SameGuy

The best place to get visual and visceral effects from the profiled-voussoir structure in the West Island is on Avenue André in Dorval, between the 40 service road and Hymus. It is striking, but in a weird, almost futuristic way. As you drive under it, it doesn’t feel like you’re going under an overpass or the Met; it feels more like a portico. I’m still not entirely convinced they’d bother coming up with a substantially different design for René-Lévesque downtown. Perhaps slimmer columns and less obtrusive catenary elements, but the guideway itself is nowhere near as hideous as in PSC and Brossard.

Srsly the outdoor sections will have a better firewall between the tracks than what they’re building in the Mont-Royal tunnel, these big I-beam poles are close enough together to stop explosions. Oh je pensais que c’était conçue ainsi pour aider au dégivrage du fil.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited, but geez that catenary system is 👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼

Pourquoi? Il n'y a toujours pas de mandat pour construire l'extension et la station intermodale, alors pourquoi l'incluraient-ils dans le matériel promotionnel? Jusqu'à la fin de 2019, ils n'ont également jamais mentionné la station Griffintown.

Anne is poised over the fifth span now, no voussoirs hanging yet when I passed by at 11:00 am.

AFAIK most of the A-13 right of way is still in MTQ hands, and a freshly-elected CAQ government in 2019 included studies to complete it in that year’s PQI.

Lol the first pin I dropped on the track gave me this angle

Lol Yeah, what’s hard to understand? SVP arretez de poster en SUPER GRAND CARACTERES! LAST CALL!

This tangent is unnecessary. 👆🏻 I expect we’ll hear about this project before too long, but I’m hoping the result of the competition is that a local firm gets to alter the norms in this city.

Once again reminds me of Serge Godwin’s mansion, levelled every bit of the old home except for the one main hearth and chimney, for patrimonial reasons. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Functionaries gonna function

Autre chose à rappeler c’est qu’on n’aura plus besoin de trains à 12 wagons s’ils roulent à tous les quarts d’heure au lieu de “ben whenever.”

New work site being set up along Sartelon near the northern end of Boulevard Thimens in Ville St-Laurent. The tracks have been completely removed and trees and shrubs cleared from Bois-Franc to Alexander.

The LG crews are on a roll! When I passed by at noon yesterday, they were just finishing up gluing the final voussoir of the seventh span (from the overpass), today at noon they were already lifting the sixth of the (typically) 11 voussoirs on the sixth span. Unlike the first 11 months of LG work over the warmer seasons of 2019 and 2020, the LG crews are working around the clock (as opposed to overnight-only), six days a week. The tempo might ratchet up to 3 spans per week! With roughly 65 spans to complete, including the Kirkland station and seven road/overpass crossings, I reckon 28 weeks to complete the branch, or the second week of November. Wow.

This is 100% un enjeu politique et non technique. Les caténaires peuvent être installées assez hautes pour le gabarit des TEU empilées, comme le fait SEPTA à Philadelphie.

Not disagreeing with you at all; my point was in reference to the idea above my post, suggesting the through-trains between Ontario and Quebec City could stop outside downtown Montreal — 20 km away in Dorval — before continuing north through the CSL rail yards, bypassing downtown altogether. Also agree. I’ve mused elsewhere that continuing HSR west of Toronto and east of Montreal is ridiculous when you actually do the math. Downtown Montreal to downtown Toronto? IMO that’s $25-50 billion properly spent.

Agree. I like the overall look, but Azur and Innovia are indeed sleeker.

The entire Westmount sub can easily be electrified, and charge points can be installed at Candiac and Vaudreuil. Big question is if these European EMUs are FRA-compliant for sharing the lines with mainline freights.

Ok yes I remember that we share a very similar view of HFR.

I thought the whole argument in favour of spending $5-10-15 billion on improving trains is the idea that they are downtown-to-downtown quicker than by air? Funnelling VIA pax to REM for a further 25+ trip to downtown and making people from the rest of the island schlep out to Dorval just to get to Québec City simply isn't worth it for the maybe 50 people a day who need to get between Ontario and Québec City (skipping Montreal). Everybody really seems to overestimate the potential traffic over the entire corridor. Most people who’d choose the train would want to get between the two metropolises, and a few more might need to travel between one of the two big cities and one of the nearby smaller cities. I reckon a similar number of people would travel Québec City to/from Toronto off-season as would do Montréal-Windsor.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They’re no MTA/MBTA/WMATA/CTA corrugated toaster ovens, but they ain’t exactly sleek, either. They’re new, and they’re ours. One can’t help but feel some amount of pride.

Excellent!

Wait. What. We shouldn’t build a metro, but we should go-go-gadget into self-driving cars and micro-tunnels with zero safety features? Of course, because we’re paying for it with Dogecoin, and screw the scientists who say crypto mining and trading has used more energy in the past year than the world’s installed solar generation output…

Yeah you’re right. They didn’t pay extra for tiling pros who give a sh!t. The misaligned tiles adjacent the tactile pads is triggering my OCD.