Why Paris Tore Down A Highway To Build A Tram
I debated whether to publish this on the “Ailleurs dans le monde - Transport en Commun” sub. Please feel free to move this publication if it belongs elsewhere.
An idea for the biggest eyesore of Montreal… (aka Autoroute Ville-Marie and a part of Notre-Dame into the East). And REM de l’Est.
I’m a bit lazy to draw it (keeping it honest). I might do it over the weekend if I have time. For now, you have to imagine it with text.
To the east, we could use Notre-Dame and create stations, taking advantage of the booming Esplanade Cartier, the Molson & Radio-Canada projects, to recover this atrocity, erase that ugly scar separating neighborhoods, and create an urban park (like the Big Dig in Boston). It could be extended, as previous plans suggested, to the north to Marie Victorin (and then to the East to Rivière-des-Prairies) and to the other East end to Pointe-aux-Trembles (and who knows, maybe one day to L’Assomption—I know, I’m pushing the limits here…). Or even the crazy (silly) idea of duplicating stations along the (soon to be overcrowded) green line could be an (ultimate) option.
The downtown part could utilize the 1970s blight Tunnel Ville-Marie (my personal biggest eyesore) by adding stations to the south and north sides of Route 136 (or Boulevard Ville-Marie, or Autoroute Ville-Marie for the intimate). These stations could be closer to Old Port (connected to Champ-de-Mars station using the tunnels under the future Place des Montréalaises), Griffintown (using that empty lot in front of ETS and connecting the station with Gare Centrale station through existing exit tunnels), and Shaughnessy Village (using the tunnels in the sector of Fort and St-Marc), Westmount, and finally to Vendôme station.
To go even further, we could use other suggestions/proposals seen previously on this blog for the West. This line could be expanded to Dorval station and YUL-Aéroport-Montréal-Trudeau REM station (if we ever realize that we can change our useless and unreliable suburban train lines into trams). An additional station could be added between Montreal-West station and Lachine station in case (hopeful thinking) the Namur-Hippodrome tram line is extended. And why not change the 14 Exo line and extend it to Candiac, connecting with REM de la Rive-Sud? (Oh yeah, I forgot Quebec cannot plan public transit long-term and only thinks about short-term transportation).
All of this is to say that Quebec is so behind concerning public transport. Montreal fait dur. On est trop occupé à créer une autre agence de bureaucratie au lieu de construire des vrais projets qu’on planifie depuis 5 ans.