Trains de banlieue - Discussion générale

[TER200]

il y a une heure, p_xavier a dit :

Qu'on donne les clés du train à VIA Rail qui est ouverte à exploiter des trains de banlieue et serait en mesure de mieux optimiser ses trajets.

Qu'est-ce que ça changerait ?

[SameGuy]

53 minutes ago, TER200 said:

Qu'est-ce que ça changerait ?

Exactly. VIA wouldn’t piss on itself if its pants were on fire without someone else’s say-so. Suburban/regional trains are much more effective and efficient for serving the common good of the farther reaches of a metropolitan area. Some cities have known this for decades, others have recently jumped on the bandwagon, but we should just abandon ours because… nobody wants to be firm with the freight railways (which were originally Crown corporations and given huge concessions because… COLONIALISM?)??? Cmon, you’re much better and smarter than that, @p_xavier.

There are plenty of unused/underused rights-of-way that the government could easily reacquire if it had any backbone at all. As we’ve said before, all it takes is the will to get things done, but that would mean the end of pork-barrel politics and neoliberalism as we know it.

[p_xavier]

Suburban commuter rail is among the most expensive to build/operate, with mediocre service and frequencies.  VIA could consolidate with exo's facilities and optimize its schedule with better slots.  The CDPQi itself ripped everything out cause it was cheaper to build and operate the REM, and that was the most profitable line.  Change my mind I'm all ears.  Sydney did the same with ine line of their commuter rail.

The train de l'est was a pure folly. You want that extended?!

[SameGuy]

Sydney did indeed convert an aging suburban train line running through very dense neighbourhoods to rapid transit. But comparing it to the DM line conversion is inaccurate; rather, imagine a busy commuter line from, say, Lachine, running diagonally through VSP, NDG, PM, Vieux-Rosemont, RPP, VSM, St-Leo, all the way to MN, scale it up by 20%, and then project 3% annual growth in every neighbourhood along the line. When it comes time to upgrade that line, would it make sense to convert it to rapid transit and add more stations? Put simply, yes. 

I’m not saying rapid transit shouldn’t be developed — though I still have serious reservations about building a hybrid RER/light metro into less-dense suburbs — but how is it that we alone have once again decided that the rest of the world is wrong, and have been wrong for decades, yet we still haven’t built the Blue line extension after 40 years of talk?

Exo’s DM line was a perfect candidate for substantial improvement up to modern standards, and was never likely for conversion to a light metro, but the deal for its infra was too good for the Caisse to pass up. Their mandate was not to build a light metro out to St-Eustache, but to service the airport from downtown. If I were a principal at the Caisse, I too would cackle at the jackpot that landed in my lap when the government offered the DM line, complete, for about 10% of its real value.

But the fact is that major cities, successful cities, growing cities around the world build suburban heavy rail to serve the suburbs, and metros to serve dense inner areas. We just need to buck conventions here, no matter how rational and pragmatic those conventions may be. From rubber-tired trains without proper HVAC that can’t go outdoors and run single, narrow tunnels, to an elevated concrete monstrosity out into the far-flung suburbs (“but it’s automated!”), we just don’t need logic to guide us.

Rather than me having to show you why I think you’re wrong, I’d like to be shown actual numbers on why you think suburban/regional rail is so much more expensive than a $10 billion dollar automated tram (with a tram’s capacity) that goes but 30 km with 23 tiny stations. Other cities in other countries — with similar purchasing power parity to ours — are able to build hundreds of kilometres of modern, electrified suburban railways with covered stations and level boarding platforms, carrying hundreds of millions of passengers per year, for a fraction of the cost per kilometre that is projected for REM-B. What am I missing here? 

[SameGuy]

I should add that Sydney’s city and suburban trains are more closely related to RER or S-Bahn than any “commuter” trains we have here, with headways as short as 2½ minutes under the central business district, and using modern EMUs in shorter, bi-level train sets. Replacing a line with short, automated metro trains when modernizing is logical if the planned ridership makes it worth the investment.

[p_xavier]

GO Transit will cost nearly 40G$ for upgrades to a 15 minutes electrified service. GO ALRT would have been cheaper long term.  Plus the trains will probably don't be bi-levels to aid with embarking.  This is the closest we'll get to a RER service in Canada.

Most cities inherited old railways and ROWs where they could expend naturally their services, mixed with intercity rail.  I see no future for commuter trains in Montreal, unless either CP or CN is nationalized, which I won't think will ever happen.  Even then it will be terribly expensive to upgrade.

[SameGuy]

Where have you seen $40 billion? No public documents show anything like that. But ok, for the sake of comparison let’s say that cost overruns double GO RER’s 2018 budget to $27 billion… they’ll quadruple service on an expanded, fully-integrated, modern, electrified system covering 270 km over the entire Golden Horseshoe, serving 175 million passengers a year.

 

[p_xavier]

46 minutes ago, SameGuy said:

Where have you seen $40 billion? No public documents show anything like that. But ok, for the sake of comparison let’s say that cost overruns double GO RER’s 2018 budget to $27 billion… they’ll quadruple service on an expanded, fully-integrated, modern, electrified system covering 270 km over the entire Golden Horseshoe, serving 175 million passengers a year.

 

Many costs are not in. Like many costs are not into the REM.  It's still mostly the same stations and no new service (besides smarttrack).  We'll agree to disagree, I don't find it integrated nor modern at all.

[SameGuy]

7 minutes ago, p_xavier said:

We'll agree to disagree, I don't find it integrated nor modern at all.

Do you find current iterations of Paris’ RER, the various S-trains in Germanic cities, or even Sydney Trains and Queensland Rail City Trains systems modern? This will let me know where our opinions differ, and we can move along.

[p_xavier]

34 minutes ago, SameGuy said:

Do you find current iterations of Paris’ RER, the various S-trains in Germanic cities, or even Sydney Trains and Queensland Rail City Trains systems modern? This will let me know where our opinions differ, and we can move along.

No, not at all. Anything not automated, without platform doors nor climatized for me is not modern.  I absolutely loathe waiting for transit outdoors.