SameGuy

How did we get from Le Méridien and the Hyatt Regency to Doubletree and Evo Student Rentals?? Sad.

That would’ve been good too!

Nous avons déjà des lignes colorées, dont le métro STM et le REM (qui n’est qu’une ligne). Si jamais les REMs 2, 3, etc rouleront, ou le gouvernement exerce son droit de “rachat” du REM, il faudra d’autres couleurs et un changement pour REM 1 (au lieu d’avoir deux “vertes”).

That poor guy.

I LOL, but those are also good points. Yes, Hymus/Sources isn’t outside the current metropolis so it’s not technically sprawl — if it doesn’t force companies to move further out to greenfield industrial zones. But that whole quad is mostly small buildings and warehouses and offers plenty of room for both residential building and commercial-industrial densification.

Public transit is supposed to serve the needs of the existing population, not the desires of developers to build new neighbourhoods. This isn’t public transit, this is private transit and land speculation with governmental support, just like Canadian Northern at the turn of the 20th century.

😂 Which makes me repeat the refrain: “The Caisse doesn’t want to build REM where people live, they want people to live where they build REM.”

That stretch of St. James/St-Jacques is still the most beautiful “concrete canyon” in Canada. It will be lovely some day when the street itself is remodelled to modern, human-scale design (in spite of the wind!).

The more I look, the more I like it. I think it will be a good counterpoint to the glass facade of 800 on the opposite side of RB, and will complement both TdLB and 1000 without being gaudy.

Fairview will be interesting. There are currently 17 lines using the terminus, plus three on Brunswick and one more on St-Jean. By the look of the plans released so far, the “terminus” at the REM station will be a loop more or less like it is now, and I’m not sure it is any larger.

@andre md I don’t even find that is a good location, essentially a desert. There are indeed multiple businesses nearby and likely more will be moving to the station's vicinity, but if that were the reason to locate it there, why didn’t they cross the 40 in Baie-d’Urfé to the existing 12,000 employee industrial park with plenty of room for more businesses? Nothing around Hymus/Sources is zoned residential and it’s unlikely all the single-storey commercial buildings suddenly give way for factories and office buildings. Now, if Amazon builds a distribution centre nearby... well that changes things!

Well if it were up to ADM, the station would be where it was already built under the transborder jetty and Marriott hotel, and the line would exit to the south and head to the A20 alignment straight downtown. The cost to finish the original station would be almost inconsequential. The new station, 40 metres below ground in the middle of the existing parking structure, was forced upon ADM by the CDPQ, and resulted in ADM devising the full-scale modernization of the ground transportation and land-side facilities to accommodate this new, imposed station location.

That is neither here nor there; business isn’t conducted on prejudices and suppositions that only belong on the opinion pages of a Peladeau tabloid.

I don’t disagree with this point. I wasn’t part of the discussions, but as mentioned above, they were indeed “swimming in money” and could have easily weathered any normal cyclical downturn (9/11, 2009 WFC, etc). The US was headed for a recession before the first cases of CoViD-19 were diagnosed, which likely would’ve softened global air travel. My beef is with describing modernizing the airport as a “luxury,” and not a necessity. That’s silly. So Turcot, 720, SdC, these were all unnecessary luxuries? Yet this same government is plowing ahead with a plan to spend $500 million to replace the Big Owe roof yet again, and is pushing to spend another Billion to host three (THREE!) FIFA 2026 World Cup games, likely featuring France, a CAF side, and a Middle-Eastern representative from the AFC.

One last time: ADM isn’t asking for a subsidy, they are requesting a loan. It’s not rocket surgery.

Pas prévus, comme “jamais.” Après 9/11, le trafic a chuté par 40% pendant moins d’un an, et est revenu aux niveaux pré-9/11 dans moins de deux ans. Et le trafic a continué à augmenter pendant 18 ans. Là, le trafic a disparu. Gone. Bo-bye. Il va rester à nul pendant au moins un autre six mois (selon moi, un an), et après la distribution généralisée des vaccins, va exploser pour atteindre les niveaux records de 2019 dans peut-être trois ans.

What Ferrari? Bizarre comment. They had requirements for a station that are unlike those for regular stations. Imagine 5000 people a day using a station, but more than half with rolling luggage? You can’t do that at a simple station with 3m platforms and simple elevators. And modernizing the airport is now considered a luxury?? Come on man. That’s stupid. I’m done.

It’s much more nuanced than a simple blurb in a two-paragraph news bite: CDPQ was going to build it, but only to their specs and with a simple connection to the airport above. ADM wanted to design and build it to accommodate the needs of travellers: much wider platforms, dual tracks in the station, larger elevators, and full integration with the ground transportation centre it was planning as part of the land-side redevelopment (that will altogether cost upwards of $2.5B including the station and its integration). CDPQ refused to build to spec so ADM took it on. The full redevelopment project is now on hold, but the station will still be part of it some day and so the costs haven’t changed. Air travel will likely return to pre-pandemic levels within a very short time after the full distribution of vaccines, perhaps even before the REM Airport branch is in service; building a simpler station now would prove inadequate and pointless, and the costs and difficulty of adapting it in he future would be much greater than building it properly at the outset.

Yup. And Piazza Azzurri — where LG-Marie was parked for six months beginning last December — just east of St-Charles is basically a ghost town. Brault & Martineau moved last month. Complexe Pte-Claire (Maxi/McKibbens/Indigo) is also prime for redevelopment, just east of St-Jean. The current “Anse” site is terrible as well. The four stations on the branch should have been at the four legacy shopping centres, with good access by more people, ample parking, and lots of opportunities for redevelopment. But again, the Caisse doesn't want to build REM where people live, it wants people to live where REM is built. The very definition of sprawl.

Most airports with rapid transit rail links are different from one another: for example Tokyo Haneda has several lines and modes and all charge the normal fares based on the destinations (tap on/off), Sydney is practically in town (closer than Dorval) but the “gate pass” both ways is a whopping AU$14.90 (CA$14.25) on top of any zone fares, while Vancouver’s Canada Line AddFare is $5 only one way (leaving the airport), and only on single fares (monthly passes no extra charges).

The picture so nice, they posted it thrice.

Between the pigeon-poop and slush bombs at IDS, the careless bus terminal implementations at Panama and Brossard, the arduous transfers at Central/PB, McGill, and EM, the Canora horror, the botched Bois-Franc transfer station, the Fairview entrance facing a swamp, the lack of safe local access to Kirkland, the lack of escalators at many stations... my opinion of the REM in general has plummeted from “cautiously positive” to “smfh-typical-Québec.” I’ll use it and and appreciate it when I do, all the while knowing that like so many other projects here, it could’ve easily been so much better.

I knew I’d seen the horrible Humaniti Québec buildings before!!

The cost of the station is the same or even more. I’m talking about the value of ADM!