Montréal Transit Developments

[nfitz]

2/3 of the REM, from Brossard to Bois-Franc in St-Laurent, will have service every 2min30sec at peak time, every 5 minutes the rest of the day. That's a métro service.

Service on the 3 northen branches is RER-likish though

That's a very good point.That central and south section will be very frequent. It includes the majority of the stations (14 of 26) and 28 km of the 67 km project.

West of Bois Franc - suddenly the station spacing gets much wider. There's 7 stations in the 8 km from Bois Franc to the mountain (Blue line at metro Edouard-Montpetit). West of Bois-Franc it branches into 3 much more suburban services, with the next station ranging from about 6.5 km (Sunnbrooke) to 9 km (Sources) depending on the branch.

So 28 km of the 67 km is very metro-like service. The remaining 39 km add only 12 more stations, and the service is more more like RER.

I hadn't realized that all the trains would run through to Brossard - that seems like a lot of capacity and frequency south of Central station for only 5 stations (over 16 km). Heck the 4 stations from Peel Basin to Rive-Sud (that needs a better name!) is almost 15 km. I'd think that half of that capacity would suffice.

So half-RER and half-metro .... a strange beast!

 

[begratto]

I hadn't realized that all the trains would run through to Brossard - that seems like a lot of capacity and frequency south of Central station for only 5 stations (over 16 km). Heck the 4 stations from Peel Basin to Rive-Sud (that needs a better name!) is almost 15 km. I'd think that half of that capacity would suffice.

The REM will replace hundreds of buses that go from downtown to île-des-Soeurs (nun's island) and to the South Shore from the city centre, so if anything they might need to increase the frequency and capacity eventually.

The REM will replace the following bus services that use either the Champlain bridge and/or the Bonaventure expressway :

STM : lines 168 and 178 (up to 15 buses per hour, 6 off-peak) that go to Île-des-Soeurs (Nun's Island)
Réseau de Transport de Longueuil : hundreds of daily departures in each direction, a bus every 30 seconds at peak I believe
Exo : buses to Chambly, Carignan, Delson, St-Constant, Ste-Catherine, etc, dozens of departures every hour at peak
St-Jean-sur Richelieu transit : up to 16 buses per hour at peak, every 30 minutes off-peak

Nun's Island residants are afraid that by the time the downtown-bound trains reach their island, they'll be full.

 

[nfitz]

Source : REM interactive map

That's a great map. I've never looked at the St. Anne de Bellvue (West Island) branch before.

I'm really scratching my head about the West Island station locations. I simply assumed that they'd be Sources, St-Jean (Fairview), St. Charles, (somewhere in between), and somewhere near the Cegep and hospital in St. Anne de Bellevue - simply because of trying to get to/from the stations over Autoroute 40.

The Sources station makes sense, right at Sources.

But why is the Fairview (Pointe-Claire) station so far west of Fairview? That makes it quite inaccessible from the south. Then St. Charles is skipped entirely (??).

The Kirkland station location makes sense where Sainte-Marie crosses the 40 (and being not too far from the proposed 440 extension they've been promising for about 50 years - might never be built, but presumably there'll be some north-south corridor from Gouin to the 20/Woodland here one day).

But then the St-Anne-de-Bellevue station looks more like it's in Baie-d'Urfé! And very much in the middle-of nowhere, with no access over the highway, about 4 km to St-Anne. I'm assuming this is somewhat controversial. Gosh, why not at least extend it to Morgan?

Am I missing something about these station locations?

 

[Fritter]

Regarding this thread,
I say Tomato, you say Tomahto.

 

[felix123]

 

[MisterF]

It seems to me that it's not productive to refuse to admit that Montreal will have a much larger rapid transit system than Toronto when REM is done. After all the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. Toronto has a problem and it's time that we admitted that.

That being said, RER is basically Toronto's REM. And even if its frequencies won't be quite as high and it won't be completely grade separated, it will still function as a whole new metro system to complement the existing one. Some nerds on websites may not like the use of the terms metro or rapid transit to describe it, but that's essentially what it will become.

Still though, the fact that Montreal will, even temporarily, have a larger system shows that there's a fundamental problem with how transit is governed and planned in Toronto. Toronto is a much bigger city than Montreal and has been larger for a couple generations now. This shouldn't even be a conversation.

It didn't have to be this way. We didn't have to design our LRT lines to be glorified streetcars that stop at red lights. We don't have to put our subway extensions through suburban industrial areas underground. We could do what they've done in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, and now Montreal with REM: find creative ways to make their systems function as actual rapid transit while only putting lines underground when it's absolutely necessary. This approach has resulted in all these cities building systems that are functionally metros (with the exception of that surface section in downtown Calgary), even if they don't necessarily use trains that we traditionally think of as metro trains. And each of these cities has expanded their systems at paces that put Toronto to shame.

 

[ViveleCanada]

It didn't have to be this way. We didn't have to design our LRT lines to be glorified streetcars that stop at red lights.

In my opinion our LRT plans weren't flawed with the fact with running at-grade, their biggest flop was the lack of respect for their role in the network. I could easily envision an LRT system that serves the local trips that most current bus riders would take along their respective corridors with transfers onto GO RER service so that trips into downtown wouldn't be compromised by the LRT's slower speed. I actually think a comprehensive LRT+RER network would reduce trips to downtown significantly as it spreads more stations along the corridor (so no long walks to the station) and skips the need to hassle at St George or Bloor-Yonge. I feel as though our subway is stretching to its limit, with trips from the extreme ends to downtown taking <40 minutes whilst GO trains speed by in half the time. I don't disagree with looking for creative solutions for grade-separation, but it shouldn't be such a deal-killer seeing how the Eglinton East got shoved off the radar as funds for the SSE swallowed up money that used to be allocated to both projects. Although Montreal's may get a bigger Metro system, they also could easily screw it up by not implementing proper surface connections. A quick peek at the STM's "Frequent Bus Network" shows the West Island devoid of any frequent bus service which is where REM is to go.

http://www.stm.info/sites/default/files/pictures/reseau10max-2016.pdf

They will probably increase bus service once its up and running, but Toronto's bus network is a good example of why surface connections are vital to RT lines (unless their planning on building an endless sea of parking at every station). My biggest hope is that REM would give Torontonians a local taste for what RER is supposed to look like, and hopefully end the narrow vision of "subways or nothing."

 

[jje1000]

Yeah I definitely wouldn't be as pessimistic as some make it- there's plenty of projects in the works around Toronto (is everyone forgetting the Eglinton Line?), and as far as I know, once the fundamental infrastructure/ownership is in place, frequencies and other policy-based initiatives like traffic priority or seamless fares can be tweaked and worked with.

RER is already a big step up from GO- who knows if in the future, further incremental upgrades might bring it even closer to a metro-like system like in other systems? Sometimes what seems to be the ideal system on the whole is actually the product of a whole series of small upgrades.

 

[nfitz]

Yeah I definitely wouldn't be as pessimistic as some make it- there's plenty of projects in the works around Toronto (is everyone forgetting the Eglinton Line?), and as far as I know, once the fundamental infrastructure/ownership is in place, frequencies and other policy-based initiatives like traffic priority or seamless fares can be tweaked and worked with.

RER is already a big step up from GO- who knows if in the future, further incremental upgrades might bring it even closer to a metro-like system like in other systems? Sometimes what seems to be the ideal system on the whole is actually the product of a whole series of small upgrades.

Absolutely. This thread announcing Montreal was to have the largest subway started over a decade ago with the announcement that there would be 20 km and about 15 stops of extension on 3 existing lines (Orange from Cote-Vertu to Laval, Blue to Anjou, and Yellow eastwards into Longueuil). A decade later, not one shovel is in the ground, and only the Blue line extension might start anytime soon.

Meanwhile in Toronto, since we started this thread they've built or are building 46 rapid transit stops with 37 more km on 3 lines (Line 1, 5, and 6). That becomes 48 stops and 60 km on 4 lines if you include the 23-km UP line (and how isn't it rapid transit?).

And that ignores the progress already with GO services. When we started this discussion, the best off-peak GO Train service was once an hour. It's now once every 15 minutes for the 50-km on the Lakeshore East line ... and 3 trains an hour for the first 58-km of the 138-km Lakeshore West line. Off peak, most trains travel the entire 20-station (108 km) run from near Hamilton to Oshawa. Significant off-peak services have been added to the Barrie, Stouffville, and Georgetown lines as well, with plans to take parts of all of them to every 15-minutes. That's a lot of rapid transit.

Torontonians (and most any city really) are too quick to trash and denigrate their own progress, and look to success elsewhere. Surely that not one inch of Montreal's 20-km that were promised at the start of this thread over 10 years ago has been built yet, is proof of that!

 

[nfitz]

The REM will replace hundreds of buses that go from downtown to île-des-Soeurs (nun's island) and to the South Shore from the city centre, so if anything they might need to increase the frequency and capacity eventually.

The REM will replace the following bus services that use either the Champlain bridge and/or the Bonaventure expressway :

STM : lines 168 and 178 (up to 15 buses per hour, 6 off-peak) that go to Île-des-Soeurs (Nun's Island)
Réseau de Transport de Longueuil : hundreds of daily departures in each direction, a bus every 30 seconds at peak I believe
Exo : buses to Chambly, Carignan, Delson, St-Constant, Ste-Catherine, etc, dozens of departures every hour at peak
St-Jean-sur Richelieu transit : up to 16 buses per hour at peak, every 30 minutes off-peak

Nun's Island residants are afraid that by the time the downtown-bound trains reach their island, they'll be full.

Digging into the numbers - you list 150 buses per hour, plus "dozens of Exo departures per hour. Let's call it 200 buses an hour. About 50 people per bus - about 10,000 riders an hour at peak. With 24 trains per hour and a design capacity of 600 per train, that's a capacity of 14,400 an hour (and 24,000 an hour with the ultimate capacity at every 90 seconds).

With those numbers, there should be space to board at Nun's Island ... though no seats. But I don't think anyone gets seats on most lines 2 stops before the main downtown station!

Wow, I don't think I'd realized just how much the bus service to the south shore had grown. What's going to become of that bus terminal near Bonaventure after this opens?

One concern I see is the 24,000 ultimate capacity with the 76-metre trains. Compare to a heavy rail subway - the TR trains here are 138-metres long with an 1,100 capacity - however the platforms can handle a 152-metre long train - which if you scale the capacity, is about 1,200 a train - exactly double the REM trains in both length and capacity. So with the ultimate every 90-second frequency, the ultimate capacity if 48,000 an hour.

Have they designed the underground REM stations to allow them to extend the platforms? I'd be concerned that they may be creating a bottle-neck, particularly through the Mount-Royal tunnel, if they want to keep adding more spurs into the service.

 

[SFO-YYZ]

I think one of the posters said it best - the fact that we are even having this conversation indicates some fundamental problems with transit planning in TO, in that there is too much emphasis on "planning" and repeatedly changing those plans by iterative policy makers to the point where we now have an embarrassing rapid transit coverage in the Toronto city proper compared with other global metros on a similar calibre. When visitors from Europe or Asia come to visit me in TO and look at the TTC map, their first impression has always: "so Toronto only has 3 subway lines?" My defense has always been, "but look at the cluster of streetcar lines south of Bloor, and don't forget all-day GO trains that go to Oshawa... and oh yes look at the new PRESTO gates aren't they beautiful" No matter how they spin it - TTC or Metrolinx - this is kind of embarrassing for a supposedly world-class city and the premier metropolis in Canada, a city that prides in phrases like "Toronto vs. everyone else" and "centre of the universe".

If we want to call ourselves "centre of the universe", let's actually act like one.

Back to REM - with the official opening of the new Champlain Bridge set for June 17, the installation of the central corridor for REM trains has also reached completion:

 

[nfitz]

I think one of the posters said it best - the fact that we are even having this conversation indicates some fundamental problems with transit planning in TO ...

Not sure how this isn't different in most cities than TO. The Second Avenue subway in NYC started planning in 1919, and initially started construction in 1972 before being suspended from 1975 to 2007, finally opening the first 3 stations (only 3 km!) in in 2017. The second phase will add 2 more kilometres and 3 stations and they hope to have it opened in before 2030 ... the bulk of the line, and 10 more stations into downtown are so far in the future that there's no dates.

London started planning the Jubilee line seriously in the 1960s (after decades of earlier planning), finally completing it in 1999. They started looking at Crossrail in the 1940s, and got serious in the 1970s, and it might finally open in 2020. Crossrail 2 started studies in 1970, with the assumption that it would be built as a tube line after the Jubilee line ... it won't open until at least the 2030s if they don't delay it again.

This thread - about the 2009 announcement of the Monteal Blue Line, Orange Line, and Yelllow line extensions surely is more of the same. Two of those were reannouncements of extension that had been discussed since the 1970s, and had even appeared on Metro maps in trains in the mid-1980s. Still nothing has been built. Meanwhile the REM is finally progressing after plans for the central /Deux Montagnes section since the early 1960s, and about 2000 for the piece from Central to Brossard.

Toronto isn't in a special place ... yes it's a problem. Yes, politics is a lot of it. But it's hardly unique to Toronto. The grass isn't greener everywhere else.

 

[CityStay]

Jeez guys, will you give nfitz a break? An alarm sounds every time someone posts here - let the guy get some sleep!

I could wallpaper my entire house with seemingly bi-annual Toronto transit plans. They come and go. A grandiose scheme is announced then quickly forgotten. A pretty map is published and, if lucky, a truncated portion of one of the proposed lines may be built (usually the most useless bit, never the DRL) and then the next scheme is hatched. This Ford thing is still just scribbles on a stack of napkins. Not getting my hopes up.

At any rate, the fact that a city of 500 km/sq, 2.1 million population has a system of roughly similar size to a city of 630 km/sq, 2.9 million population tells you all you need to know about the state of affairs in Toronto.

nfitz in 5...4...3...2...1...

 

[nfitz]

I could wallpaper my entire house with seemingly bi-annual Toronto transit plans. They come and go. A grandiose scheme is announced then quickly forgotten.

And how is that different than other cities? This thread is about Montreal's 2009 "fake-news" announcement about 20 km of Metro expansions that have yet to progress one inch. And you use this thread to complain about Toronto?

 

[p_xavier]

Digging into the numbers - you list 150 buses per hour, plus "dozens of Exo departures per hour. Let's call it 200 buses an hour. About 50 people per bus - about 10,000 riders an hour at peak. With 24 trains per hour and a design capacity of 600 per train, that's a capacity of 14,400 an hour (and 24,000 an hour with the ultimate capacity at every 90 seconds).

With those numbers, there should be space to board at Nun's Island ... though no seats. But I don't think anyone gets seats on most lines 2 stops before the main downtown station!

Wow, I don't think I'd realized just how much the bus service to the south shore had grown. What's going to become of that bus terminal near Bonaventure after this opens?

One concern I see is the 24,000 ultimate capacity with the 76-metre trains. Compare to a heavy rail subway - the TR trains here are 138-metres long with an 1,100 capacity - however the platforms can handle a 152-metre long train - which if you scale the capacity, is about 1,200 a train - exactly double the REM trains in both length and capacity. So with the ultimate every 90-second frequency, the ultimate capacity if 48,000 an hour.

Have they designed the underground REM stations to allow them to extend the platforms? I'd be concerned that they may be creating a bottle-neck, particularly through the Mount-Royal tunnel, if they want to keep adding more spurs into the service.

I totally disagree about the use of rapid transit in the last posts and I won't continue arguing on the subject. The Deux-Montagnes line would have been rapid transit...

REM's maximum design capacity is 780. https://rem.info/en/news/rem-seating-and-capacity

An engineering friend on the projet told me that underground stations were indeed built with 100m platforms for futureproofing.

The Bonaventure bus terminal was already at over capacity, buses are parked in the street. I guess these buses (from other cities like Bromont, St-Jean) will use continue to use the terminal as they are not Under obligation to go to a REM station for transfers unlike othe South Shore ciites.

On the reflection of Toronto actually gettings things built, most cities in Canada have the same governance problems. (see LRT/Skytrain debates in Vancouver, metro extensions in Montréal) The only reason Montreal is getting new transit build quickly is because it's the CPDQi that runs the show exclusively. Hence why the government is even giving new projects directly to the CDPQi and not the ARTM, which is its official mandate.