Can Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa's LRTs withstand Canadian winters?

When st. David St-Pierre saw the snowfall exterior his window in Brossard, Que., s of Montreal, he decided to chance the metropolitan region's shiny light-rail pass across system once more. 

St-Pierre was among the thousands of commuters relying on new light-rail transit systems in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa who were disappointed Thursday, when all three cities saw their new train lines face either complete or partial shutdowns after a heavy overnight snowfall. 

"I kind of rolled the dice," said St-Pierre, who waited 50 minutes at the REM Brossard station before a train finally arrived. 

The interrupted commutes have prompted questions about whether the services were adequately designed for Canadian winters.

"It's quite a scratch-your-head-and-wonder," said Steve Munro, a Toronto transit advocate, who recently conducted an analysis showing travel times on the Finch Line are often longer than they were for the buses it replaced.

"I don't think that they have factored in winter as much as they should," said Lavagnon Ika, a professor of project management at the University of Ottawa.

"You get one interruption every year or every two years when there's very heavy snow — and normally you won't get the interruptions — but you take that risk. Or, you pay seven times more," to dig tunnels, said Ahmed El-Geneidy, a professor at McGill University's school of urban planning. 

El-Geneidy says he's surprised Montreal's REM didn't launch with more snow removal mechanisms.

Heavier trains, such as diesel-powered suburban transit trains, struggle far less with snow and ice because of their weight and the strength of their engines, he explained.

The Reseau Express Metropolitain (REM) launched in St-Pierre's area two years ago and faced several snags — many of them weather-related — but had improved since, and St-Pierre wanted to believe it could withstand the 30 or so centimetres of snow, relatively typical to Quebec winters.

A newer REM line heading north of the city was launched to much excitement in November. Part of that line runs underground and has had a smoother launch than the Brossard line in 2023. 

But Thursday morning, many parts of the REM, namely the Deux-Montagnes line, were down or operating at extremely reduced speeds. So was Toronto's new Finch Line LRT, as well as Ottawa's Line 2 diesel LRT, which reopened after upgrades last year.

The Finch Line — which by Thursday evening was still not up and running again — has been mocked for its issues since launching late last year. 

Those issues have included trains at times running slower than running speed, stopping and having to be restarted in the middle of routes and doors not opening when they're supposed to open.

Torontonian Katherine Bignell-Jones opted to stay home in order to avoid a transit "mess" Thursday. She's far from impressed by the line so far, calling it a "a glorified streetcar" whose service is less efficient than the buses she used to be able to ride on Finch Avenue. 

St-Pierre says his commute was shorter and simpler, too, before the REM, when buses made several stops throughout Montreal's South Shore communities and took people downtown. 

"I think a lot of people like myself kind of lost faith," said St-Pierre, who drops his daughter off at daycare on his way to work.

"When you have a young child like I do, and you're gonna have to drop her off and pick her up, it's nerve wracking to not be sure if the REM's going to be functional."

Jeanne Panneton, a student at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) who lives in La Prairie, Que., on the South Shore, says her commute has gotten more complicated, too. Thursday morning, though she was able to get onto a train from the Du Quartier Station in Brossard, it took that train about 40 minutes to get to downtown Montreal, more than twice as long as usual.

"We were packed like sardines," Panneton said.

One of the major issues plaguing the Finch LRT has been the technology system used to melt ice and snow along the line. As it turns out, the same system is the same one used by Ottawa years ago that also proved to be problematic. 

Finch LRT uses same switches as Ottawa's plagued transit line

To Munro, the Toronto transit advocate, the switches are exemplary of the Finch's many design flaws, which he believes boils down to a lack of testing before launch by Metrolinx, the provincial agency managing transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

A spokesperson for the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) says the Finch LRT struggled with switches, vehicles and yard access Thursday. 

"[Metrolinx has] not provided an ETA on service resumption yet," the spokesperson, Stuart Green, said in an email Thursday afternoon.

Munro points to the LRT services in Edmonton and Calgary as examples that it's possible for above-ground light-rail to function, at least mostly, amid snow.

Spokesperson Claudia Néron said the service is "working to deploy new equipment and procedures" in the coming weeks.

As for St-Pierre, he says he's still optimistic the LRT will eventually run smoothly all year long. 

"My hope is as time goes on, they'll figure out that we have winter here … because I don't think this can be an ongoing thing for the next 10, 20, 30 years," St-Pierre said. "I mean, as bad as it is here, at least it's not as bad as Ottawa."

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