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Cobra said:
I don't think there's any plans for all day both direction services outside REM. As for Pis-IX, there were so many accidents/deaths when v.1 was around. When they say "reserve lanes/ROW" they really mean it... Get out of the way or get hit by the bus...that thing is speeding for real...jaywalk at your own risks in Montreal
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Amazing that Canada has this great transit reputation but we have to talk about this. They should expand the other lines too.
 
Cobra said:
I don't think there's any plans for all day both direction services outside REM. As for Pis-IX, there were so many accidents/deaths when v.1 was around. When they say "reserve lanes/ROW" they really mean it... Get out of the way or get hit by the bus...that thing is speeding for real...jaywalk at your own risks in Montreal
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It's a shame, Montreal has an expansive commuter rail network... which has decayed and stagnated for decades. Toronto has built one from the ground up over the course of the last 50 years. If Quebec showed the same ambition with the AMT as Ontario showed with GO, it would be nothing short of transformative.

The Vaudreil-Hudson line is popular, despite its very limited service and lack of reliability due to conflicts with CN. Personally, I would take it to work and home every day except there are only two trains in the evening that I could take, 3 hours apart. Same thing with Deux-Montagnes, limited service has resulted in stagnating ridership.

The REM proposal is good in the sense that it provides metro service where before there was just commuter rail. But it has a number of flaws.

1) It's basically throwing in the towel for the AMT and saying that Skytrain is the future of transit in the region. This could be considered good or bad, but I question whether Skytrain will do well in the very snowy climate here. It also means that all the sunk costs with electrification and rolling stock has been wasted. Skytrain is very cheap for establishing new lines (I think it's great for the South Shore portion of the route, especially since the new Champlain bridge has been under-designed so only Skytrain would be light enough to use it), but I don't know if it's a good choice for replacing existing lines. The current route cuts off the Train de L'Est by monopolizing the Mont Royal tunnel, and dooms the St. Jerome line to its current circuitous and indirect route, which threatens both their viabilities.

2) The ownership model of REM is not great. Basically the city/province is handing over an invaluable asset, the Mont Royal tunnel, and the most profitable AMT line and giving it to a private pension fund. Fares will have to be high to make it profitable, which makes its ridership suspect. And the success of the line depends entirely on connections to existing, publicly built infrastructure, and on publicly funded local feeder buses.

3) The route is not good, and has been presented as fait-accompli. The route seems like it was designed to check boxes off a list (Airport, West Island, downtown), not based on what makes the most sense. The A40 section is the most expensive part and also is projected to have the lowest ridership (according to analysis done by bloggers, since the Caisse has refused to reveal its ridership projections for each section). Most of what is serviced is unpopulated areas around highways and parking lots (Park and ride model). There is an imbalance between the three branches in the west and one branch in the east. It's also a dumb way to reach the airport, involving kilometers of tunnelling when the airport is only 400 m from an active commuter rail line.

4) There is a capacity shortfall. According to an analysis done by bloggers, even though there is a large capacity increase during the day from the all day service, during rush hour the train could not replace all the commuter trains it is supposed to in addition to handle its expected new ridership. These are Vancouver-sized trains replacing commuter trains. And how are these trains supposed to handle the transfer volumes when trains several times their size unload north of Mont Royal and expect to be able to transfer?
 
aquateam said:
It's a shame, Montreal has an expansive commuter rail network... which has decayed and stagnated for decades. Toronto has built one from the ground up over the course of the last 50 years. If Quebec showed the same ambition with the AMT as Ontario showed with GO, it would be nothing short of transformative.
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That's completely wrong.

AMT has 6 commuter lines. When they took over the trains in 1996, there were only 2. The other 4 are new. Of the old 2 lines, the Deux-Montagnes line was significantly rebuilt and modernized in just before AMT took over operations.

The Vaudreuil line has stagnated. But other than that, the AMT expansions in the last 20 years have been impressive, and significantly exceed GO's rail expansions in the same period of time. (though GO is still bigger, and carries more passengers).
 
TJ O'Pootertoot said:
Good for you - I too have long said, "Hey, they're not perfect but they've done many great and important things for growth and infrastructure investment in the GTA" And they just undermined it all.

DelDuca said something astonishing last week - I don't have the exact quote -but it was something about how his constituents (ie in Vaughan) would be penalized by the tolls because even though there's been all this major transit investment, those options just aren't there on the ground yet. Vaughan has arguably seen more transit investment than anywhere in the province. Yeah, the 407 Transitway and Barrie GO RER are still a few years off but the subway and BRT are both opening this year. And the Barrie line is also getting expanded service and parking lots in the meantime.

It would have taken a couple of years, I suspect, to roll out the tolls so to suggest that his residents, of all people, weren't benefiting from the investments to date etc. was very galling to hear. The province kicked off major transit investment TEN YEARS AGO so when we go to this point, people wouldn't be able to say "I'm not willing to pay until I see transit infrastructure going in." York Region got more than anyone except Toronto so for him to say that - and for Wynne to stand in RH instead of Toronto when making that announcement - was cynical and hypocritical.

And now there's no one else to turn to.

EDIT: Tracked down his quote, in this Star article:
“They can see that the subway is going to be running to Vaughan in a few months. They know that we’re deploying more service on the Barrie GO line; they know that we’re building an LRT along with York Region along Hwy. 7. So they can see the evidence that it’s coming,” said Del Duca.

“But they know it doesn’t exist right now. They know they don’t have alternatives. But, most importantly, they know they’re feeling a pinch on their pocketbooks, generally speaking. They have that anxiety. I think it’s reasonable and justifiable.”

It's not, Steven. Doesn't exist right now? It will in six months! Long before there are tolls!
FAKE NEWS!
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They have to stop making MPPs from Vaughan the Minister of Transportation
 
nfitz said:
That's completely wrong.

AMT has 6 commuter lines. When they took over the trains in 1996, there were only 2. The other 4 are new. Of the old 2 lines, the Deux-Montagnes line was significantly rebuilt and modernized in just before AMT took over operations.

The Vaudreuil line has stagnated. But other than that, the AMT expansions in the last 20 years have been impressive, and significantly exceed GO's rail expansions in the same period of time. (though GO is still bigger, and carries more passengers).
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I read a rather pessimistic article about Montreal's commuter rail network from the 1980s, which may have coloured my opinion. You've made me look into more detail:

The AMT currently has 6 lines:
Deux-Montagnes was created in 1918 and was run by CPR until it was transferred to the STCUM in 1982. Except for a 3 year shutdown for upgrades, it has been operating continuously since its creation.
Candiac was created in 1887 and ran until 1980. The AMT reactivated it in 2002.
St. Jerome was created in 1882 and ran until 1981. The AMT reactivated it in 1997.
Mont St-Hilaire was created in 1859 and ran until 1988. The AMT reactivated it in 2000.
Vaudreil-Hudson was created in 1887 and ran by CPR until it was transferred to the STCUM in 1982. It has been operating continuously since its creation.
Mascouche replicates the Montreal Nord line which ran from 1946 to 1968. The AMT reactivated and expanded it (all new track) in 2014.

So Montreal had an expansive commuter rail network dating back to the 19th/ early 20th century that was run by CN/CPR, that's only just now returning to what it used to be.

Toronto may have had something similar, but I'm not aware of anything other than the Lakeshore line ran by CN.
 
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/david-dodge-tolls-budget-1.3986406

This part needs to be understood by everyone:

"The government can't go on investing in infrastructure, borrowing money to invest infrastructure, unless there's a future revenue stream which is going to service that."
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It particularly needs to be understood by the money people at QP.....their plan to sell off Hydro (which paid a healthy dividend annually) to build transit (which traditionally needs a subsidy annually) is a particularly troublesome fiscal move.
 
aquateam said:
So Montreal had an expansive commuter rail network dating back to the 19th/ early 20th century that was run by CN/CPR, that's only just now returning to what it used to be.
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You exaggerate grossly. I took the old CN St-Hilaire commuter train. It was just 1 train a day. None of the trains other than the Dorion and Deux-Montagnes lines were anything like what AMT is running now.

Toronto had similar service. You still saw an echo of it until recently, with the morning VIA train from Kitchener, which they finally cancelled once GO got running. Though I guess the morning train from Kingston still runs.
 
Same with the Saint-Jérôme line : it wasn't a commuter train, but a long distance train which ran all the way to Mont-Laurier, and only twice per day in the best years if I remember correctly.
 
aquateam said:
...Deux-Montagnes was created in 1918 and was run by CPR until it was transferred to the STCUM in 1982.
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I think you mean CNR:
The line was created in 1918 as a Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) service. Canadian National Railway (CN) ran the line starting in 1923 following the merger of CNoR into CN. CN transferred the Deux-Montagnes Line to the Société de transport de la communauté urbaine de Montréal (STCUM) on July 1, 1982. The line was refurbished from 1992 to 1995. It was transferred to the AMT on January 1, 1996.

There are 25 inbound and 24 outbound departures each weekday.[2][...]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deux-Montagnes_line#cite_note-2010_Annual_Report-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deux-Montagnes_line
 
One would think that this summer's replacement of 36 streetcars on the 501 QUEEN with 65 buses, might be a good time to repair and/or replace the faulty or manual track switches, between May and September of 2017.

CIyHrIAUwAAWCaF.jpg


Unfortunately, employing the extra drivers would eat away at the TTC's operational budget. And there is very little funding available to fix those troublesome switches. Easier to have the streetcars stop at each and every track switch, and sometimes having to use manually set the switches.
 
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