Long refit impending for Ville-Marie tunnel
A ten-year refurbishment is planned for the Ville-Marie tunnel.
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Kate
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dhomas 08:21 on 2021-01-04 Permalink
Might be a good time to put in some metro/REM tracks…
Kate 09:21 on 2021-01-04 Permalink
Given that the city wants to make itself more carbon-neutral, you’d think it would be an obvious move. Remove a couple of lanes for traffic, put in electrical train tracks. Hasn’t it crossed anyone’s mind in the planning?
Blork 10:01 on 2021-01-04 Permalink
I don’t know how that would work or how useful it would be, because a REM line in the tunnel would have to go right down the middle in order to not block on- and off-ramps, so that means it would not be able to stop downtown; it would run from the east of downtown to the west of downtown with no stops. Is that useful?
ant6n 10:24 on 2021-01-04 Permalink
@Blork
there’s enough space to take the two center lanes in each direction. That gives a total width of about 16m to work with: .8m barrier, 3.2m track, 8m platform, 3.2m track, 0.8m platform. It’s also possible to have separate (staggered) platforms for both directions and make them narrower (most single-sided Metro platforms are 4-4.5m wide).
Under the Palais de Congress (going West) the two highway directions turn into tunnels on top of one another, meaning there are relatively sleep slopes. Then there are relatively sharp curves around gare centrale. At this point, it may not be possible to insert train tracks. But a new tunnel from the Palais to Lucien l’Allier could be relatively short, if the Eastern section of the 720 can be used for a transit ROW.
Jonathan 14:13 on 2021-01-04 Permalink
Yes! Anton for chief transport planner!
nau 15:27 on 2021-01-04 Permalink
It is a bit galling that they’re willing to tunnel some 7 km under St. Leonard but won’t tunnel the 3.5 km from Notre Dame/René-L to Gare Centrale or the 1 km using Anton’s route to Gare Centrale. Even adding Anton’s connection through to Lucien l’Allier only adds another km or so. Distance isn’t the only factor in tunneling expense but even if it’s more costly for other reasons, surely downtown merits the extra expense.
david264 06:28 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
The more important city-building move would be to cover the trench in the areas where it remains open between University and the new hospital. Putting in rail, fixing the tunnel, whatever: nothing pays off better than stitching the city back together.
david264 06:44 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
Well, University is wrong (for a couple reasons), I guess it’s more like from the palais des congrès to the new hospital.
If they’re redoing the tunnel(s) they could at least fix the ventilation so that any future moves to deck these things would require a narrower ventilation footprint, and so cost less, and reduce the uglification.
Kevin 10:36 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
The main point of the Ville Marie reno is to redo the ventilation, drainage pumping, and electrical substations above and below the tunnel. Repaving and fixing the tiles are the last thing on this list.