The REM, 20 feet from his house
Le Devoir talked to a man who inherited a house on Île Bigras and has worked on it, but the REM came along and has been doing construction work 20 feet away – and will soon be sending trains past, every 15 minutes. Mario Mordente thinks he should have been expropriated but REM management doesn’t actually need his lot, so nothing doing.
ant6n 16:24 on 2019-09-04 Permalink
Not to diminish this guy’s suffering, but I could imagine once the REM opens, it’ll be a watefront property with direct metro access to downtown (travel time of 30mins). I could imagine that the lot could get much more valuable, even with the building restrictions.
Tom 19:33 on 2019-09-04 Permalink
How quiet (or loud) is the rolling stock that they are buying for this REM?
Kate 12:53 on 2019-09-05 Permalink
I don’t think there’s ever a simple answer to that. It’s light rail, but the acoustics are bound to vary.
ant6n 14:37 on 2019-09-05 Permalink
In Vienna, I’ve come across _trams_ with really annoying noise profiles (like loud high pitches). First order approximation is that the sound is maybe a bit quieter than existing trains, but you’ll hear it for a shorter time, since the trains are 1/3 as long. Then again, this particular house is near a station, where trains accelerate/decelerate, which the REM trains will likely do a bit more quickly, so all bets are off.
Faiz Imam 15:53 on 2019-09-05 Permalink
The fact that this Île Bigras Station even exists is pure political expediency.
It’s a tiny island with about 300-400 single family houses and nothing else, not as much as a dep.
The next station is St Dorothy, which is not very far away. You could cut it, save a ton of money and impact almost no-one.
Île Bigras is NiMBY central. Not a single new house will ever be built there, and so you are spending tens of millions of dollars for basically a few hundred wealthy homeowners.
But cancelling that station would have created a political crisis, so they just kept it to keep locals happy.
Blork 17:13 on 2019-09-05 Permalink
Um. While it’s true that the Ste-Dorothée station is really close (barely more than a kilometre), the tracks run through Ile-Bigras, and there’s a podunk little station there already. There is no way they’re spending “tens of millions of dollars” on upgrading that station. They’re likely doing little more than upgrading the signage.
So yes, it’s a tiny island that’s already full, but it isn’t costing any additional money (at least nothing notable) to run the line through there on the existing tracks. Any money that’s being spent there is (I assume) being spent on upgrading the infrastructure such as being spent all along the line.
And AFAIK the bridge that’s being built is a bridge for cars, possibly due to some road re-routing or whatnot. I might be wrong about that, but I really don’t think any significant amount of money is being spent on the actual station.
Faiz Imam 17:49 on 2019-09-05 Permalink
Every REM station is a enclosed, climate controlled building, with massive glass and wood paneling. Stairs and elevators, ticketing station and lobby. its not just a platform. Each station is a much more substantial project than the previous platforms were. I read a budget document at one point, which I can’t find again. It’s definitely in the tens of millions each.
Regardless, as I said not having that station would create one more political crisis. I understand why adding a station was the easy choice.