STM’s plans to install more métro elevators come to screeching halt

Article content

A mobility advocate says the province has refused a recent request to fund more elevators in the métro network and, unless there is a change in course, she fears making the métro universally accessible will be set back by years.

The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) wants to continue with the third and fourth phases of the métro accessibility project. But without funding from Quebec, Marie Turcotte, the director general of Ex aequo, says she fears the momentum for equipping new stations with elevators will come to a halt, as no new projects are planned after 2026. Worse, the STM could be at risk of losing the specialized team of experts that plans such projects. 

Article content

Currently, 27 of the métro’s 68 stations have elevators. There are projects underway to equip another four stations: Atwater, Édouard-Montpetit, Outremont, Place-Saint-Henri and the Yellow Line at Bérri-UQÀM (which already has elevators to access the Green and Orange Lines). Already short of meeting its 2025 goal for 41 elevators, the STM’s latest 10-year capital works budget now gives the transit operator until 2030 to meet that goal.

In a statement, STM spokesperson Amélie Régis said two phases of its elevator project have been completed, but there are at least two more phases to go. Phase 3 will cost roughly $300 million and Phase 4 is estimated at $270 million. However, the STM’s recent request for the province to include at least the third phase of the elevator project into its 10-year investment plan was denied. As a result, teams can’t plan any future elevators after the ones already being built.

“As of today, we have no indication the project will be included in the 2024-2033 PQI (Plan Québécois des infrastructures),” Régis wrote.

This is a huge problem for the future of accessibility in the city, Turcotte said.

Article content

Article content

“Elevators in the métro are necessary for people in wheelchairs, but they are very useful for families with strollers, pregnant women, people with walkers or canes, people with luggage and even people who are bringing bicycles on the métro,” Turcotte said.

She added elevators in a métro station are used about 700 times per day, which indicates it’s not only for people in wheelchairs.

Turcotte pointed out it takes teams several years in order to plan elevator projects, so if new money isn’t confirmed in the next few months, there may be a slowdown in the progress of adding elevators in two to three new stations per year.

Because it requires expert architects and engineers to put together such projects — often requiring the stations to be extended by a few feet to house the elevators and all the equipment around them — Turcotte is also concerned the STM will lose its specialized team because the planners will have nothing to do. Many will likely look for employment elsewhere.

“It’s really a tour de force to equip a station with an elevator that wasn’t designed for that in the first place,” Turcotte said, adding if that expert team is disbanded, it could set the project back even further.

Article content

STM chairperson Éric Alan Caldwell agreed with Turcotte’s concerns, and said it is doing everything possible to keep up the momentum of elevator construction.

“We have teams that have been able to find solutions to build elevators in the métro stations,” Caldwell said in a recent interview. “Equipping a métro with elevators is an expertise that is very specific and very niche. We shouldn’t disband this team. This is why we’re making representations to the province.

“If the province doesn’t (confirm the funds) quickly, there is a risk, but we’re working so that risk doesn’t happen. It makes no sense we gave ourselves all these objectives for universal accessibility and the funds are not (confirmed).

Speaking for the city’s opposition, Christine Black said she, too, is concerned, as the city is falling behind its own targets for universal accessibility.

“It’s very worrying to see the project isn’t advancing and we’re very, very far from the objectives we have set for universal accessibility,” Black said.

She said the situation shows the Plante administration is lacking leadership to solve the problems facing the city’s transit agency.

For his part, Caldwell said he hasn’t lost hope.

“We haven’t resigned ourselves to the fact we won’t get that funding. We asked for it and we want it.”

The Gazette’s repeated requests for comment were not returned by Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault.

jmagder@postmedia.com

twitter.com/jasonmagder

Article content

Article content