What could a long term vision for a REM network in Montreal look like?
We have REM A, what if we took things all the way to REM C.
I released another article on the very unfortunate state of the REM network this morning and some comments brought something up which is very reasonable. “How would the REM realistically take over the role of the suburban rail network in Montreal?” With the under construction REM A taking over the Mount Royal tunnel and relying on four car trains (the existing metro uses 6 or 9 car trains - although each car is smaller than on the REM) a lot of folks see the REM A as being capacity limited, and to some extent it is, the northern portion of the line using the historic Mount Royal tunnel has three branches running into it - start adding more and you very well might have some capacity problems. But, I think I have a solution.
The reality is, the Mount Royal tunnel, while it is an impressive feat of engineering in its day - is simply not the limiting factor for a REM network, because Montreal can and should build more tunnels across its city centre. Paris already has 3 RER tunnels (1 is under construction for the RER E extension northwest) and so surely Montreal can build at least 2 more REM tunnels - given the REM trains are smaller and more nimble than RER trains this should also be far less expensive. Adding two new downtown trunks for REM trains in Montreal would enable a huge network covering the entire region and connecting basically every smaller city and destination.
I decided to map out what I foresee as being the network - and I wanted to cost things out - the $36 billion dollar price of the ARTM’s proposed PSE (the REM East replacement) to see just how much we could get if we tried to get to best practice costs. To some extent this is in the same vein as Alon Levy’s excellent article on expanding the New York Subway. To determine the final price, I am going to assume Montreal could achieve similar prices to Paris with it’s Grand Paris Express project - which is 80% underground has 68 stations and is costing about $50B CAD. I will address price at the end of the article - so if that’s all you care about go straight there!
With that out of the way let’s look at my proposal in detail.
The Grand Montreal Express REM Expansion Program
The idea I had with creating this “potential” network was that downtown Montreal should have three REM tunnels carrying routes known as REM A, B, and C, and most of the contiguous developed area of Montreal should be within about 10 kilometers of a REM station about a 20-30 minute bus ride. Of course many residents would be much closer to REM corridors, and they would be explicitly oriented towards additional densification - sort of like Copenhagen’s “finger plan”. To be clear this network would not replace EXO regional rail, though many of the shorter trips made on that network would move to it. EXO should reorient themselves to serving longer journeys to areas of development not contiguous with Montreal such as Saint Jerome.
The City Center
The underlying concept for the city center REM network layout is to have a triangle transfer, where riders can switch between the three REM lines, and the existing Metro at three points. This means no single station is overloaded with passengers changing from one line to another. In this plan REM A is the existing REM using the traditional Mount Royal Tunnel and Gare Centrale approach tracks. REM B is a route following Rene Levesque to the east of Gare Central which dips south to better connect to REM A at the station before serving Lucien L’Allier and likely popping above ground to run next to the existing rail corridor approaching that station. REM C comes in from Avenue Parc from the north and then swings west under Sainte Catherine to connect to REM A at McGill before swinging south to connect to REM B at Lucien L’Allier, the line would then run between Griffintown and Little Burgundy half way between REM A and the Green Line and pop above ground to run elevated next to REM A before heading north again to cross the Saint Lawrence serving Habitat 67 on the way.
REM B
The idea for the REM B is a hybrid of the original CDPQ REM de l’Est plan on the east and a new 2 branch extension to the west. Altering the CDPQ plan the approach into downtown Montreal would be undergrounded - potentially mostly cut and cover on Rene Levesque which would absolutely be done in Europe given such a wide street (you could likely do it while maintaining 4 travel lanes). The stations would also be build for four car trains compatible with those on REM A for greater economies of scale and to in my personal opinion better handle demand given the better connected nature of the line as opposed to the original plan.
In the west the REM B would follow the tracks into Lucien L’Allier providing far better and faster service to Montreal West and Vendome than the existing commuter rail trains. West of Montreal West station the line would split into two branches, one could be built above or next to the tracks headed to the Blue Bonnets site, serving the site itself (the terminus would be at Namur on the Orange Line - which is actually getting some nice density near it), as well as Cote Saint Luc. The western branch would be build through Lachine serving the central parts of the neighborhood, likely in large part in tunnel. West of Lachine the line would connect to Dorval railway station and connect to the existing REM A airport branch - this would be given over to REM B and a new interchange station with the West Island Line would be built near where they today branch. Giving the airport branch to the REM B better balances the lines, since this would give REM A only two northern branches both could run more frequently up to every 3-5 minutes, meanwhile the airport branch would also get more service as part of REM B, and travellers arriving in Montreal would have far more locations available to them with a single seat ride than with the branch being part of REM A as REM B would have many more stops in central Montreal.
REM C
The REM C would be an entirely new REM corridor running north south and connecting Longueuil to Laval as well as parts of the Plateau and Montreal Nord in addition to outlying towns like St. Bruno, Boucherville, Candiac, and Sainte Therese. well. This line unlike the other two REM lines would use six car trains unlike REM A and B due to the large number of branches, the need for Orange Line relief, as well as the areas of high populations served.
In the south the REM C would mostly be elevated above ground on three corridors one which follows Mont St. Hilaire Line, one which runs south along Taschereau to a connection with REM A at Panama, and beyond and one more which runs to Boucherville via Cégep Édouard Montpetit and the hospital site. The line would gain access to the island of Montreal via a tunnel under the seaway, and new stations would be provided at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and Parc Jean Drapeau south.
To the north the REM C would provide a station at the eastern base of Mount Royal and intercept busy buses on Parc. It would then swing east on St. Joseph to connect to the Orange Line at Laurier, the route would then follow Papineau north (I chose Papineau to better spread coverage between REM A, B, C and the Orange Line) and cross into Laval. Where service would hit many major destinations, while trying to stay on corridors which make construction simple and minimize disruption.
Logistics
There are some general logistics I want to discuss. My plan as I mentioned standardizes the trains network wide - that way all trains could be used on any line, and a large order could be placed for all trains at once - reducing cost. Something similar was done on the Grand Paris Express where about 70% of the network uses a single train model. This is possible because all three REM lines will be connected, REM A and B near the airport, and REM A, and C in Pointe St. Charles. I think it would be really charming to paint the trains according to their line too, light blue for REM B, and red for REM C. For what it’s worth there are also passenger interchanges in the suburbs between REM A and B and REM A and C, reducing the need to go into the city centre further.
Service levels on the network would be the same as with REM A, 20 hours a day 365 days a year but, I would push things further and using some of the techniques used on the Copenhagen Metro run service 24-7 on weekends (this is common in many European rail systems). Of course the network would also have wifi, cellular, air conditioning and platform screen doors on all trains and at all stations.
The total length would be: REM A: 62 km, REM B: 58 km, REM C: 95 km with new construction being 120 kilometers with roughly 50 new stations, of that I estimate roughly 85 kilometers could be built at or above grade.
Cost
Now, you are probably curious about the price, based on the average cost per kilometer in Paris this entire thing could be built for about $40 billion CAD, not much more than the (bad) proposed REM de l’Est replacement. At the same time this proposal would be over four times longer, meaning less than 1/4 the cost per kilometer - it would unlike that proposal obviously not be entirely underground but, it would form a far more coherent and useful Express Metro overlay, rather than a people mover in one part of the city. Assuming land value capture (which was extremely successful on REM A and could have generated far more funding) and other tools like congestion pricing or tolling were introduced to help fund the plan I think it could absolutely be done. What would a realistic timeline be? Well I think about 10 years, the Grand Paris Express will take about 13 but, this project really just has far less tunneling (which is risky and time consuming) and when tunnels are needed as the PSE report mentioned Montreal has excellent ground conditions for doing so. Of course, the plan has so many branches that these could be phased over time as well.
The point of all this is to well, make a point. If Montreal set its sights on best practice (some places build for even less than Paris) it could have a 200+ kilometer regional express metro network before 2035 - for a similar order of magnitude cost as the proposed REM de l’Est replacement. It would in some ways be an even more complete network than today’s Montreal metro.
Awesome plan, I am in full support.
I'm glad you wrote this, I think we need people doing this far and wide. Show that better things really are possible, it's just a matter of being willing to understand how, and taking the cost control issue seriously. I think we absolutely cannot afford (literally) to stop banging this drum. Not to repeat myself from earlier, but I don't know what it'd take for governments to realize that we are screwing ourselves over with these costs.
It still bugs me though that we have all this legacy infrastructure but the state of mainline passenger rail on this continent is so dismal that it'd probably be easier to build an entirely new from-scratch system...been feeling a bit sad about this, especially given that it seems like our mainline agencies (not to mention the freight companies) seem to have a universal allergy to wires. The rest of the world electrified ages ago, and China and India are electrifying right now...come on guys!
On that note, how would you figure intercity/interregional trains into this system? New tunnel between Centrale and Lucien-L'Allier and through-running onwards?