Wheelchair user stranded without a ride home after Montreal's REM shuts down

Christophe Rudyj, who uses a motorized wheelchair to get around, says he was excited about the launch of Montreal's new light-rail network as it promised to be accessible to those with reduced mobility.

He even attended the inauguration of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) last year.

But the South Shore resident found himself stuck in downtown Montreal during a Saturday evening service disruption, and now he's sounding the alarm over what he says is a lack of adequate support and planning for passengers with reduced mobility.

Stranded at Gare Centrale station, a REM employee told Rudyj that shuttle buses are not accessible, and encouraged him to instead call the local adaptive transportation service, known as transport adapté, to come pick him up.

But transport adapté requires reservations 24 hours in advance.

Rudyj called Exo, the transit agency that runs commuter trains in greater Montreal, for help. He soon learned there were no quick solutions. He was worrying about his wheelchair's waning battery life.

"The REM doesn't have any protocol on what to do with disabled people," Rudyj said. "If the REM had shut down when I was on it, I wouldn't know what to do."

REM service outages have drawn strong criticism from riders who have also voiced concerns about lagging response times and poor communication.

Back in January, Quebec Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault said the system needs to be working, and the problems need to be taken seriously.

When the REM first opened, there were also issues with the elevators, drawing complaints from those who rely on them to access the transportation service. An investigation by CBC News in October revealed that, in REM's first 73 days of operation, there were only 30 days when all nine elevators were working.

In Rudyj's case, he ended up waiting for two hours before adaptive transit gave him a ride to his home in Saint-Mathias-sur-Richelieu, about 40 kilometres from Gare Centrale. 

Linda Gauthier co-founded the inclusion advocacy group, Regroupement des activistes pour l'inclusion au Québec (RAPLIQ). She said she has asked the REM about their evacuation plan for people with reduced mobility and never got an answer.

"We wanted to know how they would evacuate us. Would they take us in their arms? We never knew. At that point we were convinced that there was no evacuation plan," she said.

Francis Labbé, a spokesperson for the REM's developer, CDPQ Infra, said in a statement that universal accessibility was incorporated into the early stages of planning and "we are sorry for the situation experienced by Mr. Rudyj on Saturday evening."