Proposed closure of Montreal commuter rail lines

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R

Rasputin

Conductor
AU Supporting Member
Joined
Jan 17, 2019
Messages
1,868
Rasputin said:
Here is a link to an article about the proposed closure of certain Montreal commuter rail lines. I don't understand the history of this issue but I understand that controversial decisions have been made in the past few years. There seems to be some suggestions that they don't even have a concept of a plan:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/3-exo-commuter-train-lines-closure-artm-1.7320278
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"As of March, Mascouche was at 20 per cent of its 2020 ridership, whereas Mont-Saint-Hilaire stood at 35 per cent and Candiac at 53 per cent."
 
jiml said:
This has been the subject of recent discussion in rail groups here. Local expert @Urban Sky made some excellent observations in another forum which, if he chooses to share here, clear up some of the misconceptions or omissions in the media accounts.
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I believe the CBC article’s following statement is very accurate:

Inflationary pressure and changes in commuter behaviour since the COVID-19 pandemic played important roles in the need to cut costs, the report says. And it notes that closing the Deux-Montagnes line, the busiest Exo line which will be replaced by the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), had a significant impact on its budget.

One should recall that the Deux-Montagnes line was the by-far most popular exo route (representing maybe 40% of its total ridership) and also the only electrified passenger rail corridor (state-of-the-art 25kV, like the TGV, Shinkansen and Acela Express) in this country. More crucially, it was one of only two corridors (the other being the Vaudreuil-Hudson line) which operated off-peak services beyond the token counter-peak and noon trains, which would have made it more resiliant to the post-pandemic work environment which have battered the other much more commuter-oriented services.

I can‘t stress enough that exo‘s entire network has suffered from decade-long neglect and underinvestments whereas that of Metrolinx in Toronto has thrived with all-day-2-directions service now expanded to 6 of its 9 routes (Lakeshore West, UnionPearson, Kitchener, Barrie, Stouffville and Lakeshore East), but the impact of the REM providing a much more frequent (and thus attractive) service (while absorbing exo‘s most important route) has certainly made an already bleak situation much worse…
 
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