SameGuy

One thing I hope we do get, and that Infra signed off on with PMM’s bid: LCDs over the doors. Or are we even too cheap for that? On the Sydney Metro, they indicate the tran’s progress on the linear route map, the current station, and which side the doors will open.

I’m riding virtually the same train we will be riding starting in June in the undetermined near- to mid-term. The most noticeable differences are fairly obvious: six-car permanent consists with open gangs end to end, and upholster seats. There are some more subtle differences as well: our Metropolis trains feature wide windows at the front and back of each unit, whereas the Sydney Metro stock has emergency exit ramps at either end, similar to Barcelona’s T9/10 stock. You can see in the picture above that structural A-pillars block part of the view, and reduce some of the bay window area’s standing room. I’m certain the very vast majority of future REM users will be sufficiently pleased. I’m equally certain that a plurality of the vocal members here — along with pundits from La Presse, Métro, and JdM — will have very little nice to say. 😂 These trains are fast, and also compared to our STM Métro, very spacious. While riding, however, they are not at all quiet: in tunnels, it’s not deafening, but between the aircon, traction motors, other bogie and mechanical noises, and some other stuff I couldn’t quite figure out, it’s at least as loud as our Métro; outside at ground level, on the other hand, it’s much like any other electric train running at decent speeds. But what is clear is that these are very cheaply built rail vehicles, and it will be noticeable to forum nitpickers and perhaps more than a few skeptics who aren’t transit nerds. Sydney Metro North West Line celebrated its fourth anniversary this weekend, and the cars look old. There is shoddy workmanship everywhere I look, and other stuff that looks like it was MacGuyvered by maintenance techs to fix factory defects (lots of sloppy caulking between composite interior panels, for example). In contrast, I’m now aboard a 10 year old Downer-Changchun EMU and it looks almost new. On the other hand, we are getting a 68 km automated metro system built within 10 years of its announcement, and at a fraction of what it could reasonably cost to taxpayers if financed entirely from the general coffers. Overall, this will be a generational upgrade to transit for Montreal.

SkyTrain in Vancouver maintains short headways off-peak. It’s a true, modern metro designed for the way people want to use public transit — a social service — not forcing riders to adapt to the transit authority’s wish to reduce costs. And honestly, it’s an automated metro; the added electricity and vehicle maintenance cost incurred by running 12 two-car trains an hour instead of five or six is likely insignificant in the bigger picture of operating a 67 km metro network.

It’s not show-up-and-go if you show up and don’t go. A schedule makes it a commuter train.

The beauty of show-up-and-go transit is that there is no schedule upon which to rely, and adjustments can be made on the fly based on demand. It’s even easier with an automated system: just a few mouse clicks from the CCO and extra trains are added or vehicles are doubled up; no need to fight with the unions or to ask for permission or anything like that.

I will w&l

Except other modern elevated trains around the world, both light and heavy, aren’t always any louder than other trains. I expect it will be noticeably quieter on the western portions built on voussoirs. But as I said yesterday, many modern elevated trains are built on similar concrete I-beam structures without significant noise problems. I’d be willing to bet the problem with the first REM segment stems from choosing one of the cheaper ballastless track systems. I’d love to know what it sounds like running over the SDC bridge, if it could be isolated from the road traffic noise.

I don’t think we should have expected better when CDPQinfra awarded the contract to NouvLR, a consortium made up of three large construction companies with almost no experience in the actual design and engineering of a large metro system. People keep invoking the Canada Line as some kind of beacon project, but SNC-Lavalin only built it to CLCO’s (RAV’s) specs. All phases of the REM project were contracted to the lowest bidders, and it seems like most of the cost overruns of this “cheap” project — which sure look like a result of inexperience and incompetence — are being eaten by the Caisse.

I don’t know those details. It could be the main construction will finish next year, it will take a bit longer to finish out the stations, several of which are in the densest part of downtown. There is a work site for a station directly across the street from my hotel. It all makes any arguments about Montreal being too complicated to build an underground REM-de-l’est sound ever more ridiculous.

So it has nothing to do with them painting the concrete and protecting the tracks and ATC wiring and balises. Ok.

Point of reference: here in Brisbane, a 2016 proposal for “Cross River Rail,” a new train line running under the centre of downtown, was given a business case in 2017, a go-ahead in 2018, and preliminary works started in 2019. The 5.2 km tunnel under the downtown core was begun in 2020 and completed in 2022. Construction of the full 10.2 km line will be completed next year, and the public passenger service will commence in 2026. What are we doing?

As I posted in the REM rolling stock thread, today I once again rode the Brisbane AirTrain, which is a branch line on the Queensland Rail CityTrain network and is run with Bombardier NGR-700 vehicles. It’s such a terrific service. I just don’t get why we have to wait decades to over-design everything, when all we’d need is the intestinal fortitude to tell the Class I railways to go F themselves, and start taking back their land grants so we can convert their underused or abandoned lines into proper suburban and regional rail.

I was heading to Wuppertal in 2020. We know what happened. I haven’t rebuilt my plans yet.

I would love for more people to take the suburban and regional trains in Australia, which strike a very delicate balance between an advanced RER-style regional metro converging in the downtown cores and more traditional mainline railways. 15- or 30-minute all day service on most outer lines, five- to 10-minute frequencies in the inner suburbs, and metro-like frequencies of two to three minutes on the shared trunk downtown — which in Sydney is mostly underground!

That doesn’t even make sense, but you be you.

It still shouldn’t take two hours by rail to go 200 kilometres, even with four stops. Whatever form modernization eventually takes — HF or HS — it still can’t come soon enough.

Lol I was taught at an early age to never just say, “Yuck!” I was made to realize that not everything suits everyone’s tastes. FWIW, in my humble opinion, if 900 sticks to the original CM concept, it will be one of the most elegant and striking rental residential towers in this city, but à chacun son whatever I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/loud-noise-light-rail-confederation-line-lrt-1.5245185

Sounds like an elevated train to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And as has been repeated multiple times in these threads (here and elsewhere), aural annoyance is most often subjective, and not necessarily defined by sound pressure levels measured in decibels. The same way one might argue that another “may just not be the right type of buyer for a condo in the city centre, and that's quite ok, I certainly hope that those who buy a condo in a tower in the city centre don’t expect to only be hearing crickets,” different sounds are annoying in different ways to different people. People in big houses along the 20 in Beaconsfield seem to be desensitized to the constant, loud traffic on the highway, and barely notice the freight trains rumbling by, yet if the winds change and the evening wide-body departures from Dorval pass overhead, they scream bloody murder — despite the measurable sound pressure level of a plane a thousand metres up being lower than that of the freight train! FWIW, last night I did an unscientific reading of a 737 Max8 taking off, from just past the end of runway 24L, in the Transport Canada parking lot. At a height of roughly 150 metres directly overhead, this is the iPhone reading I got. 76 dB, even at a low, steady rumble, is still very noticeably loud. 80 dB is considerably louder, and because human ears do not have flat frequency response, we perceive sounds between ~2500 to 4500 Hz as seeming quite a bit louder than sounds lower than 2500 Hz or higher than 4500 Hz at the same pressure level. Again, it’s all about perception to the individual.

Ok je comprends. Je pensais que vous vouliez dire que si nous avions déjà construit l'extension, nous serions en mesure d'ouvrir les antennes ouest du REM dans les délais, tout en sautant le tunnel

The trains are in Brossard, the CCO is in Brossard, without the tunnel there are no western segments.

It’s not a “phare” but it’s not terrible either.

Les antennes au nord du centre-ville auraient été prêtes cette année sans les obstacles rencontrés lors de la finition du tunnel.