>>1623563>Montreal plans on building 100km of automated rail for $13 billion USD.not really the headline you think it is.
it's 67km, not 100km, of which 30km was an existing electrified commuter rail line.
it's going to cannibalize the ridership of the red line in fig. 1 which has stations spaced closer together to serve actual communities, the REM alignment goes along a highway and stops at shopping malls and parking lots
Its monopolized the mount royal tunnel, and forced commuter trains to do the bypass shown in fig 2, taking the purple route instead of the black formerly shared segment
another glaring issue is the grey tunnel segment in figure 3. the old plan featured a much shorter ground and elevated spur of the red commuter rail line, but now they will approach from the north and tunnel under the railways. 22km in REM, 16km in original plan
its living in the skin of a dead commuter rail line that used to transport 30,000 people every day and is now a bus service, its going to feed off the passengers of another commuter rail line for its west island branch, its airport branch is ludicrously expensive and bad and the south shore branch is just replacing a bus service, and yet its the only part of the network that makes any sense
