Metros can’t share tracks with other passenger trains or freight trains. Converting the Vaudreuil line into a metro like the REM would require full acquisition of the right of way ($$$) full grade separation ($$$) full electrification ($$$) and likely build a bypass for other passenger and freight services that can’t use those tracks anymore ($$$). Metro conversion of branches like the DM can be quite cost effective, metro conversion of mailines not so much. Building any type of more frequent service on Montreal’s established commuter rail lines will be challenging, but converting to metro is on a whole other scale of cost and difficulty.
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In Japan, freight trains do share track with metro lines. What is preventing it isn’t the fact that they can’t, but the fact that our safety standards are so high that we have effectively legislated ourselves out of perfectly valid and cost effective options. Heck, Japan has got local, metro and Shinkansen service running on the same line in some of the further out communities that are served by their transit system.
The true genius of the Japanese transit system is that while some of the trains have 5 doors, 3 doors, or two doors, they all line up in the same locations, meaning that they can have anti-intrusion doors and still be able to serve all trains that stop at a station.
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Thank you for taking the time to answer!
Which is kind of ironic when we remember how unsafe most rails, trains and wagons are in fact ! We’re struggling just to make DOT-111 tank cars a thing of the past since Megantic. Even if it’s known since at least 1991 that they easily fail in accidents.
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Noticed that they somehow stopped announcing broken elevators.
IDS elevator is clearly broken but not on the website.
And is the du quartier still broken? It’s been like a month or something.
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Je ne sais pas ça fait combien de temps c’est sortie. Mais, il y a de nouvelles photos sur le site de NouvlR (automne 2023). Le projet semble vraiment bien avancé!
Des rails à EM .YEAH
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Je me ferai une immense plaisir de le faire… 
… mais cela devra attendre à ce soir uniquement. 
Edit: Merci à @trefle_incarnat qui l’a fait pour moi. 
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Plaisir !
Le plus gros a été fait, mais il restera quelques images pour ceux qui auront le temps.
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It’s interesting how of all stations, des sources, Sunnybrook, Côte-de-Liesse, du ruisseau and Montpellier got nothing.
Je ne comprends pas ce que je vois au dessus des voies…
Nous sommes dans un tunnel, pourquoi avoir ce genre de toit? Il semble y avoir un genre d’isolation?
Aucune idée non plus c’est quoi.
Ventilation?
Ordre du SIM?
Ça peut être de tout genre
Ça semble être de la laine ignifuge, potentiellement une mesure de remediation pour une protection coupe-feu, vue la complexité des lieux et le cas unique du tunnel. Peut-être aussi qu’il y a une capacité acoustique
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Je comprends que quand ça marche bien personne n’en parle mais ça fait plaisir de voir que le REM a bien fonctionné malgré les 15cm de neige et la pluie verglaçante. Mais ce n’est pas vendeur de dire quand ça va bien 
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@mtlfan I’m responding here as our discussion was more about the whole branch/REM project then Des Sources station.
That’s true, but I wouldn’t be surprised if CDPQ get a deal or convinced the mall at Fairview to accept paid parking. It’s not unheard of. Their parking is absolutely huge and behind the Réno-Dépot nobody ever uses it. So it wouldn’t be a loss to them.
Although that now that I think about it, there are no amenities to allow people to safely cross the road (which is an intersection between a service road where people go 70 and a street where there’s nothing and people go 60 easily on.
I think the A3 branch really show the limits of the CDPQ approach to public transit. Planning around a financial incentive doesn’t create the best environment for great public transit. Obviously we’ll have to wait for the opening to see how true this is. But to me it really feels like the whole A3 branch is just massive compromise to minimize to the maximum possible risk for them to the point of it being ridiculous. The A1 branch was plan alongside an highway redesign and Brossard and Du Quartier stations where in the middle of nowhere where it’s cheap for CDPQ to build parking and for developper to build housing without risk.
The A4 branch is an old train line where cities were already planned around them and parking was already present (so CDPQ did not had to buy expensive land for it)
The A3 line would have been better in my opinion if it was built under the hydro lines in the West Island. You could have excused the lack of parking and as it’s already a busy transit place for people. But obviously that’s risky building there because of nimbyism and having to deal with Hydro Quebec an other entity.
The much less risky option is expropriating some land along the highway, it’s comparatively cheap and nimby won’t oppose it. But it’s still not free so you minimize it to the bare minimum while hopping cities and landowner will patch the few holes your plan has. Like the lack of access to your stations. Long term it might workout for them. But it’s poor planing when looking at the whole West Island.
(Also the numbers I gave about parking came directly for the REM website)
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Given the fact that the West Island is very car-oriented, there is no “perfect” place to build these stations. In fact, the locations where the stations were built are probably the least bad options.
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Except saint-charles station.
Oh right they didint placed any there…
Why did we not get anything on Saint Charles baffles me to no end
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Because it’s actually pretty close to the Fairview station? And the Kirkland station is built in a much better area.
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