“No brainer”
By Joel Ceausu
www.thesuburban.com
Not all spending is alike, says Marvin Rotrand.
“Like good and bad cholesterol. Sometimes it’s an investment, not an expense,” and that’s the case with the Métro blue line extension says the STM vice-chair, who is presenting a motion at Montreal city council to push for the extension of Line 5 that runs between Snowdon and St. Michel stations.
“Extend the blue line!” has been the rallying cry in the East End for decades, with politicians, community and local business groups clamouring for its realization before any further extension on orange or yellow lines out to the suburbs. Thirty years ago, it was assumed new STM investments would be on the blue line, but it went north to Laval instead, where three Métro stations cost upwards of $800 million.
There are 250,000 people living in northeast Montreal without direct access to the subway says Rotrand, and those are already users of public transportation—no convincing required. “It makes no sense that the SRB rapid bus on Pie-IX—which will carry up to 70,000 passengers per day and that Quebec already committed cash to—that nobody committed money to extend the Métro one kilometre to meet up with it.”
Quebec is spending almost three quarters of a billion dollars on the north-south Train de l’Est into the city, and Liberal politicians and borough mayors are eager to be photographed at new stations, but where the Métro and East End is concerned, “you can’t get there from here.”
East End economic development offices, chambers of commerce and citizens groups have long bemoaned the difficulty in hiring in St. Léonard and Anjou stoked by the dearth of public transit. What’s more, and uncommon in Montreal, the concern and urgency is not couched in environmental terms or any ideological devotion to public transit, but one of pragmatism and an economic imperative, with all politicians in favour, regardless of affiliation.
“There’s great potential for growth and development in the east of the island,” says Rotrand, “but it is being hampered by difficult access to the subway. St. Léonard’s own council and Mayor Michel Bissonnet, a strong ally of Denis Coderre, produced a resolution demanding the extension last month, and its sole opposition member Domenic Moschella has also affixed his name to Rotrand’s motion.
The non-partisan motion asks Montreal City Council to declare extension of the blue line a priority over other lines. The motion supported by a group of opposition councillors including Anjou Mayor Luis Miranda, Moschella, Ville Marie’s Steve Shanahan and NDG independent Jeremy Searle.
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