Montreal City Weblog

Kate 09:28 on 2026-01-15 Permalink Reply  

• dhomas 10:22 on 2026-01-15 Permalink

  “Les gares de Toronto et de Montréal devront être au centre-ville”. From the map, it looks like they’re aiming for Gare Centrale. Even if it’s a new downtown station, it will be interesting to see how this new TGV will get there coming from Quebec/Trois-Rivières. It will not be able to use the Mount-Royal tunnel (though it does seem to be included in the shaded area; could they have provided a lower quality image??) as the REM has exclusive rights to the tunnel.
  The first part of the project, going west from Montreal toward Ottawa, should be easier, I think.

• Kevin 13:06 on 2026-01-15 Permalink

  I guarantee nobody planning this has even thought about the difficulty involved in getting to Central Station.

• Joey 14:14 on 2026-01-15 Permalink

  Is the issue with the Mount Royal Tunnel simply because the REM has exclusive rights, or are there practical considerations? I know less than nothing about trains, but I am thinking of something along the lines of infrastructure that was built for the REM being incompatible with the TGV. If it’s purely a question of who has rights/priority, then it’s conceivable that the current arrangement could change. If it’s a technical issue with the infrastructure or an inability to accommodate the REM schedule with the TGV schedule without significantly reducing service for either (or both),

  PS: I love that we call it TGV in English

• James 14:30 on 2026-01-15 Permalink

  Multiple options are being studied for montreal and laval stations. I can assure everyone that the complexity of getting to downtown Montreal is well understood.
  Using the REM tunnel is basically impossible due to many many technical and regulatory obstacles.

• Joey 15:46 on 2026-01-15 Permalink

  Thanks James. As we are seeing on other ‘national interest’ files, the current federal government (the province too) sees regulations as nothing more than fun little obstacles to swipe out of the way. Technical limitations are another thing altogether.

• Nicholas 16:13 on 2026-01-15 Permalink

  Using the Mount Royal tunnel is impossible because it was retrofitted this way by the CDPQ to specifically exclude the possibility of high speed trains using it. At the time various people brought up the advantage of using the tunnel for both regional rail and intercity rail, including one commenter on this blog in a presentation to the National Assembly, and at the start CDPQ said it would be possible to share the tracks. But then they changed their mind (or were lying from the start) and chose a system that would not be able to. And so now, due to a lack of foresight and attention by all the people who mattered, we will have to pay a lot in money or time to bring the trains downtown, or be stuck with a station outside of downtown.

• azrhey 16:44 on 2026-01-15 Permalink

  I know next to nothing about possibilities…but why not arrive/depart at Vendome ? It’s close enough to downtown…i think? Happy to be told why it can’t be done

• Anton 19:17 on 2026-01-15 Permalink

  The internal quote from within via rail ten years ago about sharing REM with HFR was “if you make it impossible, it’s going to be difficult”.

  REM it’s designed to have capacity problems even at the highest frequencies – die to very short trains, so there aren’t any schedule slots for sharing. The trains are also narrower than heavy rail, so TGV cant pass platforms at Eduard montpetit. REM has taken over half of gare Centrale, unclear where tgv would fit. Insertion south of gare central is difficult. Cdpq owns the tunnel and gare Centrale, unclear what they would allow.

• DeWolf 22:11 on 2026-01-15 Permalink

  I’m not sure why everyone is assuming the TGV will use existing tracks or platforms. With the project’s budget — a very flexible “$60 to $90 billion” — it could involve an entirely new tunnel under downtown Montreal.