Montréal Transit Developments

[robmausser]

REM has rolled out the first Alstom Metropolis onto Brossard Station (with platform screen doors now completed) - vehicle testing will commence in January in the South Shore tracks:

View attachment 289645

Réseau express métropolitain - REM

Réseau express métropolitain - REM. 43,301 likes · 48 talking about this. 67 km de métro léger automatique 5 stations en service 26 stations à terme Grand Montréal📍

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I cant remember, will service launch be with 2 pairs of these connected, or just the single pair.

 

[begratto]

I cant remember, will service launch be with 2 pairs of these connected, or just the single pair.

2 pairs at rush hour, a single pair at other times.

 

[asher__jo]

I think these are conscious design decisions, which should be adjusted according to each station's local surroundings. Brentwood is on the extreme end of building a futuristic (yet bulky) station footprint, while other stations like Richmond Bridgehouse, Marine Drive, or Aberdeen can be more discreet and are tightly integrated with their surrounding buildings. I also like how building the Canada Line on No. 3 road in Richmond Centre actually enabled wider sidewalks, parklets, and new bike lanes under the elevated structures. In this case, I would argue that it added to the overall attractiveness of Richmond City Centre.

Sure. But there's no getting around engineering, all the visual mass serves a necessary function. You can only minimize that soo much, but still have to deal with the reality of putting a station footprint that would normal be surface or below ground in the sky. The most successful elevated skytrain would probably be Main St-Science world being directly integrated to building and not running in the centre of the street.
Also, Richmond is a highly suburban area that you can't directly compare to an area like dt Montreal.

 

[NoahB]

REM has rolled out the first Alstom Metropolis onto Brossard Station (with platform screen doors now completed) - vehicle testing will commence in January in the South Shore tracks:

View attachment 289645

Réseau express métropolitain - REM

Réseau express métropolitain - REM. 43,301 likes · 48 talking about this. 67 km de métro léger automatique 5 stations en service 26 stations à terme Grand Montréal📍

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It's alive!

 

[TossYourJacket]

REM has rolled out the first Alstom Metropolis onto Brossard Station (with platform screen doors now completed) - vehicle testing will commence in January in the South Shore tracks:

View attachment 289645

Réseau express métropolitain - REM

Réseau express métropolitain - REM. 43,301 likes · 48 talking about this. 67 km de métro léger automatique 5 stations en service 26 stations à terme Grand Montréal📍

www.facebook.com

Really curious how these trains work out, as it seems like a 4 or 5 car version is very possibly what we're gonna get for the Ontario Line.

 

[nfitz]

Yes agree. In its current form, Canada Line can add at most a 3rd car into its existing 2-car configuration.

Standing in the underground stations, I've looked, and I don't see how you squeeze another car on there, without massive excavation, and presumably closing the line for some years. They don't seem to have left any easily usable area for quick conversion - like they have on Line 4.

Really curious how these trains work out, as it seems like a 4 or 5 car version is very possibly what we're gonna get for the Ontario Line.

Quite possibly. Alstom is on one of the three bidding teams for vehicles. The other two are Hitachi and Siemens - but I don't think either of them have any local manufacturing, so presumably it is Alstom's to lose.

Should be able to figure out which are the 3 potential vehicles.

 

[ARG1]

Standing in the underground stations, I've looked, and I don't see how you squeeze another car on there, without massive excavation, and presumably closing the line for some years. They don't seem to have left any easily usable area for quick conversion - like they have on Line 4.

The stations are designed to be extendable to 50m from the existing 40m. This leaves about 5m at each end for train overhang. Its not an ideal solution but its definitely doable.

 

[nfitz]

The stations are designed to be extendable to 50m from the existing 40m. This leaves about 5m at each end for train overhang. Its not an ideal solution but its definitely doable.

Could they run 25 metre cars?

What an unusual size. That's even smaller than the proposed 14-metre seventh car for Line 1 and 2 - so I doubt they'd do that until they replace the rolling stock. Which also seems to be the direction Toronto is going - with uniform length cars to make the full length in the next order.

Oh well no rush - we've been waiting 70 years already to use the full platform. For some reason, even the though the platforms were designed for nine 17-metre cars, they never ran more than eight-car trains as far as I know.

 

[tayser]

Standing in the underground stations, I've looked, and I don't see how you squeeze another car on there, without massive excavation, and presumably closing the line for some years. They don't seem to have left any easily usable area for quick conversion - like they have on Line 4.

Quite possibly. Alstom is on one of the three bidding teams for vehicles. The other two are Hitachi and Siemens - but I don't think either of them have any local manufacturing, so presumably it is Alstom's to lose.

Should be able to figure out which are the 3 potential vehicles.

I just looked at some videos of the underground sections - it appears there's about 10 or so metres of platform at the start of each station and looking at the ends of the existing rolling stock sets there's ~3m from the front of the vehicle to the nearest door - I'd suggest minor platform lengthening within bounds of what they can do plus adding a third car that doesn't measure 20m but 15m in the middle of the existing sets is probably how they'd do it.

The train is lengthened by ~15m, but in the underground stations, the first door is right up against the existing barrier with the final/rear door near enough to the end of the minor platform extensions (lengthen by 15m but only require ~10m of new platform space).

Tight, and definitely reeks of value managing, but doable when they need it.

Vid for reference:

 

[ARG1]

Could they run 25 metre cars?

What an unusual size. That's even smaller than the proposed 14-metre seventh car for Line 1 and 2 - so I doubt they'd do that until they replace the rolling stock. Which also seems to be the direction Toronto is going - with uniform length cars to make the full length in the next order.

Oh well no rush - we've been waiting 70 years already to use the full platform. For some reason, even the though the platforms were designed for nine 17-metre cars, they never ran more than eight-car trains as far as I know.

Well the current plan with the 50m platforms is to add a 10m segment between the two cars, so it'll be a 20/10/20m train.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Official map of the project:

Technical presentation:

https://www.cdpqinfra.com/sites/cdpqinfrad8/files/2020-12/REM_de_lEst_Technical_presentation_0.pdf

20 new stations, two spurs, and construction to commence in 2022?

Wait, that's allowed?

The speed of how REM was built really does exemplify how slow the progress has been on RER. They built an entire system from scratch in 5 years and Toronto has yet to decide on what kind of trains they will run. Heads should roll at Metrolinx.

 

[superelevation]

Everyone gives the Canada Line a hard time for its short cars while not looking at what actually matters (capacity) meanwhile we build a half underground half above ground tramway for nearly twice the price in Toronto - with platforms twice as long and the capacity is . . . the same.

 

[nfitz]

Everyone gives the Canada Line a hard time for its short cars while not looking at what actually matters (capacity) meanwhile we build a half underground half above ground tramway for nearly twice the price in Toronto - with platforms twice as long and the capacity is . . . the same.

Eglinton Line? Capacity would be the same (if true), because they are starting with only 60-metre trains, running every 4 minutes at peak.

So yes, 40 metre trains every 3 minutes would be a similar (slightly less I think) capacity to slightly narrower 60 metre trains every 4 minutes. But it easily meets the long-term demand projections at even that frequency. But with a huge ability to increase capacity 300% if they go for 90-metre trains every 2 minutes. 400% if they do the underground section every 90 seconds.

That's about twice the ultimate capacity of Eglinton to Canada line. For twice the cost you say?

 

[afransen]

Eglinton Line? Capacity would be the same (if true), because they are starting with only 60-metre trains, running every 4 minutes at peak.

So yes, 40 metre trains every 3 minutes would be a similar (slightly less I think) capacity to slightly narrower 60 metre trains every 4 minutes. But it easily meets the long-term demand projections at even that frequency. But with a huge ability to increase capacity 300% if they go for 90-metre trains every 2 minutes. 400% if they do the underground section every 90 seconds.

That's about twice the ultimate capacity of Eglinton to Canada line. For twice the cost you say?

If people are skeptical about OL running every 90s, how do we expect a low-floor LRT system that has to also run on the surface human-operated without grade separation to do likewise?

 

[superelevation]

Eglinton Line? Capacity would be the same (if true), because they are starting with only 60-metre trains, running every 4 minutes at peak.

So yes, 40 metre trains every 3 minutes would be a similar (slightly less I think) capacity to slightly narrower 60 metre trains every 4 minutes. But it easily meets the long-term demand projections at even that frequency. But with a huge ability to increase capacity 300% if they go for 90-metre trains every 2 minutes. 400% if they do the underground section every 90 seconds.

That's about twice the ultimate capacity of Eglinton to Canada line. For twice the cost you say?

The Eglinton Line's final buildout capacity is 15,000 ppdph, the same as the Canada Line. This has been well known for years. Its also pretty clear that ridership is being underestimated. 5500 ppdph is not much.

This is likely due to the limited frequency the line can achieve as the vehicles have many less doors per unit length and worse circulation, in addition the trains are deceptively low capacity since as we know most of the space over the bogies (50% of the train minimum (3/5 modules)) is primarily seats and not standing room.