Mayoral candidate for Coalition Montreal Jean Fortier has some ideas of his own about public transit including a metro line extension that is inbetween what his main rivals are proposing.
Jean Fortier wants stops added to the Blue line of the metro that is already supposed to be extended to Anjou, something the incumbent Denis Coderre has been promising.
Fortier, a former executive committee chairman in the Pierre Bourque administration, said there should be a 4 km extension between Côte-des-Neiges and Griffintown with stops at the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) on Notre Dame at Peel, in downtown near the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and at Beaver Lake.
Fortier said this would link the north east of the city to downtown without creating a whole new metro line as proposed by Projet Montreal leader Valérie Plante.
"It's less than a quarter of the cost, it can use the existing rolling stock," said Fortier in an interview with CJAD 800 News.
The plan would mean tunneling through the mountain.
"There would be just a small edicule, the equivalent of a bus station. And everything would be done underground - probably the digging could be taken out of the ground from other stations so there would be very, very little impact," said Fortier.
Fortier said why tunnel through the mountain for the proposed light rail project which he said is more expensive, inefficient, full of unknowns and has a bigger carbon footprint.