Tram to Repentigny announced
Flying under the radar of the tariff crisis is the announcement that Quebec is starting the creation of an east‑end tram running from the green line and the (extension of) the blue line out past Repentigny.
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Anton 17:30 on 2025-03-04 Permalink
meh
Ian 18:44 on 2025-03-04 Permalink
Why meh? Your understanding of public transit is very in depth, so I would love to hear why you are unimpressed and what you would have liked to have seen instead.
Nicholas 20:36 on 2025-03-04 Permalink
Ian, I’ll refer you to my comment below: “a suburban tramway, mostly not grade-separated, that will cost more per kilometre than most rich countries pay for urban metros. Imagine what we could build if we could get metros for the cost of Spain, Italy, France, Scandinavia, Japan, etc.” Also the last projections I saw for the tramway were trip times no faster or slower than the buses we have today. Sure, trams can be nicer, but $19 billion (with a B) to go slower through the oil refineries than we do today?
anton 08:38 on 2025-03-06 Permalink
Cost is a huge concern, especially given it’s only a suburban tram. The second is the whole network setup – it’s basically two lines, joined together at the end of the green line. I doubt there will be many people who will be able to make a trip on just this line – most people will have to transfer at least once (to the green line), or twice. I think most of the trips that would use this line will be very long, and will involve one or two transfers.
I am not sure this is the most effective way to spend the next 19 billion in public transit money. The REM “only” cost 8 Billion, and is arguably much more useful (fairly fast, connecting through downtown, multiple branches etc.). I wasn’t too happy about REM 2.0 because it was only going to downtown barely, and had a very strong suburban focus, with much less regional network building. This tram cuts any downtown connection, and is mostly suburban.
I think it would be easy to figure out more useful projects to spend 18 Billion on (examples: pink line, a more urban tram network, high frequency electric regional rail).
That said, it’s difficult to say what a better project could be out East. The desire to build out there is political, not primarily a transportation necessity. But if one wants to accept the “need” to build a some “structuring” network out there, what would it be?
Ian 08:07 on 2025-03-07 Permalink
I guess that’s the question. The REM is meant to drive development but the purpose of this tram seems less obvious, besides the political aspect of serving the “French” east end of the island.