Bonnardel “disconnected from reality”
Valérie Plante says transport minister François Bonnardel is disconnected from reality in not recognizing that overcrowding on the orange line is a problem, and on handwaving Plante’s pink line proposal. She’s right that extending the blue line will only make the orange line’s rush hour problem worse.
Bert 20:04 on 2019-02-13 Permalink
In what concerns the Pink and the Yellow lines, the STM et al. have to abandon current single-track / single-line architecture. There is plenty of capacity on the blue line to handle more trains and more cars.
The first thing I would do is have a spur off of the Outremont station, adding stations Outremont Parc ; Fairmount (Parc / Fairmount ); Tam-Tam (Rachel / L’esplanade); Pine-Parc; Roddick Gates; Berri-UQAM. There would be certain cars that would be downtown bound and others that would be NDG bound.
You have the Pink line basically follow Rosemont (Rose – Pink) to the east to southern Anjou and have the blue go to northern Anjou.
Daniel 20:20 on 2019-02-13 Permalink
I suspect the reason the STM haven’t introduced spurs is that lines without them run more efficiently. They can handle more trains, and are less prone to delays.
It’s disappointing but not surprising to hear the CAQ have little interest in the Pink Line. The REM serves the suburbs, which is where their voting base lives. CAQ voters don’t live on the Plateau, or Rosemont, or any of the other places the Pink Line would serve.
I’m not sure what the answer is yet, but I do know taking politics out of transit planning and letting transit experts make informed data-driven decisions would be a great start.
Bert 20:31 on 2019-02-13 Permalink
I wouldn’t spur anything on the green or orange lines, that is for sure. That said, I am certain that the utilisationof the Blue line is well below actual capacity, both in terms of volume (per train), frequency and total ridership.Bridging Berri to the Roddick Gates will at least reduce the morning yellow to orange / green line in the morning.
I think the most important thing to improve is core capacity (i.e. Jean-Talon – Berri – (McGill / Bonaventure) – Lucien-Lallier – Snowdon) before adding in new feeder lines.
Kate 16:29 on 2019-02-14 Permalink
Bert, the westbound blue line is sardines in the morning during term time at UdeM.
ant6n 18:40 on 2019-02-14 Permalink
Spurs are pointless if your central section isnt … well, central. So Branches on the Blue line sound pretty meh. The Orange line could maybe have a branch in the West. I once had the crazy idea to interline the Blue and Orange line at Snowdon, so every second Orange line train would become a blue line train at Snowdown … but if the Blue line ever got extended West, that wouldn’t work anymore.
The Pink Line should definitely be considered as a (East/West) central trunk line with branches. And the REM would make a lot of sense as a (North-South) central trunk line with branches, it’s just that whatever branches they decided build (and which ones they decided to cut off) makes the whole system kind of inferior and a somewhat of a wasted opportunity…
Bert 19:34 on 2019-02-14 Permalink
Kate, go figure, trains are only 6 cars long and departure intervals are 1 minute longer.