Decisions to be made on REM de l’Est
Decisions will be made on the REM de l’Est by the ARTM and other players, although I had understood that the one thing it can’t be called is the REM de l’Est because this was trademarked by CDPQ‑Infra. But I still see the name used.
Faiz imam 19:23 on 2022-05-30 Permalink
With elevated being out the window, by definition it’ll either be at grade or under.
If this is serious heavy transit, it will be like the early pink line ideas.
If it’s watered down to cut costs it’ll be a at grade low capacity LRT line.
One thing that makes me optimistic though, is the plans for redoing Rene Levesque. It seems like the consensus is to make it multi modal and less car focused. I that’s really true you can get a decently high capacity separated LRT line for the downtown section, with perhaps going elevated or underground farther out.
Kate 11:17 on 2022-05-31 Permalink
Is all elevated off the table? Or just elevated where and how CDPQ‑Infra wanted it?
Faiz imam 12:32 on 2022-05-31 Permalink
Well CDPQ made it elevated where it would save costs, and went underground when that was simple.
From the public conversation it seems like elevated is off the table anywhere along René Levesque. So I’d bet we’ll do at grade along that whole stretch, using a brand new type of vehicle that shares no common parts with anything else. (maybe they can reuse the ones from the Quebec city tram? Or the Ottawa LRT?)
The throughput will be much less than anything grade separated, but there are dozens of examples of lines around the world that have done this with a pretty decent performance. It’s not an impossible task.
But one thing has to be clear. The more performance a at grade line has, the impact it will have on cars and other active travel modes that have to cross it.
Thats a nuanced conversation that I’m not sure we know how to have.
DeWolf 17:15 on 2022-05-31 Permalink
At-grade would be a chance to truly transform René-Lévesque into a good urban boulevard. You can easily restrict cross-traffic while still allowing people to cross the tracks at grade.
Paris has been building lots of trams along previously car-centric boulevards and they run pretty smoothly: https://goo.gl/maps/vfN7Rv1tGnN6LKuV8
A tram-train approach works very well in many cities. Calgary’s C-Train network carries more than 300,000 people per day even though it has many at-grade crossings and both of the lines are street-running in the downtown core.