MONTREAL — About 25,000 trips were taken on Monday’s first day of paid service for the Réseau express métropolitain light rail service, REM officials said Tuesday. That was despite two incidents that stopped service during Monday’s peak morning commute for more than an hour [see “Montreal’s REM experiences bumpy first day,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 1, 2023]. Another incident Monday night lasted about an hour and stalled a train on the Champlain Bridge, according to the Montreal Gazette.
While predictably a large drop from the more than 120,000 who rode the system during two days of free rides last weekend, the 25,000 riders appears to be a healthy first-day figure for a system that, in its current 16.6-kilometer (10.3-mile), five-station configuration, is expecting about 30,000 riders over the course of its 20-hour operating day by this fall.
Tuesday’s second-morning commute was incident-free, the Gazette reports.
Emmanuelle Rouillard-Moreau, a spokeswoman for system owner CDPQ Infra, told the Canadian Press on Tuesday that the company was investigating the switch problems that led to one of the morning incidents as well as the evening stoppage. She also said REM will adjust its communications after the system’s social media did not report the Monday night disruption. Messages about that problem appeared only in stations and on trains.
After no problems were reported on Tuesday, the CBC reports the automated, driverless system was shut down for about an hour early today (Wednesday, Aug. 2) because of computer problems. Shuttle buses were deployed before trains resumed operation about 6:35 a.m. Also, CTV News reports that late Monday night, three passengers boarded a train that went to the storage garage instead of back toward Montreal. After summoning help via the intercom system, they were eventually taken by the train back to the Brossard station, where an REM employee drove them home.
— Updated at 8:10 a.m. CDT with report of Wednesday shutdown; updated at 9:10 a.m. with report of passengers taken to storage garage.
Just love those computer programmers. “GIGO” applies for those 3 passengers. “Garage in garage out”. FIFO Also “first Passengers in garage first out of garage.
Montreal’s REM light rail system aims to be one of the best roses of “La Métropole” and there is no rose without a thorn!
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
How is Hawaii doing compared to Montreal?
That was my first thought, too. What a striking difference between the two new systems. I presume Montreal is denser and already far less car dependent than Honolulu which would eliminate much of the first mile, last mile barriers for new transit users. Do both systems go where there is demand?