Montreal’s Tram Obsession and Why It’s So Dangerous
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- čas přidán 1. 09. 2023
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After the cancellation of the second REM and a hilarious $36B suburban subway proposal, Montreal has discovered its newest transit solution - a tram. Unfortunately, it doesn't make much sense.
Quebec City Tramway article: rmtransit.substack.com/p/the-...
Paige Saunders | NIMBYs vs REM: • NIMBYS vs REM
Oh The Urbanity! | Elevated Trains Are Good, Actually: • Elevated Trains Are Go...
Marco Chitti's plan for Montreal: / 1493001149208797198
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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
Never would i have imagined a dangerous tram obsession
My niece had a potentially dangerous tram obsession. Fortunately she was 3 at the time, reins were a thing, and she grew up.
Everything in QC is dangerous.
@@123benny4 Dangerously beautiful that is
The issue is the net impact on transit is often negative when the wrong mode is used, people perceive transit as slow, or potentially ruinously expensive!
😂, but also 😢
The problem is your average politician doesn't understand the purpose of transit. Most politicians just think of trams or metros as just big capacity buses. Concepts like frequency, travel speed, loading times, walk times, lack of transfers, grade separation, transit not stuck in traffic, etc...don't mean much to them. To them the only different in transit is the vehicle size, which is a dangerously ignorant mindset. NY's metro succeeded where many other metros did not, because it does value all of the above. Imagine if NY tried to switch their metro system to a tram system with transfers.
Politicians just think of transit as a travel mode for the poor and they don’t care about the poor so they often choose the cheapest, shittiest option that not only doesn’t solve any problem but also becomes a tax burden on all citizens because of the poor transit option chosen.
I think the more concerning thing is that politicians shouldn't really need to be experts of this - they should be able to rely on the advice of agencies for this.
A huge part of the problem is the bureacracies that they should be able to rely on for objective information often have preferences. In the 1990s in Toronto the bureaucracy and the advocacy groups were absolutely bonkers obsessed with light rail. As a result a very large public consensus in favor of subways -- and spending for them -- was wasted.
@@Conellossus- That definitely isn't the attitude towards transit in Toronto: people of every single class like and use the subway and want more of them.
NY had a massive tram network, they tore it up and put it underground for the reasons you mentioned haha
One of my grad school professors came up with a methodology for problems like these - he was referring to IT projects, but this would work just as well for transit. I named it Hemphill's Protocol, in his honor.
1. What do you need to do? Make this as high level as possible, ignoring tools, budget, er c. For example: get people from the north part of the city downtown for work, shopping, and entertainment.
2. What software will do what you need in #1? Prof H was thinking computers: in transit, you'd think in terms of ridership numbers, frequency, destinations, the need to avoid major disruptions, politics, budget & timeline, placating NIMBYs, et c.
3. What hardware will run the software to do #1? In transit, only at this point do you decide on the type of vehicles, elevated or underground, and so on.
Anyone who says "let's build a tram!" has the entire process backwards.
This is really good, having a consistent methodology also helps make these decisions less political!
Add in another step 0, look at the resources that are already there. In the case of the east end of the island, there are extensive wide road ROWs with good interchange points with multiple lines headed west. Step 1a is look at what is missing: frequency and span of local service, north-east to downtown connectivity, reliability in congestion, speed to downtown, then 1b, prioritize.
Even the REM de l'Est fell significantly short on these issues due to it's technology-first stance, but it certainly helped more than a tram system would.
@@fbfree1 This would actually be step 2. It's a constraint to solving the primary problem, which is transporting people.
For transit (but not for software) you need to ask a 4th question, 4. What are the constraints imposed by existing infrastructure, buildings and geology.
@@Alex_Plante Actually, it's a constraint for software as well. Remember the 640K limit on PCs, imposed by not only the price and size of the memory available at the time, but also by the combination of the segmented 20-bit addressing on the 8088 and the use of some memory space for I/O? Or the original non-expandable 128K Mac?
I figure a couple years of the REM running and being a success will win people over.
I am holding out hope for this!
It happened with the UPE in Toronto. It went from being an unmitigated disaster during development to a grand success once running.
yep, I also entertain the same logic for the tram it Quebec City. The CAQ government politicized it and its current version is a hobbled version of the proposed version. However, I am sure it will demonstrate its efficacy. People will see the light one day.
Happened with the Elizabeth Line.
Yeah, best case scenario could be that they dither and don’t do anything for a couple of years and then do a REM east expansion in 2030, perhaps with a REM west or Blue Line west extension.
I take the REM daily to go to school and I have one word to describe it: RELIABLE (something very rare these days). I never wait more than 3 minutes, it’s quick and there’s always security in the stations. Hope REM de l’Est will not be canceled 😢.
THREE minutes?!?! THat's amazing!!
It will be down to 2.5 once the rest of the network allows the trains to through run at Gare Centrale.
@@andrewweitzman4006are there no plans to increase the frequency further? I mean it's an automated metro...
I guess the ridership will increase so much that they will be forced to do it.
They could easily go down to a 2 minute headway, so every 6 minutes on each branch
@@nicolasblume1046 2 minutes is for the Brossard to Bois Francs section during rush hour when the rest of the system opens. Right now, the trains have to turn around at Gare Centrale, which adds some time as Gare Centrale is supposed to through run rather than act as a teminus.
Theoretically, you can have 90 second frequencies.
@@nicolasblume1046 I think there's a plan to have one every 90 sec during peak hours once the network will be almost fully finished (so, everything done exept the branch to YUL)
You have no idea how much I appreciate your voice of reason. The original REM de l’Est plan was the right solution. It aimed at helping bring people from the far eastern end of the island and off island into the city core. Trams just aren’t designed for that kind of distance. It was so disappointing to see that project cancelled. Hopefully when people see how great the REM is they will resurrect it.
Vote in next elections for the right people
@@PiotrPavel who ? communiste solidaire ? liberal party ? 🤮 PQ ? they are bad or worse than caq
maybe for city we can see change, but Balarama Holness left city politic and i dont see who will oppose against la plante verte
@@PiotrPavel It doesn't work. In Quebec, the electoral system favors voters/suburban voters over urban voters meaning the Montreal area produces 55% of Quebec's economy but struggles to have political power. This makes public transit projets nearly impossible to promote as rural/suburban voters favor cars.
In short, even if Montreal votes for left wing parties, nearly exclusively right wing parties can get elected.
@@vkobevk "communiste solidaire" lmao, touch some grass dude
@@NapoleonTrotski you should inform yourself on this party if you want to sell your soul to them
France has tons of smaller and very compact cities, it makes sense, that trams are THE mode of transport for french cities. But Montreal is maybe a little too big, to predominantly rely on trams? Even in Paris, trams are only there for the outskirts of the city to bridge gaps in the metro and RER systems.
Exactly, an approach that is a hybrid of Paris' and Lyon's tram systems probably makes the most sense!
Helsinki's and Copenhague's planned tram systems is the same as in Paris. Bridging the metro gaps in the outskirts.@@RMTransit
the 121 sauve/cote vertu bus gets 30,000 riders a day, a several other lines move over 25,000 a day. these lines should be upgraded to tram or at the very least, BRT. urban transit customers shouldn't have to settle for subpar service.
The best way to deal with thsi s to send a team from Montreal down to ride the trams in Toronto for a day, that'll cure them.
🤣 Yes! and we should put the NIMBYs with them so that they hear how much louder than the REM they are
There is not nearly enough exchange between the cities, Toronto could learn a lot from the Metro!
I bet not a single NIMBY would take the time to visit the TTC because...you know... Toronto is not in their backyard...
@@ianweniger6620also some Montrealers don’t like Toronto anyways
I live past Montreal est and anyone that proposes a tram here clearly doesn't live in the area. Trams require well maintained roads with no potholes, and Rue Sherbrooke is anything but that. I have to take the bus all the way down Sherbrooke to Honrore Beaugrand and the trip is bumpy and often times crowded. The crowds that filter in to the metro every morning are a human traffic jam and there is no way that is sustainable. I am so dissapointed by the nimbys in anjou and hochelaga that pressured to cancel the Rem de l'est. They had no idea what they were protesting.
Green line already more or less follow Sherbrooke so it would not really do much. Tram is better suited in downtown area as a way to force the rebuilding of Rene Levesque for example.
To be fair you don't necessarily need good road conditions for trams (Toronto doesn't have them), but you're certainly right - the long uncomfortable journey is a big problem!
You can avoid the need for well maintained roads with no potholes by running the tram in a median reservation.
the problem with Sherbrooke it the the road is kinda small and badly maintained.. honestly, extending the green line, would be a viable solution
It's hard to not have NIMBYs when the city is obsessed with increasing its population year after year. The Montréal island doesn't get any bigger.
I think a lot of city planners see the modern tram/light rail model as a "jack of all trades" transit system and that's why they like it. What they want is something that can be like a tram in the city centre with slow speeds and frequent stops, and like regional rail outside of it with higher speeds and less frequent stops. They want one system with one kind of vehicle and built as cheaply as possible. This results in a system where crossing the city centre can take nearly as long as the suburban portion of the journey because the vehicles are going much more slowly and stopping much more frequently. Thus it doesn't attract as many people from the suburbs as it could unless their destination is on the right side of the city centre.
Golden mean fallacy in a nutshell: Assuming an idea is the best of both worlds only for it to end up being the worst of both worlds.
So then why don’t they make high-floor citytrains like in Edmonton? Low floors look pretty, but they are usually pretty slow.
@@Abrothers12 Vehicle design is usually not the limiting factor when it comes to tram/light rail speed, high floor can perhaps go a little faster but then your city centre has to find room for lots of raised platforms. What determines speed is mainly a combination of track geometry, stop frequency and safety considerations to pedestrians and other vehicles. A tram usually has to negotiate tight corners, stop distances are fairly short and you've got people, cars, bikes and other trams milling about which means being able to stop on line of sight of an obstruction, and since steel on steel means long stopping distances, that means going slowly. Metro systems have shallower corners because they don't have to follow road infrastructure and can go underneath buildings, stops are generally much further apart, and there's no people, bikes or cars to get in your way (at least there shouldn't be!) which also means you can use block signalling or CBTC instead of relying on the driver's eyes and reaction time.
For sure, you can have something faster by building a city centre tunnel, but that raises whole new issues - which is why I am skeptical of trams for routes like this!
Here in Cologne we have a large LRT system and the things missing are just more city center tunnels. The parts with street running and so on are not that large problems, but the frequent congestion in the city center kills the whole network...
I always thought it ridiculous that some people thought that building the REM de L'Est as originally proposed would take ridership away from the green line. For riders coming in from further East or North this is immaterial, for people who live close to the green line they would continue to use it, and if there is some number of people who take this REM instead, they are doing so because it will be a more efficient way to get to where they are going. What we need is more and better transit for everyone, worrying about a temporary drop of ridership on the green line misses the point.
Its funny how metros are nor socially acceptable but 8 lane highways dividing the city fabric are😂
The put a metro line next to the highway by lane diet method?
The biggest issue here is jurisdictional wars between three different institutions. The CDPQ forces municipalities to shut down any service that might compete with the REM through its contract with the provincial government. The ARTM is constantly trying to centralize control around itself despite never having accomplished anything good since the Liberal party created it and the STM is constantly struggling to get funding from the auto centric provincial government, which makes the notion of any ridership transfer to an infrastructure it doesn't own and derives no fares from scares it.
The provincial government is literally the one that pushed for this program.
@@ZontarDow What part of my comment are you replying to exactly?
@@jerQCote this wasn't the comment I posted that as a reply to, what he heck is going on?
I agree with you… these are internal fights between gouvernemental entities and gouvernement officials that work 30h per week and think only of themselves… the REM de l’est should go from city’s outside of MTL and have many transits into the local metro. And we should all be able to pay with one pass and have access to all
@@carlsonpakapala No, I meant the ARTM has been a roadblock for all project developments and has even dragged the STM to court to stop a payment consolidation project. Meanwhile, the CDPQ is designed to put profits first so they pushed for the transit monopoly. This has nothing to do with individuals. The institutions are the problem.
As a British person I think the the UK is a great example of dangerous tram obsession. Manchester and Birmingham in the UK substitute tram-trains for a proper metro/underground rapid transit system and they're just too slow for the trips they cover (and most of them were already national rail lines as well).
Absolutely, I think it's a shame the UK never replicated the Tyne & Wear Metro in other cities, instead going for tram systems. The fact that Birmingham's "rapid transit" network comprises of a single tram line is just pretty insane.
@@pacerclarathey even have the audacity to call it the Birmingham Metro
@@pacerclara Especially when considering the sprawl, the high rates of car-ownership and how long it's taken to implement just a second line...
@@marsillinkow It's both stupid and muddying the definitions even more.
Manchester in particular as its trams are high floor and not suited for a traditional (i.e. mixed traffic) operation.
The main issue is there are some "mass transit expert" in Montréal that think that Tramway is the only solutions to all transit problem. Since they are university teacher, they get a lot of attention. They wanted a Trams instead of the REM and said it would have been better.
Tramways are nice for place that need it. One on Avenue du Parc would be amazing. But doing long distance in tramways would be a pain.
The ARTM is not convinced right now about the Trams. But that do not really matter. ARTM is just a company that suck money from government without adding any values. There is no project that got out of the ATM or ARTM anyway. All project got out of the government because they are dysfunctional.
The hope in Montreal is to have a government that will be pragmatic and will go forward with a REM like project. The added benefits of the project will far outweigh the drawbacks.
A lot of those "no elevated rails", Tramways is better come from the leftist movement that is well rooted in the city. Not all bad things come from those people and their existence is probably one of the main reason Montreal do so much for bikes, walkable streets, etc. We just have to have a conversation and convince them.
It always comes down to money. You see it in Toronto too: they want to build what's cheap, not what's efficient.
“Tram Obsession.” “Find a mode and then make it fit to the project.” Sounds like the IBX proposal in NY City.
Saint-Michel, Pie-IX, Beaubien, Henri-Bourassa, Sauvé/Côté-Vertu, Saint-Laurent, Parc, Côte-des-Neiges, etc. These are the streets where we need to build LRT, not streetcars. For the east, we need the Pink line, because this line is all about equity and reducing segregation of Montreal-Nord. The pink line would be the only line that would be faster than cars 24/24, 7/7 because of the diagonal. Montreal-Nord residents are more diverse than most other boroughs, they currently have some of the most used bus lines of the STM network (67/467 Saint-Michel, 48/49/69 on Henri-Bourassa, 139/ now BRT on Pie-IX), but these lines are slow and not reliable compared to metro and REM, and they need better, faster, heavy transit modes and should have got them for decades. The Pink line could use the same trains and technology as the REM and could be extended on the ground or aerial to Laval and Terrebonne.
I absolutely think using the same trains as the REM (but six car and fully interconnected) makes sense for the Pink Line, you could even potentially interconnect them someday depending on how the various networks interact!
The trains should also absolutely NOT be underground or else they would cost wayyyy too much. The proposal of putting REM trains in the median of A25 is actually a good one because it will be cheaper, straighter, and will serve many important destinations like Radisson and Anjou
True for short term economics, but on the long term, the 100% underground pink line from downtown to Montreal-Nord would bring way greater benefits in term of equity/accessibility and may have a better modal share shift from car to transit because of the diagonal (some subway trips would then be faster than using a car, 24/24, 7/7)@@realadrieno
The irony is, had the province of Quebec extended the A720 freeway to the A25 freeway that continues across the St Lawrence on a bridge, building the REM de l'Est would be a no-brainer: just build it above the freeway!
I am of the age where I remember trams in Montreal, as idealistic as they may seem to the present-day politicians, politicians of the late fifties saw them as cumbersome, traffic dependant and inflexible sluggish people movers.
When there is a traffic accident, drizzle or freezing rain or an unruly pedestrian, the tram stops and is stuck there, and the whole line is out because one tram can't overtake another.
And if you know Montreal, you know just how unruly Montreal pedestrians are.
The only trams that escape this quagmire are those in dedicated ways, completely seperate from any car traffic, which implies massive expropriation costs.
The REM model, with elevated rails in well-placed locations is the only efficient solution to bring people from the city edges to the downtown core.
BTW, if you noticed, in Page Saunders' video, most of the NIMBYs present at ANTI-REM rallye came by car, so, to me, they don't represent the voice of the actual future users of the potential REM-DE-L'EST.
Here in Valencia the government seems to have an obsession with the words "tram" and "metro". There are 4 tram lines in development (3 new and 1 expansion) and they recently added plans for 4 metroTRAM lines that are neither metro, or trams and they don't even have tracks.
metroTRAM will be suburban BRT lines using electric buses that looks like trams (for example the Irizar ie tram)
I got a hunch that there's a labor factor at play with REM East, considering that it goes through a working class sector of Montreal and that none of these trains will have unionized drivers and operators.
People in the SF Bay Area are against systems like Honolulu Skyline and Vancouver Skytrain, or adding platform screen doors on BART (which is mostly automated) because of this policy position.
The working class part of Montreal it goes through either voted for the CAQ or the Liberals, both of which aren't pro-union. Only pro-union part it goes through is the rich part of the core that voted for the fascist party.
I think the concern was perhaps that the REM would not look aesthetically pleasing because it was above ground and also the impact of the noise to people who would live close to the tracks. Hopefully, the Caisse is able to convince the government to get the green light and build a track that runs from Berri to Pointe aux trembles.
Hasn't anyone done modeling as to how much ridership the REM de l'Est would divert from the Green Line? Sounds to me that it could possibly be exactly the right amount to relieve its congestion without making it so redundant that service would need to be reduced.
It's the exact same problem as in Taipei! Tram lines feeding into crowded metro lines with horrendous travel time to the city center- no thought about regional rail. Tbh if you make a criticism video about Taipei it might actually work due to Asian face culture 😂😂😂 Some recent changes to pedestrian safety in Taiwan were only kickstarted due to criticism by western media
Those light rail lines are super odd
In a perfect world Montreal would have both. There are jobs that trams can do well, and there are jobs that metros can do well.
A good city of that size can and should have both.
Metros have two advantages over trams: speed & capacity.
In Europe, cities are dense and trips usually short, so speed isn’t really important. Which means the determining factor is capacity: metros are used on trunk routes, where most of the city lives and works, and tend to be short (often
This is a great comment, and I wholeheartedly agree - city size is a huge huge factor!
The "disadvantages" of REM expansion are so wierd to me, since Prague use the same point as advantages on Metro D line. It´s northern expansion from Pankrác to Náměstí Míru (and potencionaly further to historical downtown including transfer station on Main Station) main pitch it take some ridership from line C that is the most used. It allow to people switch between mode of transport on more places making all of them less crowded.
I feel like it's the same with my home city Bergen. A small light rail is just too small, being super crammed and too slow to be a better alternative to a bus.
This makes me think of the St. Louis North South Metrolink plan. I am worried that a street running, albeit on its own guideway, plan like STL has will result in us building a project that's to slow and will make this the only major transit expansion we get for decades to come. I would love to see your take on this plan.
Would this be using the same high floor trains?
@RMTransit unfortunately it looks like they want this line to have low floor trains. If this goes through, I can only hope that they at least match the supplier to whoever is building the new trains for the existing system to help with parts commonality.
@@bobsled3000I do think the only thing they could probably do is a dedicated right-of-way and signal priority (I am dubious of whether it would happen tho)
@@bobsled3000Metrolink (and probably also the City of St Louis) explicitly said that it was to replace the bus services and also the communities that have a relatively
low car ownership, but if serious TODs could happen around it it could still be “good” I would say. It’s not a long line anyway, so I guess it’ll be fine. Also I’m not sure whether the Jefferson Ave looks like a place that is good to build heavy rails so that’s another problem. If that line went into the County (OK I really hate the NIMBYs in the county) then a more heavier-ish rail might be needed.
@yizhouwang3645 I'm also just not thrilled with the Jefferon alignment but unfortunately the grand alignment I'm a fan of is dead
Great video! One thing I have to point out is the REM didn't bring the South Shore closer to Montreal. South Shore cut many bus lines pushing residents to take the car to either the REM where there are few parking spots or drive directly to Montreal. This is why if you take the REM even at Rush hour, it is no more than half full. Pre REM buses would go directly to Montreal crossing Champlain bridge and would do Brossard to downtown Montreal in 15min.
Trams on saint laurent, park avenue and papineau street would be great tho. Obviously with dedicated lanes for them.
Any transit to east and north should be REM style for sure
Tunnels for metros are three times more expansive than ground-level or elevated tracks. NIMBYs are causing not just problems but extensive costs which have the potential to kill some projects.
Thank you so much for making this video Reis. Im so frustrated as I saw the news unfold about the project getting worst and worst. We definitely need CDPQ infra back on the project. I hope Montreal wakes up and brings them back because ARTM are not the best planners.
Tramways seem to have this charm that other mass transit systems lack. I get it; even though, when I studied in Toronto, I used the metro more often, and I was very conscious about the problems of the Toronto trams, the trams seemed to have this strange pull on me. I think this charm makes it so much more attractive to residents, even when a tram is not the logical choice for transit mode
haha finally someone I agree with. If only because I prefer them too busses, send in the trams!
I mentioned this a couple times already but I see the "metroisation" of trams critical as it means building only one single or at least few lines instead of a coherent network as well as a danger of overbuilding them.
Hamburg is a pretty good example of a city which would benefit from a tram as well but one approach, namely stopping the U4, is definitively a step in the wrong direction because a) of the reasons you mentioned (capacity, speed, etc.) and b) ignores Harbug (i.e. south of the Elbe) which still has pretty bad rail service. There are similiar issues around Germany (e.g. Frankfurt and not trying better grade separation in Höchst, Berlin and adding rail service for the Tegel redevelopment) but Hamburg is IMO the most notable one given the imbalance between both sides of the river.
I still find it funny that REM started construction 5 years before the Eglington line in Toronto and managed to open before, for half the budget while being fully automated. Even if they don't get it right with REM-Est, Montreal should be extremely proud of what they have already accomplished with it.
Well the first branch did, the rest is set to open over the next 4 years
now now, they'll be too busy patting themselves on the back they'll forget to finish anything else
Indeed, what the REM de l'Est offers and trams don't, is quickly connecting the east and north ends, to the city center. This would make it easier for people from the east and north end to work at, and go out to, the city center, which is the best use of that project (IMO but I think objectively as well). That's the vision we should aim for.
Edmonton's Valley Line trams are going to ge pretty good. Its important that these trams have separation from car lanes, and integration to an existing metro is a must.
I have my doubts... Still optimistic but not hopeful especially for a pre-2024 opening at the rate we're going...
In some ways yes, but they won't be all that much faster than a bus in many locations - and in some places on the Valley Line West grade separation was even decided against despite the well known additional travel time.
I share your frustration but also your hope concerning the REM de l'est, as a Montreal resident. Thank you so much Mr. Martin for being a strong supporter of beloved and desperately transit needing Canadian cities... And beyond (P.-S. : I really enjoyed the Stadler train factory tour, it was really inspiring)
Berlin went through a tram-obsession phase in the 1990s/2000s, and although trams are a great thing, this would have been bad. That's because trams were already built out in the east (where they had never been withdrawn) but not the west, so new tram lines would benefit West Berlin, which is already well served by the U-Bahn, while East Berlin is not. Exactly one new U-Bahn station has been built in East Berlin since German reunification in 1990.
Tram plans sound a bit like the "We could build a monorail" nonsense one often hears in the States (Canada, fortunately not so much) as a way of doing nothing at all. Berlin has several gaps where the U-Bahn needs to be extended a short distance to connect to another line, but the possibility of trams was often mooted to avoid doing anything, even though changing modes to travel a few hundred meters is the wrong approach.
Some places where trams are touted as a forthcoming mode have been unbuilt for 30+ years. To travel from Friedrichshain to Kreuzberg - nowadays both parts of the same district - means taking a tram to the Oberbaumbrücke and then (after several hundred meters of walking, depending on the line) transferring to a bus or U-Bahn, despite tracks being laid across the bridge three decades ago. But the possibility of this being done has made it harder to get that same U-Bahn line 1 extended the short distance needed to connect with the U5 at Frankfurter Tor or even to the S-Bahn at Ostkreuz.
Building of rail should be the responsibility of independent departments controlled by engineers, independent of government control. The government should maybe give it goals (ridership, system condition, areas to reach, etc.), but only professionals should decide how the infrastructure gets built. Imagine if the military was controlled by direct involvement, or if fire departments were controlled by direct involvement -- it would be disastrous. NIMBYs being a problem is just a sign of a dysfunctional system that needs fixing.
I've been watching the de-industrialization and abandonnement of track in Montreal. I'm probably the only one sad to see the disappearance of switchers and rail. The industrial neighborhoods are now condominium neighborhoods with street parking and bike lanes. The urban planning mock-ups show flying vehicles, elevated routes and buildings covered in vegetation. The planning includes all the utilities and transportation, but somewhere like Griffintown has delayed access to REM.
I recently took the REM up and whilst looking past the Pharmaprix on wellington noticed the abandoned industrial building and lot. That would be a great place to have the REM station before moving onto Gare centrale. Not sure what the hold up is for this station.
Amazing video. Such an objective and educated view on the very real issues we face mostly here in Canada and North America in general. Your work brings hope we can one day change this! :)
I just saw sections of the REM are in the middle of highways with little if anything within a walking distance of
Thank you Reece for a very informative video. This Englishman (Roger Sexton) was unsurprised when you referred to the huge enthusiasm for trams in Francophone countries, (and that in my book includes the ex-French colonies of Algeria and Morocco). Note that Brussels, which is largely French speaking, has a Metro, a large 'legacy' tram system and extensive bus services. However there seems to be a policy to 'tramify' (their word!) the busiest bus routes. That makes sense in environmental terms and economic terms (More capacity requiring far fewer drivers.)
Absolutely, Brussels has one of the most impressive networks out there! I need to do a video on it . . .
Its about that time of year for the annual Line 5 (Eglinton LRT) disaster update.
Oh I beg to differ - a tram line running the length of Sherbrooke Street sounds like a dream come true. For a very short time the old tram tracks were laid bare on the border of Westmount/NDG and it would be such a great swing from the road hell the place has become. Not sure what the Dangerous Tram Obsession nonsense is, but it's a great form of local transport that IF we clear the streets of so many commuters will be a breath of fresh air for everyone. Trams have nothing to do with language by the way.
I grew up in the west island and it surprised me when I saw the new stations because it ends up in a spot that's so far from any major commercial or even residential zones. It reminded me of the exo limes on the south shore where the train stations are way off on the edge of cities.
this video should be put in a time machine and sent to Edmonton circa year 2000. (it's too late now)
I admit that I was tram obsessed before lol. But after some time reading about it and I realized it's not the solution needed to resolve the transportation issues of the city. Great video!
Impossible to forget those pictures. Thanks for the remembrance -- and the warning.
I was wondering if you were gonna talk about this. Good summary of the situation, although I would like to add some things from my perspective as a Montreal area resident who follows Québec politics. First, whoever was overseeing this project at the ARTM was quoted in an article in relation to some criticism about using a tram. He said that the tram would be... Faster than a REM train. I seriously couldn't believe what I read.
The previous suggestion for the 36 billion dollar project seems to make more sense though. It was clearly an attempt by the ARTM to instead substitute it with a tram network proposition, which I suspect is making someone at the ARTM richer. However, contrary to what Reece posits here, this tram project isn't happening. The mayor has already come out against it and the premier is also against. The Québec government is currently working on creating a new agency that is to be in charge of transit construction and planning, which would relegate the ARTM to only running the existing systems and giving their opinion on what they think is needed. It does seem like elected officials realize that a tram is not the solution. À suivre!
The ARTM is a complete failure, and if I'm being blunt I suspect the reason they are is in part ideological since the communities they serve are almost entirely CAQ and PQ voting with only a handful of Liberal ones and no fascist seats. If I was running it I'd day one increase frequencies, see about having a second track added to Saint-Jerome and Hudson where there's only one line, negotiate an expanded transit window with CN and CPKC, expand the Candiac line to Farnham, the Hilaire line to Saint-Hyacain, add branches to Beauharnois for the Candiac line, and Joliette for the Maschous line. Then when that's done go about rebuilding the old Granby line and start the process of electrification. And for good measure try to get the STM or CDPQ to revive the old Line 6 project.
It's pretty much the same debate Toronto had a decade ago about Line 5 and Scarborough RT replacement. Maybe Montreal will repeat the same mistakes and scrap the $750M train de l'est.
i love your vids
I love your video. You could take some examples from the expansion of the Santiago subway in Chile. For example, two lines have been fully automated for the last 5-6 years and compare it with the Montreal experience. I personally believe that the main road should continue to strengthen the metro.
It has to be said, over and over, If you aren't building an automated metro, you are building the wrong kind of metro. Trams for all intents, are inflexible buses, impaired by road infrastructure. At least a bus can route around an accident. Automated Metro's, be it above or below grade, eliminate all the inherent traffic snarling and human right-of-way trespassing that results in the vast majority of delays on un-automated systems. Transit vehicles last much longer when not driven by humans, because humans treat trains like they treat cars, high acceleration, and hard braking, which results in a lot of wear on the vehicles and accidents in stations and rail yards.
In Canada we need to keep pointing to Ottawa's sheer incompetence as example why human rail vehicle drivers make us less safe, and the Edmonton Traffic Snarler as to why not to build rail vehicles that cross road infrastructure, because it 's a bad experience for both transit and car drivers alike.
Current trams are light-rail vehicles for people-scale infrastructure, you can only build these in places that have no vehicle infrastructure (eg tourism and "bar-hopper" infrastructure) to compete with. That's why they work better in Europe, they already rolled out their commuter and big metro's decades ago at people-scale. Trams and Light rail are not for North America's car-first infrastructure, it will always fail because it doesn't meet the high frequency, high speed needed to move people to places they want to go with an experience better than driving.
Cars suck, but what sucks more is having to wait more than 3 minutes for a train in wet+cold climates.
Although the connection to downtown is yet to be determined, they should be working on plan to make the L shaped part and connect it to the Metro. Even if the connection to other REM lines doesn't come right away, just having a way to get to the existing transit network would be a huge improvement for the East of the island. The rest can be optimized later as the project go on.
Montreal NEEDS more metro! I don't get how or why so many of our politicians are afraid of extending the metro. Sure, the REM is great, but Montreal's metro is the shining jewel of the city in my opinion. It needs more love! The REM and the Metro working together IS THE KEY
Australia has been choosing Light Rail where it shouldn't have, as well. In the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane, they have built a very long Light Rail from the Heavy Rail line down the coast to connect the metropolitan areas of the Gold Coast. However, because it is a tram it is very slow, and it is already running out of capacity. On event days, people can't even get on or off the tram because of how dangerously crowded it is. The trip takes almost 50 minutes to get from the Heavy Rail Helensvale Station, to the end of the line at Broadbeach. They're extending it far further too, to go to the Airport. It needed to be a faster mode, and it needs more capacity.
Since the line uses former railway tracks, there's a fair degree of separation from traffic. So, reduce the number of stops, and give the trams priority at intersections. Then buy higher capacity trams.
It also looks like the heavy rail extension to the airport is still in planning. Would a heavy rail branch to Southport to connect to trams work better than the current plan?
I think the only place a tram would make sense is on Rene-Levesque. Having a tram there would force the rebuilding of this god awful boulevard into a more walk-friendly zones. It wouldn't solve the Montreal-Est problem but this is where a Tram is useful from my perspective. Having the Tram line from Notre-Dame until Rene-Levesque become Dorchester would be around 5km, a definitely fine distance for a downtown tram line.
I wouldn't be so sure, trams don't always lead to nice streets!
Would you be down to cover Medellin's public transit system? It may not compare to the massive systems of major world cities, but it's a great example of how previously infamous cities were able to find growth in new management and created a system that not only caters to the middle and high classes, but actually puts in a lot of effort to reach the poorest of the population and connect them to the city
Trams are usually are a good idea for an inner-city rather than the outskirts. One example of this is San Francisco which has a tram street system, subway system for the bigger San Francisco (proper), and then a rail system (BART) for the suburbs / surrounding cities to/from San Francisco which links up at points with the subway and tram systems.
I agree, Reece, multiple transit authorities in one region is bad especially when they fight like "enfantiscally" (maybe translatable as worse than childiishly)! Same here in Ottawa-Gatineau (NCC).
This whole video just reminds me why the TTC is so terrible in so many ways.
This is accurate. I grew up next to one of the old electric train lines in the West of the island. Being able to get downtown by walking to the station near my parents house was pretty decent, it made going to college/uni much easier than it would have been otherwise.
Having the REM with metro-like frequency of trains would have been next level though. Not having to plan being at the station at an exact time, being able to come back late at night, less crammed cars at rush hour, more reliability and speed, all would have made the downtown core feel like it was at our doorstep almost
I defer to you and your expertise on transit planning but on a personal note I will walk 5 miles, cycle or drive to avoid a crowded bus because they make me nauseous. The new Bombardier cars in TO with all their failings have good air quality and a comfortable ride with a more experienced operator. I would love the seat layouts seen in NYC or QC and not these crappy forward facing seats over the wheel wells that make walking through the car impossible. I'm pro-rail in whatever form factor is most appropriate! Thanks for the insightful videos and substack articles!
I could see a network using Stadler KISS type trains (SBB Switzerland/Caltrains) for the Mount Royal route extending it far beyond Deux Montagnes. This could have been combined with a HSL route to Ottawa and Toronto. At the same time, the line from Windsor Station west could have been electrified and used for a similar suburban network. The REM to Brossard makes sense, as would a REM type train between the West Island and the Deux Montagnes line. The airport should have been connected to the Windsor Station line.
Solution: bury the originally proposed REM de l'Est alignment like the NIMBYs wanted, but make the NIMBYs that wanted it buried pay for the difference vs elevated.
I think a team can work in some places but long distance East-West needs fast, frequent transit from extremities to the city center. I would replace every high density area bus with a tram network, partially using the already reserved lanes. I would make an elevated metro from Repentigny to Deux Montagnes, stopping in the city center instead of Sauvé Station.
If you want a good exemple of Tram obsession in France go check about Bordeaux … refuses to do a subway for 30years and adding only trams
You should do a meet up next time you come in Montreal. I grew up in Montréal-Nord, lived in Côte-des-Neiges and currently live in the Plateau.
Out of curiosity, what happened to all the Edmonton videos? Was there some sort of copyright issue?
I can’t help but think of New York City’s Interborough Express when I watch this. The modes chosen to be competing against each other (brt, lrt, and heavy rail) were all positioned as if they would provide fairly similar levels of service, which is simply not the case for the region-scale trips this project is aiming to provide. I still strongly believe that choosing light rail was a grave mistake, especially since it makes a future expansion into the Bronx much more challenging compared to if they chose heavy rail trains that could have used the Hell Gate Line. It’s painful to see how often transit proposals in the US compare different modes purely in terms of capacity and travel time, with no consideration for other factors.
Berlin's recent tram plans are a perfect example of this. Tram vs metro has turned into an ideological battle with a belief held on both sides that the two modes are easily interchangeable. Under the red-red-green coalition, Berlin was planning tram lines where previous decades imagined an extension of the U-Bahn network (worst offender: opening the U5 to Hauptbahnhof but then building the extension to Turmstraße as a tram, despite the original business case for the U5 relying on it carrying on to Turmstraße/Jungfernheide). Meanwhile, Berlin has some extremely frequent bus lines in the West that would be perfect for replacement with trams.
Trams in west Berlin will take a long time no matter the government. There's just to many lines that need to be built
RMTransit can you talk about the Kuala Lumpur Metro System? Thank you :)
Yay, finally some Montreal content
We have a similar problem in Brussels, but here it's mainly ecologists lobbying against the metro projects and wanting tramways instead. This, totally ignoring the fact that Brussels' tramways are narrower than those in most other cities and therefore carry less passengers per vehicle, or per hour. (and of course, are slower than metros).
That $36 billion price tag still blows me away
Like it's literally costing Japan less than that to build a mostly underground maglev line! HOW ON EARTH CAN A GENERIC METRO LINE COST MORE THAN A STATE OF THE ART EXPERIMENTAL MAGLEV LINE THAT'S 10X LONGER?! WHERE IS THAT MONEY GOING?!
@RMTransit, what did you think of the Transit City project planned by David Miller in the mid-to-late 2000's?
I really hope the REM de L’Est is built
I like trams, but I agree 100% that they are not the tool for every job. Imo, the most sensical way for the city to integrate trams if they're so desperate to do so is to pedestrianize Rue de la Commune along the waterfront in Old Port and run some trams along it. It'd be aesthetically pleasing, it'd remove conflict points between cars and all the tourists in the area, and it could connect up with Berri-UQAM, run along the waterfront, then connect over to the future Griffintown REM station. Satisfy the europhiles with a classy tram-and-pedestrian Old Port, then go ahead and build more appropriate rapid transit like the REM de l'Est as originally proposed.
As someone who lives almost in Gaspesie in eastern quebec, I got to say the REM was super practical when I came in Brossard for work. I could take the bus to the terminus, grab the REM and get in Montreal much faster. And I mean getting from Pointes aux trembles to the airport in car takes forever 😂 why not allowing to do it in less than an hour with REM de l'est ?
I mostly grew up in Pincourt, just off the southwest tip of Montreal Island, and I enjoyed going downtown when I was a teenager and young adult, especially exploring by Metro. But the northeastern quarter of Montreal Island beyond Honoré-Beaugrand Metro station was always pretty much "Terra incognita" as far as I was concerned because I was an anglophone embarrassed by my weak French and too self conscious to take the bus in what I generally assumed was the most "French" area of the city (as opposed to Montreal's "West Island" where English was more commonly spoken and I was fine taking the bus pretty much everywhere the buses went in the area).
If there had been a Northern REM in the 1990s, I dare say that I'd have been a lot more comfortable exploring the northeastern quarter of Montreal Island so that my first time "exploring" a lot of places there wouldn't have been on Google Street View over a decade later.
As it happens, I have to make a trip from my home on the west island to Jean Talon, E. -- google maps tells me that'll take 2hrs and 3 minutes by bus metro bus; 29 minutes by car. The REM will be no help, notwithstanding I'm a 15 minute walk from a station but I'd have to go all the way downtown in order to get back out to Jean Talon. Then I have to get back... And that's with the connections working as they're scheduled.
I don't understand this obsession with trams. Even ottawa went with a low floor tram style when running a fully separated grade and making their two lines not compatible. And ottawa got into problems with the wheel bearings in the super compressed bogey style.
I see trams as having a place in an urban transit system but like buses they have their limits.
i have had a bet with a friend for over 15 years regarding the montreal metro. why are there rubber tires (locomotion? smother (but bouncy) ride) and rail wheels (for guidance, locomotion?) Have you ever done a video on these trains (i seem to remember riding on a similar train in paris). tks. the videos are great, informed and insightful.
It's probably because I no longer live in Montreal so I kind of lost sight of what was going on with this project, but this sounds crazy D: I can't believe they are even considering "replacing" the REM de l'Est with trams. It's like saying that if you replace a Ferrari with an Acura (like in a famous South Park episode...), no one will notice because they look similar!
The town I'm most familiar with is Frankfurt (Main, Germany). We have multiple Metro lines running above ground in less densely populated parts and then diving below ground closer to the city center. I can't see why that wouldn't be possible in Montreal as well.
This is so cool sort of like a bullet train
So, Trams make sense in downtown where the stops are close together, speed not so much of an issue, mixed traffic (read pedestrians) require driver operated units, trams get their usual priority at intersections and so on. REM makes sense for cross city. Now, if we can only tackle the problem of actually getting to the REM and/or the tram network.
Man, that makes me, sad. Look at Japan or korea where basically all the metro lines are elevated... and they deliver a very high quality of service, and, I don't think it's controversial to say, they are not a social blight. People have weird hangups about elevated metro and I just don't get why. I love an underground metro as much as the next guy, but the stations are expensive and they take a long time to build. Trams are an appropriate short-distance solution that can be awesome for building "streetcar suburbs" and other medium density TOD without a prohibitive cost of investment, but they need to feed into a strong "spine" that can support them. They aren't teir-one transit. they're feeder systems, and they should be treated and built as such. we should absolutely have trams, but these days, we spend way, way too much on them. we overbuild the stations and even the overhead wires (no need for a catenary under 50 km/h), and so the trams end up costing 3/4rs what a metro system would have. then we put the expectations on them that they can deliver 3/4rs of the service that a metro delivers, without regard to the inherent limitations of the medium... no need to make them flagship transit projects. let them do what they do best, and spend the big bucks on systems that actually merit the price tag!
Excelente video genial 😃
Hello. I'd love if you made a video about cities in the UK and their lack of public transport, especially in comparison to London.
Hes done various cities
Latest being leeds
At least they’re fixing the axel bearing issue in Ottawa that’s plagued the system since day 1. We should hopefully have a good system in 12-18 months.
Fair warning, this turns into a bit of a rant... basic point: My city is looking like it's going to build light rail/tram to an outer suburb on a route that would be better served with proper rail (probably elevated, but surface might be possible) to said suburb and then out to the two big towns that are the source of Most of the car traffic on that route. A proper rail route would replace an hour or more long bus ride, while light rail that only goes part way wouldn't.
Christchurch, New Zealand, Probably needs a rail line from at least Rangiora (major town in the next district over), Kaiapoi (slightly less major town in the same district), then probably bellfast (suburb), Papanui (suburb), then ideally into the city centre, and then out an equivilent path to the south (I'm not that famliiar with that side of the city, but I do know the southern approach to the city has similar issues to the northern one). Noticeably for the northern part of this, that's where the existing (single track, non-electrified) main line Already Goes (well, it bypasses the actual centre of the city, but it comes Fairly close). There's also a major road (flat out a motorway for a decent chunk of it, and multiple lanes for further than that) along much of the route if a more direct path is desired.
What it's probably going to Get (assuming the whole thing doesn't fall appart due to the national level government sticking it's oar in, or NIMBYs(not as much of an issue as they could be), or some other nonsense) is some sort of Light Rail from... probably the city centre (hopefully somewhere sensible relative to the bus interchange!) to... Bellfast.
Note: Christchurch's busses are pretty good. The busier routes run every 10 minutes when they see heaviest use, and everything runs at Least every half hour (except in the really early hours of the morning). They're generally pretty reliable, have a decent set of accessibility features, and recently the fair structure has been redone so all tickets are $2 regardless of trip (you also get a free transfur within a couple of hours, and if you have a metro card you never have to pay for more than two trips in a given day, not to mention you can link a conmmunity services card (given to the elderly, disabled, and those in particularly bad financial situations for other reasons) to knock it down to $1 a trip)*. Err, those are NZ dollars. Sure, there's room for it to be better, (some of the older busses are rather uncomfortable when you get stuck on them for the trip out to Rangiora, for example) but they're pretty good!
The bus is also the sum total of public transport in the city. There's the central city tram loop, sure... except that project stalled out years (might even be decades at this point) ago when the main designer died and so rather than rebuilding the city's extensive tram network we got stuck with the proof of concept as a tourist attraction** . There's passenger trains that go out in three directions... about three times a week... they're excursion trains for toursits and priced accordingly, go out from the city in the morning and come back in the afternoon, share the largely single track main line with the freight trains, use the same Engines as the freight trains, only go 140kph max (though I'm lead to believe the narrow gague track we use can't really support much faster than that safely even if everything else was sorted out)... yeah, that's kind of hopeless. Oh, and the port hills gondala (cable car... thing. every name for this is also a name for something else?)... which is, you guessed it, a tourist attraction, not useful transit.
The silly thing about running light rail to bellfast rather than a proper rail line to Rangiora is... well, the bus trip to Rangiora from the interchange is over an hour long, Bellfast isn't even it's half way point (though getting out of bellfast is the point at which the bus starts going faster, because here's less frequent stops and higher speed limits and the route through kaiapoi is mostly a straight shot down the main road... though the part at the Rangiora end only avoids getting hung up in traffic for the whole route by spending most of it's time on the back streets where it has to turn at almost every intersection instead), and at commuter rush hours, basically the heaviest road traffic in the area is all the workers comming into the city from Rangiora and Kaiapoi (that said, changes to the road all this traffic takes Have improved things, and while in a couple of places that was 'build another lane' (in the sense that the road used to randomly swap between one and two lanes each way and is now two lanes the whole way along), most of it was rerouting things to be distributed more sensibly).
On the up side, at least light rail to bellfast might put an end to the nonsense that is the current setup of line one, where a bus that goes from Rangiora, through the interchange and out to a hospital (in cashmere)... is the same number as a bus that goes from belfast, through the interchange, to that same hospital, and then further on Actually to Cashmere proper before turning around... resulting in line one being labled as 'Rangiora to Cashmere' when there is no bus you can actually take from the 'Cashmere' stop that will get you to Rangiora, nor form Rangiora that will actually get to you to Cashmere proper (and, in fact, the bus's destination board lists the hospital as it's end point, as it should)... all they're achieving by mashing these two routes together is... printing half as many paper timetable/route map pamphlets and making the timetables for the route a confusing mess to read.
*So, naturally, the National Party ( main centre right party) is including getting rid of the bus ticket subsidy and building more roads for more cars as part of their campaign platform this election.
** it basically only goes To tourist attractions. Sort of linked to the old bus exchange, does an worse job of connecting to the new bus interchange that replaced it. It also mostly proved that there was a problem: it generally couldn't make left turns (we drive on the left here), the turning radius would be too tight.
Time to sent another letter to my MNA
Edit: done, and sent one to the ministry of transportation for good measure
Trams would actually work if they run on their own separate right-of-way like Boston's Green Line Riverside Branch or its Union Square / Medford extension so long as it doesn't share the same track with streetcars. That's why the Green Line as a whole fails; three separate streetcar trams join the main trunk, causing impossible congestion and very slow service.
In Paris, several tire trains circulate on the surface, ie. Barbès. The REM with metal wheels, too noisy. The countries to be copied are no longer European, but Asian, apart from India. In China, the trams, its equivalent of the REM and its trains are suspended and meander silently like a snake or in magnetic levitation, also silent. Here we opted for a poor quality Indian solution to the detriment of Bombardier or Chinese.
😂 Such nonsense
Transit should function like our circulatory systems do. Think of grade separated light rail as the veins, and trams as the capillaries. In my honest opinion, the REM proposal should be brought back and constructed, with maybe some additional lines, all grade separated. And *then*, and only then, they should build trams to make those last few small connections into neighborhoods. Also build dedicated bus lanes. I really want Montreal to succeed with their transit projects because they seem so promising, and doing so would mean US cities have a great example to follow.
04:45
"... you should look at a project and find a mode that fits, not find a mode and then make it fit to the project..."
Sounds like sage advice Reece.
Since discovering your transit documentaries I've come to understand that much of what I understood about public transit since the 1960s appears to have been deficient or downright wrong. You have published so many great items specific to issues with transit and they way it operates in so many different cities but I really find it a bit difficult to see a basic framework on how to evaluate existing transit systems or proposals for new ones. Is there any way you could create a sort of "idiot's guide" decision tree or roadmap (a TfL spider map will do) of how to look at the current state of community transit and what options might make sense to improve it?
I've lived in Sydney, LA, Toronto and used transit on visits to big cities like Montreal, Berlin and London but these days I'm based in Halifax, Nova Scotia - a medium size city with a bus network of which few are fond plus the oldest continuously operating ferries in North America. Operating on an ice-free harbour since 1752, they have added only ONE part time route to their entire service despite our harbour including the huge Bedford Basin in which which big convoys once assembled and sailed in two world wars. This also surrounds or is not far from a great deal of our communities, the downtown core and a large industrial area.
The Halifax transit motto here seems to be "Sorry, this is the best we can do for transit in a medium sized city".
We have only one CN freight line that VIA occasionally uses for the Ocean Limited to Montreal, but really there is little or no opportunity for any sort of serious upgrade like say, the London Overground.
To my eyes, the harbour and the ferries seem to be the solution and, reluctantly, the City (which had been obsessed with a half-baked "commuter rail" project that even they had to admit was impractical) has put them under study. For me the question is how to go about evaluating how to improve transit in a medium sized city like Halifax.
Another question I would respectfully pose is how does overhead rail compare in cost terms to underground?
I wonder how far our population (estimated to be 422,000 in 2023 but exploding right now) would need to grow to justify something like an overground line atop major roads that would make fiscal and commuter sense? Is that a dumb idea?
Thanks for all your transit conversations Reece. I'm learning heaps!
Cute guy with an amazing ability to discuss relevant topics logically. This article made me like you even more. Congrats!