After an outcry from the roughly 18,000 users of the Mascouche and Deux-Montagnes train lines, Quebec announced Friday it is boosting its alternate transit options during the two-year closure of the Mount Royal tunnel.
The tunnel is due to close Jan. 6, for the construction of the Réseau express métropolitain. The $6.3-billion network will transform the Deux-Montagnes line and link it to the airport, the South Shore and Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, and begin service in stages in between 2021 and 2023.
On Friday, Chantal Rouleau, the junior transport minister and the minister in charge of the metropolis, announced the government will double the number of shuttle buses offered outside rush hour. The province is also doubling the number of trains on the Mascouche Line, which will detour around the tunnel directly to Central Station. When announced in September, the plan called for three trains per day to head downtown. Now it will be three during both the morning and evening rush hours, or six per day.
A new shuttle bus will take passengers from the Deux-Montagnes station to the Sainte-Thérèse station on the Saint-Jérôme Line.
The original attenuation measures cost $192 million. Rouleau said Friday the additional measures will cost at least $30 million more.
This story will be updated.
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