superelevation
Active Member
Link worked fine for me!
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- Thread starter Ansem
- Start date
Link worked fine for me!
Deadpool X
Senior Member
It took me to Facebook first.
asher__jo
Active Member
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chronicsurfer
New Member
Was at Notre Dame street this afternoon (Brrr...what a cold day!!) to drop off something and got to see the wide green belt that the REM de l'est is to be built on.
Curious to know - How did this area come to have such a wide green belt? The road is narrow for one that carries truck traffic entering in/getting out of the port of Montréal. I do get that the other side (Hochelaga) is pretty residential and green belt is a buffer. It is still too wide. Surprising that the green belt didn't used for road widening.
Curious to know - How did this area come to have such a wide green belt? The road is narrow for one that carries truck traffic entering in/getting out of the port of Montréal. I do get that the other side (Hochelaga) is pretty residential and green belt is a buffer. It is still too wide. Surprising that the green belt didn't used for road widening.
henrydm
New Member
it was supposed to be a highway but the plans never unfolded
NY99
Active Member
You’re not off-base entirely, but I disagree vehemently with the implication that GO expansion will offer an inherently “inferior” service to REM. They’re just different proposals to create different kinds of services.
Even after REM is fully built out, the GO network will be much, MUCH larger than it (there won’t ever be a REM equivalent to a trip to Kitchener, Hamilton, or Barrie, as far as I understand). The Golden Horseshoe simply covers a much bigger area geographically than Greater Montreal. GO Rail will always (and should always) have a somewhat more regional scope than REM.
Yet even with that said, if GO expansion is realized the way Metrolinx is promising, I reckon we’ll see 80-90% of “REM quality” (hard to define that in any concrete way, but I digress) for what is almost certainly a drastically cheaper per-mile price. And that counts for a lot in my eyes.
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Deadpool X
Senior Member
Leave REM vs RER debate aside for a minute. The biggest reason for this debate is that Montreal is already doing that while Toronto is "planning" to do that. Being a much larger city, Toronto should have been far ahead instead of playing a catch up.
Tuck
Active Member
Don't know enough about Montreal to comment fully but first thoughts are:
1. Cool.
2. Seems weird to run a branch to the north-east rather than extending the metro up that way. Its basically serving as a metro extension, without actually being one and results in kind of a weird duplication of service and transfer point. Can the metro not run above ground?
3. Yikes @ 40m platforms
4. Yikes @ elevated through the downtown (Though, I've been to other cities like Bangkok where that isn't really all that bad, but its also not particularily pleasant)
5. Yikes @ the poor downtown connections to the existing metro (see point 4)
6. Ten billion seems a tad expensive for what they're getting, especially considering the short train lengths.
Anyways, its cool to see Montreal moving so quickly on these projects. There does seem to be some weird decision making going on (probably largely for $ reasons), but at a certain point you just have to accept that the perfect is the enemy of the good.
1. Cool.
2. Seems weird to run a branch to the north-east rather than extending the metro up that way. Its basically serving as a metro extension, without actually being one and results in kind of a weird duplication of service and transfer point. Can the metro not run above ground?
3. Yikes @ 40m platforms
4. Yikes @ elevated through the downtown (Though, I've been to other cities like Bangkok where that isn't really all that bad, but its also not particularily pleasant)
5. Yikes @ the poor downtown connections to the existing metro (see point 4)
6. Ten billion seems a tad expensive for what they're getting, especially considering the short train lengths.
Anyways, its cool to see Montreal moving so quickly on these projects. There does seem to be some weird decision making going on (probably largely for $ reasons), but at a certain point you just have to accept that the perfect is the enemy of the good.
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asher__jo
Active Member
QC funds transit much better and always has.
felix123
Active Member
Yes, this pretty much sums up the situation. During today's REM de l'Est press conference, they made another announcement about an announcement (set for Q1 2021) during which they will apparently be unveiling the Laval extension of the REM. That extension's current stage is essentially where I would place most of the GTA's major transit projects. Sort of, kind of happening, maybe and only if the next municipal/provincial governments of the day don't cancel it because they didn't like that it was called an LRT, even though it was fully funded (Brampton and Scarborough, I'm looking at you).
Case in point: we were supposed to have electrification by 2017, but even if it were really going to happen, it was then delayed by the incoming PC government and is now based on a financial close that's of course, scheduled for after the 2022 provincial election.
And circling back to your point, yes, the GTA has a 65% larger population and is far wealthier than Metropolitan Montreal by any metric, and yet it cannot seem to unify, procure or luck out with a benevolent provincial government to manage building any new transit projects that aren't, well, dog#%^&. But it's okay, because one day in the mid 2020s, we'll be riding to Humber College on the new Finch West LRT, just as soon as the one person in that car makes his left turn ahead of us. Never mind the 5-6 more rapid transit lines that Toronto deserves, because Finch West is the project that we've all been waiting for.
felix123
Active Member
The metro needs to run underground due to its rubber tires, which can't handle snow. Montreal's infamous former mayor Jean Drapeau selected these trains as he was enamored with the rubber-tired metros that Paris was running (including outdoors, because Paris rarely sees snow). The result is a metro system that has stagnated due to the cost of having to tunnel any extensions to accommodate these trains, combined with a decades-long economic decline out of which Montreal only recently emerged. The slight upside is that Montreal has a system that is 100% underground - kind of just a cool fact and also good in winter.
There are 3 downtown connections to the metro and none have been detailed, but I imagine that H-B/University and Saint-Urbain's connections to the metro will be underground, using the RESO (Montreal's version of PATH) and some other enclosed solution for Berri-UQAM.
No idea how they're planning to get by with 40m trains, unless the frequency approaches that of the Canada Line. I very much doubt the REM de l'Est will have that kind of frequency, though it's theoretically possible.
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Coolstar
Senior Member
Agreed. It's truly impressive how fast the REM is expanding compared our glacial-paced projects here. Admittedly, it has made me jealous of Montreal and their bright future for transit for good reason.
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tayser
Active Member
I'd argue $10 bil looks cheap.
I had to rejig a few things in my brain (i.e get my head around the tiny 40m stations), but the volume of them, regardless of whether they're elevated, on the surface or underground, will be a few billion out of the gates. ~5km tunnel will probably be $80-100m/km for the civils and fitout of tunnels. $1 billion for the fleet and maintenance/storage facility. Then does that figure include operations? because we haven't talked about building the elevated line yet.
nfitz
Superstar
The connection from Central to the terminus should be pretty simple. Hopefully the final station is underground, but I"m sure they could have some long escalators from elevated as well, if they are willing to sacrifice road lanes.
A bigger issue is the connection to the Metro at the terminus. Their figure makes it look like Central and Bonaventure are a single station. In reality, parts of Central are as close to Square-Victoria, and honestly, the slighter walk from McGill to Central seems simpler, as it's so much shallower than Bonaventure. I find the excellent STM downtown map (see below) very good at showing the relative locations of things.
What's missing here, unlike the REM which links to the Green Line well (and I hope there's some improved connections from the Central platforms into Place Bonaventure), is as good connection to the existing Metro lines downtown - though tough, given where Réné-Levesque runs.. However, isn't the Orange Line quite shallow (and straight) underneath Réné-Levesque? I wonder if there's any feasibility in adding a station there - that area has certainly developed since the Metro was first built, and if the northern entrance was at Réné-Levesque, then it's no closer than Place-des-Arts and Saint-Laurent.
But hang-on ... if you look at the map closely, they do mention and show an intermodal connection with the Orange Line! Is that really a new Metro station?
The northern terminus of the Montreal North branch is unclear. They say at Cegep Marie-Victorin, but the figure makes it look like just west of the Anjou Exo station. But they don't show an intermodal connection.
The driving route from Cegep Marie-Victorin to Central Station is interesting. Does anyone really drive that way (south on the 25, west on the Metropolitan, and then down Decarie and the Ville Marie) ? I suppose it's the only expressway route - but I take the 25, Souligny, Dickson and Notre Dame - or possibly St. Laurent and Park from the Met. I don't think whoever did graphic has driven down Decarie and between the 15s very often!
officedweller
Senior Member
EDIT - that original REM, not l'Est
REM says they'll run 4 car trains (76m) during peak and 2 car trains off peak (or off hours) to save on costs.
In comparison Vancouver's M-Line uses 2 car trains all day (due to shortage of rolling stock) but that allows good frequency / less waiting compared to fewer 4 car trains.
Canada Line only has 2 car trains and branch frequency drops to every 20 min late night, which is 10 min frequency on the combined / overlapping part of the route.
The same will probably be true for REM - the low frequency is the branch frequency and combined service will provide higher frequency closer to the city.
Ultimately, if they need more capacity they'll lengthen the trains (using spares or buying more cars) or reduce headways - but crowded cars are a sign of success.
Wonder how early they'll start each day.
Canada Line runs first southbound train at 4:48am (for airport workers). Other SkyTrain lines start at just after 5am.
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