This Saturday there was another service interruption at the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), the fourth technical incident in as many days. This time, pieces of ice falling onto the track of the Samuel De Champlain Bridge are to blame.
Published at 4:19 p.m. Updated at 5:00 p.m.
CDPQ Infra, the light rail operator, confirmed that a service disruption was underway at around 2:30 p.m. Service was initially scheduled to resume around 2:45 p.m., then around 3:30 p.m., and finally resumed just before 5:00 p.m.
Only two stations, Panama and Île-des-Sœurs, were affected by the disruption, but it affected the entire section. In fact, Réseau de transport de Longueuil (RTL) buses were running between the two stations; Users therefore had to get off the REM, take the bus and then get on the light rail at the next station.
“The warming is causing ice to fall from the structure of the Samuel De Champlain Bridge onto the track. To ensure user security, we work with SSL [le groupe Signature sur le Saint-Laurent, exploitant du pont] so they can clear the snow from the structure,” CDPQ Infra clarified in a tweet on X.
The REM had already dealt with the same problem at the beginning of the winter. SSL teams must then essentially manually remove the ice from the bridge struts, which can take several hours. The bridge's lanes were also closed.
Four out of four
This is the fourth technical error to occur on the REM in four days. Late on Friday afternoon, an equipment failure led to a slowdown in traffic on the entire route network towards the main station. However, at this time the trains were still heading towards the community of Brossard.
The day before, on Thursday, REM service was canceled due to a technical problem related to the city train's screen doors when ice fell on Quebec. The latter also experienced a disruption the previous day, Wednesday evening at rush hour, around 5 p.m.
Due to the breakdowns, several users were again stuck on the train as a train had to be manually returned to Du Quartier station for evacuation.
Photos shared by users on social networks showed long queues in front of the RTL shuttles. Several users then complained about the proliferation of these events recently. “It has become a daily stress to know whether this train of doom will work or not,” illustrated one of them, for example.
The Orange Line of the Montreal Metro was again interrupted for around twenty minutes this Saturday. On Friday, the “backbone” of the subway between the Berri-UQAM and Henri-Bourassa stations was paralyzed for a total of more than three hours due to the presence of an irritant gas and the intervention of emergency services.