of the Pierre Boucher Hospital and Édouard-Montpetit CEGEP, or in the city of Boucherville, further east, the RTL services are mainly directed towards the Longueuil terminus. and the nearby metro station at the foot of the Jacques Cartier Bridge.
The commissioning of the REM will therefore have no impact as deep as Brossard or Saint-Lambert. In terms of transportation, said Michel Veilleux, it is mainly the major works of the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine tunnel that cause the most concern on the South Shore between Highway 20 and Route 116.
The construction is scheduled to begin next spring. However, it is in 2021 and in 2022 that the work is expected to have significant impacts on traffic between the two shores of the St. Lawrence. One in three traffic lanes will be cut in the tunnel in each direction for at least one and a half years.
On October 30, explains the Director General, the RTL will be in Boucherville to listen to the expectations of its users during this period of prolonged traffic disruption, and to survey residents about their transportation needs, destination or frequency of passage of passengers. bus.
In this part of the agglomeration, "services do not need to be transformed, just modernized. It has been a long time since we have seen our service corridors and our bus lines in this part of the network. "
The Longueuil Transmission Network in figures
3e public transportation company in Quebec
Budget (2019): 191.4 million
Number of employees : 1200
Population served: 426,379 people
Number of buses: 475
Services
85 ordinary circuits
1 metropolitan circuit
71 school circuits
13 collective taxis
Punctuality rate (2018): 85.8%
Daily traffic: more than 100,000 trips
Yearly goodwill (2018): 36.6 million displacement
Source link
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/grand-montreal/201910/08/01-5244657-les-travaux-du-rem-et-du-tunnel-la-fontaine-redessinent-loffre-du-rtl.php
