Montreal’s light-rail system will cost $300 million more than planned, will come a year later than planned, have one less stop than planned and is getting a new name, the group responsible for the project revealed Thursday.

CPDQ Infra, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec subsidiary responsible for the project, announced Thursday morning a consortium of SNC-Lavalin and Pomerleau have been tapped to build the infrastructure for the now $6.3-billion project.

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SNC-Lavalin will also provide the trains, in a partnership with Alstom Transport Canada. Bombardier submitted a bid for the contract but lost.

“The REM is a colossal project on a human scale, which comes about only once or twice every generation,” federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau said at news conference Thursday.

The higher-than-expected cost represents a five per cent increase from the original price tag, the consortium said during a news conference.

Construction will begin this April, and only 30 to 40 per cent of the project is set to be completed by summer 2021.

When the project was first announced, authorities said it would be done by the fall of 2020.

Other changes include:

• A new name: the network will now be known as the Réseau express métropolitain instead of Réseau électrique métropolitain, so it will keep its REM acronym.
• An abolished station: the stop that is now gone from the 67-kilometre-long route was planned near Highway 13.
• A design change: the route from the Champlain Bridge to Central Station will now be built above ground along the CN corridors, instead of underground, reducing the chances that underground water collectors will be contaminated.