Montreal city councillor Marvin Rotrand, dismissed from the STM's board of directors last month, is now criticizing Projet Montreal's planned Pink Line.
Rotrand says the plans for the Pink Line are vague and are preventing other necessary transit projects from proceeding.
"How do you go to the government of Quebec and say 'ask the federal government to invest in this?'. It may be $6 billion but we don't know where it's going, we don't know how it's going to run," said Rotrand.
The Pink Line was proposed during last year's electoral campaign as a train connection from Lachine to Montreal North, but since it is planned to go both underground and aboveground, it could not use existing metro trains.
"What it basically means is that if we are going to build this Pink line it will have to have different rolling stock. It will have to be steel wheel technology," said Rotrand.
When the STM was asking for bids to build new metro cars, a Chinese firm proposed altering the existing metro tracks to use steel wheels and said it could do so at a lower cost than using rubber tires. However the STM rejected that notion and stayed with rubber tires, choosing the Azur trains instead.
Craig Sauvé, the vice-chair of the STM and a member of Montreal's Executive Committee, said that Rotrand's complaints about steel wheels and new trains are premature, since the final route of the Pink Line is still tentative.
"With what is going to come from the study we'll be able to elaborate how this vision will concretely take form," said Sauvé.
He said whatever the final route, another urbain train line is necessary.
"The metro system, it's getting clogged, it's at capacity, so something has to be brought into it to give it some relief," said Sauvé.
The CAQ government is not in favour of the Pink Line, but is open to extending the Yellow Line through the South Shore.
Rotrand said for that and other reasons, the city should consider other options to an overcrowded metro system.
