geraldshaw

A picture is worth 1000 words. A rapid transit station in Wuppertal above. Imagine this along R-L and the value of Ivanhoe's downtown core properties. QED.

Just for the record, being new to this site, I am a professional - Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). I hold a 1st class honours BA in economics from McGill, and a MBA in finance from Western. I also sat on the Dean's Council at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government for 7 years - being the first Canadian ever to do so. I also was V-P Head of CIBC's Global Energy Research Team. My career has been all about analyzing financial facts particularly for public company's mega projects - the economics and the politics and timing of project actualization and the forecasting models thereof. In my salad days, I covered the Caisse as a ranked outside financial securities analyst. I trust that this mini CV reduces the stress and discomfort by some posters that this thread has become soiled by my participation. And more than my diplomas, my greatest pride is being a born Montrealer in 1950. I can talk about riding street cars up the steep hill of Guy and Cote des Neiges over the top. Regarding costs of rapid transit in North America, after much research I can find not a single example of a rapid transit project being delivered any where near initial cost projections. The blame game / explanations are almost always politicized. Furthermore, la Caisse owns Ivanhoe which has $26 billion in real estate assets -- that include PVM, Le Fairmont Queen E, and 1000 de la G. Is Ivanhoe really and truly on board with an elevated REM-est in the downtown core? Their silence speaks volumes. Why did Macky Tall leave the Caisse-infra? Do the opinion experts on this site care to comment on this and when the true facts on Ivanhoe/Tall/Caisse-I positions are?

I agree with Frodo. Posters on this thread seem to be required to be Polyanna cheerleaders for a $10 billion (likely $15 billion) dollar downtown core above ground REM est project, which if ever built will be Quebec's greatest white elephant, requiring a bail out that is 7X the Bombardier bailout by the Quebec taxpayers.

Oui. Il ya beaucoup des morts/accidents souterrains sans des les etres humanes a conduire. Oui. Il ya beaucoup des morts/accidents souterrains sans les etres humanes a conduire.

Most interesting. The trouble is your key assumption "if it is programmed right" which of course is not always the case when there is a derailment. I was shocked by the data on derailments attached. I cannot imagine feeling safe 40 or 60 feet above the ground in a train without a human driver. Attached are the list of train derailments from 2010-19. In 2018 Canada had 88 derailments. Imagine if Canada had 88 airplane crashes in one year. There would be tidal wave of condemnation of air travel. Of course bringing this risk up makes some call me a "fear monger" or a "conspiracy theorist" or using "hearsay". Go figure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_(2010–2019)

What parody (a mocking, not serious) is there discussing derailments and concurrent injuries and deaths? Derailments are more common in cold climates, -30C nights -- due cause cracked rails. Open air trains are far more dangerous than those in tunnels - also 90" of snow and ice storms in normal winters are no parody either. There is no parody in accidental injuries or deaths by derailments or crashes of elevated transit trains from heights over three stories high or on the ground level crashing - including elevated bendy buses for that matter - in high population zones. We had 47 dead here in Quebec due to an out of control train that crashed in the middle of a downtown centre. Elevated, high platform rail - 40 feet above the ground, with the risk to life in downtown Montreal is a serious matter and certainly not a parody.

Is discussion of the accident liability risk due to elevated REM-est rail in downtown Montreal allowed on this thread? There was a derailment today in NYC from the elevated rail line to the street. Front page of the NY Times. There are many, many examples. Attached is a Chicago LOOP disaster that killed several passengers and also people walking on the street below. Imagine this on Rene-Levesque. And in the case below Chicago had human beings as drivers. REM-est will be driven by computers. We live in a harsh winter climate (normally) with 90 inches of snow each winter and ice storms that will inevitably cause a REM derailment at some horrible date in the future which will cause the public to demand human drivers and concurrently destroy the economic model for the Caisse, unless they have an escape clause for Acts of God and more likely a Quebec government (ie, all of us) pay for a bail out and re-engineering for human drivers.

A very public campaign with notices along the Turcot walls that there are cameras recording and posted boards with notices saying that and a harsh / zero tolerance by-law with significant prison time, minimum 1 year exists and a few found guilty cases with a public shaming as they go to jail is needed, which should concentrate the minds of vandals rather wonderfully.

"Here we are discussing the REM-B/REM-2 proposal and what we think about it". Given this is the rule, why is it wrong to say that an above ground rail line platform though the core of downtown Montreal will lower values for building owners (many of which are owned by Ivanhoe i.e., the Caisse de depot) and with challenges in the courts will cause delays ? How is that a conspiracy theory or hearsay? This is not a QAnon opinion, it is following the rule above of "discussing the REM-B/REM2 proposal what we think about it."

The total $ claims for injury due to the lost value of the sum of all the dozens of buildings' claims may well fail in the courts - the points are that the delays that these dozens of civil actions and appeals by various buildings owners will take years to complete and the history of transport extension delays in the past in Montreal are controlling facts that one can pretend to ignore. Blue line extension - after 20 years of a promised shovel is the best example and it is an underground project -- already Cadillac is fighting the expropriations at their Anjou property. This is not China or the Middle East when new projects are easily expedited. Cheerleading for quick first shovel for a REM-Est is fine, but it will not expedite first shovels.

Deadlines for the design decisions for REM-Est have been mentioned. This is Montreal. The extensions of metro lines average 15 years of delays. Moreover, if REM-Est goes ahead with the above ground on R-L, there will be 5 years in delays due to court challenges by the parties who will try to prove injury due to lost values of buildings from Robert-Bourassa and East for several kms. Claims will be at least $1 billion.

Apples and oranges above. The subject is above ground rail not high rises. You clearly have not ridden on Chicago's LOOP. The rail noise, the below the tracks crime, the destruction of miles of open air sidewalks and the loss of 4 floors of open views for hundreds of beautifully designed buildings (many historic high rises) over many miles has massively reduced the values of the buildings along the routes and if copied here will cause future development risk/uncertainty as builders/investors wonder where Montreal-LOOP 2 and 3 will be planned. A Montreal LOOP will kill high rise development in the core.

REM-est - above ground along Rene-Levesque will be Montreal's Chicago LOOP, the world's most ugly and noisy - rail screeching transit line. The crime at street level in the dark corners, below the elevated tracks (see below) kills dozens of Chicagoans every year. The REM-est line must be below ground.

I hope there is recourse for the poor buyers at Humaniti. Cheap trash finishes and the crooked joinery is professional misconduct --all the contractors responsible and the designers' names and emails / websites needed to shamed all over social media, day after day, week after week, month after months until massive re-doing and corrections are made

BUILDING DESIGN & MENTAL ILLNESS https://dnyuz.com/2021/01/05/a-new-tool-in-treating-mental-illness-building-design/

USSR Apartment blocks 1975. Looks like the communists invented the maise of Griffintown

Montreal's skyline has become largely a squeezed together bunch of soviet style rectangular shoeboxes sitting on their ends == like Boston, which readers have no idea of unless they look up Boston's dull and boring skyline. 628 finally breaks that shoebox look -- like the Sun Life and PVM did. We need an 80 story non shoebox tower to showcase our city as we did in past decades.