Maybe you don’t understand how forums work; this is a discussion thread about VIA Rail, are you trying to tell me I don’t have a right to say it’s a silly idea to discuss a 10 km tunnel under the city when we can’t even extend the metro 5 km into the suburbs? When we can’t dig a tunnel for an automated tramway under RL? This is a discussion forum, my comments are as valid as anybody else’s.
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Regarding the tunnel under René-Lévesque, who said it was impossible, other than the CDPQi who just wants to save money, even if turns downtown to become ugly? We are still waiting for the detailed study proving that.
We have spent the last 10 to 20 years trying to get rid of ugly concrete bridges for roads and highways in Montreal, wether it is the Turcot interchange, the Parc/Des Pins interchange, the Henri-Bourassa/Pie-IX interchange, the Bonaventure highway bridge at the entrance of downtown, and so on… But suddenly, now we are willing to go backward, despite all the progress we have been doing…
I don’t recall people being so pennysavers when it came to try to accomodate old and existing transportation infrastructures to the city’s environment.
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Stuttgarts project at 7 billion euro is probably on the psychological limit as to what would be spent on public transit infrastructure in Quebec. My comment about not being in France or China is a bit defeatist for sure; but when the next good comparison for this project is from Germany, another European county that literally borders France, I think the situation is basically the same. There is just more political (and seemingly more efficient use of transportation funds) in other continents compared to NA. Germany also has an extensive history of RER/S-Bahns in their cities. That makes an RER style tunnel under the Plateau a hard sell for the government even though it makes the most sense.
Also not to bring the discussion backwards or anything, but is there anything stopping via rail from just having two completely separate lines that are not connected? One north of the St.Laurent and was south? Would it just be a case of duplication of facilities? This is in regards to a terminus at Parc or Cote-De-Liesse…
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Nobody thought it would be possible to have a 60km mass transit project done rather quickly in Quebec, and yet we are getting the REM. The key to its success was complete coordination between different levels of government and political will on all sides. If we could do it once, I’m sure we can do it again. Is it realistic? Yes, if all the political stars are aligned. Would la CAQ do something like that? I have doubts, unless there is something big in it for the citizens outside of the core part of the city.
As for having 2 terminals, it’s definitely possible… An alternative would be to have a large hub at Dorval, which connects with the airport and have trains bypass Central station, but it would need an extension of the REM to the train station. It’s useful for everyone who doesn’t have central Montreal as their final destination.
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Pour le moment, les travaux n’ont pas débuté; et sons supposés débuter pile aux prochaines élections provinciales; donc on verra.
Mais initialement, ce projet de troisième lien a été annoncé en janvier 2020, avec les premiers travaux préparatoires qui débuteraient en octobre 2022 à Lévis, près des champs; plus d’un an et demi après l’annonce originelle. Et ce sont juste des travaux préparatoires; le dossier d’affaires devant être ficelé en 2025.
C’est pour moi un bel exemple illustrant l’impossibilité actuelle de se greffer aux travaux du REM à McGill pour commencer un deuxième tunnel.
D’accord avec toi. Je voyais un hub à la station Cote-de-Liesse du REM mais Dorval pourrait être une option intéressante.
@SameGuy
“What are the current (or 2019) O/D numbers for XLJ-YMY and XLJ-YBZ? As much as railfans are clamouring for better service, in my opinion the government should just concentrate on Centrale to Union for any massive investment, while the phase 2 and 3 proposals remain on the back burner until the needs justify the investments.”
One would argue that most of the money will be spent on building the Havelock sub. between Perth and Peterborough.
Je me demande quel est le potentiel d’achalandage si le fédéral limitait certains vols domestiques comme dans d’autres pays. Quelqu’un connait le pourcentage du trafic aérien Ontario-Québec attribuable aux destinations du HFR Quebec-Windsor?
Les pays comme la France sont capables de limiter les vols courts parce que le train est aussi rapide que l’avion sur ces distances. Au Canada, on a pas encore une ligne ferroviaire capable de faire compétition à l’avion ou la voiture. C’est pour ça que le TGF entre Montréal, Ottawa et Toronto est un projet intéressant. Même s’il n’est pas un TGV, il permet au train de devenir compétitif.
La première étape si le gouvernement fédéral voulait vraiment faire une mesure restrictive en faveur du train, ce serait de fermer l’aéroport du centre-ville de Toronto. Pour ça par contre, ça prend une alternative efficace, ce qu’on a pas encore.
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Seulement 2 des 13 destinations desservies à partir de l’aéroport du centre-ville de Toronto peuvent être remplacées par le TGF: Montréal et Ottawa.
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potentiel
4 en fait, avec Windsor (où on a annoncé cette semaine qu’on allait étudier une extension du TGF vers l’ouest) et Québec.
Reste que Ottawa et Montréal représentent les deux destinations les plus achalandées au départ de Billy Bishop, et que toutes les autres sont aussi desservies au départ de l’aéroport Pearson.
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Remplacer un vol de 1.5 heures par 7-8 heures de train?
Même avec un véritable TGV à 300km/h, ce serait une trop longue distance pour satisfaire le critère que la France a établi pour limiter ses vols courts (faut que ce soit moins de 2.5 heures en TGV)
I honestly don’t think there is a federal government on either side of the aisle that would ever do such a thing without HSR between the two cities already running. It would be political suicide. Toronto is a huge city, and forcing workers and business people and travellers to go all the way to Front in the centre downtown just to take a five hour train ride to Montreal is silly.
Sauf que moi c’est pas ce que j’ai proposé. J’ai dis que si le gouvernement fédéral voulait imposer une mesure restrictive il pourrait fermer l’aéroport Billy-Bishop, pas interdire les vols de 2.5 heures et moins. Le point étant de rendre plus complexe l’accès au centre-ville de Toronto pour ceux qui voudraient prendre l’avion.
Bien entendu, pour ça, il faut un full build du TGF et des temps de parcours compétitifs.
With current (2019) and projected traffic for rail in the corridor as light as it is, I’ll maintain that as long as there is a straight, smooth highway between Montreal and Toronto, and relatively cheap, subsidized petrol, along with multiple bus lines and a competitive airline industry, nothing short of full HSR should warrant any large investment in rail.
I disagree. All we need is a rail line that’s frequent, reliable, takes 1 minute less than cars or planes and costs less.
Throw in some fiscal incentive for companies to switch to rail passes and it could work.
Edit You also need good transit options once downtown. That’s why Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto are the only cities that could currently support good ridership.
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Je vais reformuler autrement; dans un scénario d’un HSR à départs fréquents dans le corridor Québec-Windsor, quel est le pourcentage du trafic aérien de l’Ontario et du Québec que cette ligne pourrait théoriquement aller chercher?
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This is counterproductive. It forces people to fly into Pearson and take their own cars or Uber to get downtown. The only way to make the train attractive is to make the train attractive. But a train that does a milk run between the two largest cities in the country and still takes almost as long as by car — or the plane including all of aviation’s extra nonsense — is not attractive at all, except for nostalgic and romantic reasons.
Before anybody mentions “security lines,” I should note that the VIP lane at Trudeau is ridiculously quick. I’ve driven 25 minutes to Dorval, parked, shown up in the main terminal 40 minutes before a Porter flight, breezed through security, had time to get an espresso and a snack, and walked through the tunnel onto Queens Quay West and be at the 509 streetcar stop all in less than four hours. The train needs to beat that.
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Don’t get me wrong, I would love to take HSR to travel on this continent. But we also don’t have efficient feeder trains. Montreal is a large city, but Toronto is a huge city. So even if we spent $50 billion for a state of the art HSR between Montreal and Toronto, you still need to get to the station. Toronto has pretty good GO service but not great GO service. They are spending $10 billion to improve it, but once again it doesn’t cover the entire territory efficiently enough to make the train competitive with all the other ways to get to Montreal. And on this end, even if we build all the Metro extensions and every phase of REM, it doesn’t matter how efficient it gets, it will be quicker to hop into your car to get to Toronto. With petrol prices still artificially low, people simply won’t give up driving from point A to point B. You have to make the train more attractive than every other mode, regardless of cost.