Don’t get me wrong, I am not critizing the plan itself that is indeed absolutely realistic with the means the ARTM has.
It just highlights how bleak the next decade or so will be in terms of infrastructure projects, including mass transit in the greater Montreal.
After the 90s that were quite bleak, with 0 metro extensions, only the 1st rebuild of the DM line and revival of some commuter lines, we really started to see a renaissance in the mid-2000s. The Laval metro extension, the Mascouche line (for what it is worth), 2 super hospitals, YUL international/US expansion, A25,A30, Turcot, Champlain, Quartier des spectacles and Quartier International all came to life in a decade ish span.
Of course, the pinnacle was the REM A which really made me beleive that we were finally able to build something nice, quickly and in a reasonable budget in Quebec by bypassing our notoriously bureaucratic,slow & politic processes taking 40 years to study the same metro extension 7 times before deciding to replace it with a bus. Not that long ago, we were even talking about a REM B and a REM C, piggybacking on the REM A success and seeing an actual possibility to get over 100 km of light metro for the region in a 10-15 year time frame.
After getting 67km of REM in a decade and all the above projects, seeing that we are now back to an era where projects are so sparse, politically loaded, slowly “progressing” and stil stuck in our typical “study the study” paradigm is quite a crashout from the high of the last decade.
While our medias were criticizing the REM at every occasion, the rest of the world was watching, taking notes and highlighting the success. We really had something to not only be proud of, but also to replicate. Instead, we are just going back to our old ways again.
If someone told me in 2010 that we would be able to ride a metro straight from Brossard to Fairview by 2026 I never would have believed them. If things stay as they are now, chances are tin for anything significant to show off in 2035-2040 apart of the blue line.