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Montréal Transit Developments

North Entrance in 2010s
View attachment 602329
A better photo, in my opinion @nfitz...

DSC_2928.jpg

Source

Edit: Sorry @Northern Light, I hadn't noticed your post.
 
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The rolling stock was replaceable, and the Guideway was structurally fine.

The reality is that the line was at capacity, and was unable to accommodate newer versions of the 'Sky Train' technology, essentially because of of the tunnelled curve taking the line from N-S to E-W and vice versa.

It simply couldn't handle longer train cars/trains. The TTC's 'Mark 1' versions of the technology haven't been made for years, and several cars had already been de-commissioned due to age or crashes or the like.

So to upgrade the line with new equipment meant shuttering it for 2.5 years minimum to rebuild the offending tunnel. Additionally, only 2 of the six stations were long enough to support longer trains, and so would have required significant work to expand them and upgrade them.

In light of that, and the long standing desire to expand the line further north and east..........the choice was made to replace it with a subway. However, the endless nonsense at Toronto City Hall led to different schemes being cancelled/altered/reinstated multiple times.

Meanwhile, the TTC understood that there was no future for the line as is, with its 'orphan' technology and so scaled backed any plans to sustain it for the longer term.
There was also the problem that none of the stations between STC and Kennedy were accessible so there was no intention to run the service past 2025 anyway, so the incident merely brought that forward
 
The future of the region’s most-popular train line is in doubt as planners expect the Vaudreuil-Hudson route will lose up to 20 per cent of its riders when the REM’s West Island branch is implemented next year.

“We are expecting a loss of ridership on the Vaudreuil-Hudson line of between 15 and 20 per cent,” Exo chief Sylvain Yelle told The Gazette in a recent interview. “We think the line will still be pertinent and must continue to be part of the existing offer.”

The hits keep coming for EXO. Destined to become an afterthought once the REM is fully operational.

Sylvian claims that EXO does one thing better than REM, .... parking. Which I don't think is necessarily true. Looking at the Vaudreuil-Hudson line on Google maps shows a lot of the stations in the Dorval area don't even have nearly as much parking as the smallest GO stations.
“We have to look at this on a long-term basis,” he said. “There is still a lot of potential with Exo’s train service.”

He also noted that the Exo train stations all having large parking lots around them, which is not the case with the REM — a bone of contention for many in the West Island, who prefer to drive to the train.
 
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Montreal West mayor says having less frequency, fewer trains is good for public safety. Huh? I mean, technically he's right, I suppose. But doesn't seem to be a worthy argument against the train.
 

Montreal West mayor says having less frequency, fewer trains is good for public safety. Huh? I mean, technically he's right, I suppose. But doesn't seem to be a worthy argument against the train.

Number of cars on the roads increases due to less people taking train. More deaths from car accidents. He's not even technically right.
 
Number of cars on the roads increases due to less people taking train. More deaths from car accidents. He's not even technically right.
He is the mayor of Montreal-West and therefore only concerned about public safety within Montreal-West and therefore presumably right. Whether his concerns should inform a decision about adjusting the current frequency of trains is an entirely different question…
 
Montreal West mayor says having less frequency, fewer trains is good for public safety. Huh? I mean, technically he's right, I suppose. But doesn't seem to be a worthy argument against the train.
I don't think that's true in Montreal West. Will people from Dorval and Beaconsfield be driving through Montreal West to get downtown?

Meanwhile, it will be safer in the town itself - as students are very tempted to ignore the crossing barriers so as not to be late for school.
 
A bit of good news for EXO.
Interesting - we had some discussion earlier about EXO rail ridership being down, particularly on these 3 lines. I hadn't realized that Lucien d'Allier was closed.

I'm amused to see the Gazette write this is the first renovation to Lucien l'Allier station since 1976. 😂
 
Interesting - we had some discussion earlier about EXO rail ridership being down, particularly on these 3 lines. I hadn't realized that Lucien d'Allier was closed.
Except it wasn't these three lines, in fact the only 2 EXO lines that are doing well are the VH and SJ lines which both terminate at LL.

The 3 struggling Exo lines are Candiac, which terminates at LL, and the Masouche and MSH Lines which don't.

Graph:
1731270630960.png

I'm amused to see the Gazette write this is the first renovation to Lucien l'Allier station since 1976. 😂
Didn't LL first open in 1997... ?
 
Except it wasn't these three lines, in fact the only 2 EXO lines that are doing well are the VH and SJ lines which both terminate at LL.

The 3 struggling Exo lines are Candiac, which terminates at LL, and the Masouche and MSH Lines which don't.
Ah, thanks for the reminder! They all looked surprisingly low, given how far we are past the pandemic. I didn't think Candiac looked any worse, relatively speaking, than the other two CPCS lines. MSH is a bit of a mystery of why it's so much poorer, relatively speaking.

Didn't LL first open in 1997... ?
About then - closer to 2000 I thinkk. But it was little more than the old platforms that were unchanged for many decades (other than the removal of the train shed - which must have happened sometime between 1950 and 1980). And that horrid undersized structure along the edge of the new Forum, at Montagne. It was the Metro station that was built in the late 1970s (opening in 1980), and the metro station had no connection to the tracks or Windsor station back then. The platforms were massively long - the longest stretching almost 550 metres from about Stanley to about Guy, so as to handle The Canadian. Even after they built the new Forum, they only lost about 200 metres.

I'm not entirely sure what they are up to, but looking at the 2024 photos in Google Earth, it looks very extensive, with the installation of shelters (finally!); and hopefully there's a direct connection now to the metro station and pedestrian access to anywhere other than the east side of Montagne.
 

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