Airplane noise becomes a hot potato
The Journal looks at growing unrest with airplane noise as Trudeau airport gets gradually busier. The sidebar is an amusing PR war between Aéroports de Montréal (which holds a line that airplane noise is negligible) and other people (who don’t).
Living in Villeray myself right under a flight path, I can’t say I find it a huge burden, although it’s a definite part of life in this part of town and might be troublesome to someone more sensitive or nervous than me. The only thing I find unnerving is when a plane comes between me and the sun – feels like the light of the world is flicked off for a moment – which can happen more than once a day on weekdays.
No solution is even floated, although one can’t help thinking that part of the point of Mirabel was to direct major jet noise away from the city.
Bert 19:56 on 2012/08/26 Permalink
Mirabel was in fact supposed to take the brunt of the workload. However, it was also thought to be in line to be the eastern Canadian hub, the stepping stone to Europe. Longer range, especially twin engine, aircraft put the final nail in the coffin. Mirabel to properly, serve Montreal it was promised, but never received a dedicated high speed rail link. I guess the funding for that will start once the Big-oh-oh is paid off.
That said the predominant pattern is for a westerly take off. Take offs generate more noise than landings. Add to that. So at any compatible altitude a takeoff will be louder than a landing.
dwgs 20:17 on 2012/08/26 Permalink
I was taught by a geography prof at Concordia that Mirabel was also intended to be the major international airport for Ottawa. The original plan called for a high speed rail link to both Mtl and Ottawa.
Taylor C. Noakes 20:45 on 2012/08/26 Permalink
@dwgs – yes I think you’re right. A highway 50 was proposed to link Ottawa and Mirabel, intersecting highways 13 & 15 perpendicularly. If I’m not mistaken, highway 50 was supposed to extend eastwards to intersect with highway 40.
There’s always reason to look back at Mirabel. But if we were serious, the City of Montréal would have to figure out its own way to finance the highways and high-speed rail connections, possibly with the City of Ottawa.
Either way, it makes so much more sense for both Montreal and Ottawa to use Mirabel – it’s positioned so as to be accessible to both major cities, and would a) free up Macdonald-Cartier for regional, government & military purposes while removing the possibility of an accident over high-density residential and industrial areas in Montreal.
The period of highest likelihood for a crash is during take off and landing. Putting a major international airport in the midst of open land not only leaves plenty of room for expansion, but if in the event of a crash, better to go down in a field than a sub-division, as there’s a higher survivability rate.
Mirabel needs comparatively little in terms of rehabilitation funds (the biggest expense would be the rail line and highways), as opposed to the constant renovation and redevelopment work and strain such construction exerts on Montreal’s infrastructure.
The ADM should adopt a division of labour approach. Mirabel for international, charter and domestic, Dorval for cargo and regional flights in addition to construction and maintenance, and St-Hubert for general aviation, military, the CSA, gov’t and police.
In the meantime, the AMT and STM could work together with the City and Transports Quebec to develop other 700-series bus lines (running north to Mirabel), additional trains running at express-speeds (i.e. no or fewer stops) using the existing Deux-Montagnes and Blainville lines and potentially use reserved lanes for buses, motor-coaches and taxis. Fixed rates could make it viable and convenient for the Greater Montreal region. Moreover, it’s location could permit 24-hour operations, all of which could assit Mirabel in becoming an international hub again.
We’d be wise to offer special landing rights, lowering the fees to secure international flag carriers, as was the case to stimulate business way back in the day.
Marc 21:40 on 2012/08/26 Permalink
Mirabel (YMX) was conceived as part of a rose-colored dream of twinned airports for both Montreal and Toronto. YYZ was to be twinned with a new airport in Pickering. Yes, the dream was to serve Ottawa and Quebec City with four big airports in Quebec-Windsor corridor but it didn’t make much sense for the latter. To properly twin YUL and serve Quebec it would have made much more sense to build in Drummondville and not Mirabel, but then you couldn’t serve Ottawa. Things don’t often make sense in a rose-colored land.
Then reality knocked on the door. In Toronto the folks forbade the construction of a new airport in Pickering but no similar luck here, and we ended up with a white elephant. Anyone remember flying out of YMX? I hated it. It was a poorly designed concept of a terminal without planes; where you had to use a shuttle thingy that added 45+ minutes to deplaning and clearing customs. It always felt like it was designed to fail. It could have worked, but only if YUL were closed down. And that ain’t gonna happen. If you wanted Mirabel, if you believed in it, then you HAD to close Dorval.
@Taylor: Moving cargo aircraft to YUL is nonsense because it has a curfew. The cargo-ers (FedEx, etc) love YMX because it has no curfew and they can do whatever they want. Being a cargo hub is where Mirabel succeeded. Take a drive down the 50 and you’ll see dozens of planes from UPS, DHL, FedEx, Purolator and others.
ant6n 21:50 on 2012/08/26 Permalink
A Mirabel airport train wouldn’t even have to be uber fancy high speed rail.
Consider that the current commuter rail takes 35 minutes from the Parc station to St Therese. Electrify that, and you can probably make 25 minutes with a modern trainset, and skipping some stops.
Then there’s the connection from Parc to Gare Centrale, which should take 10 minutes once the AMT builds the connection to the Montreal tunnel.
Then there’s the connection from St Therese to Mirabel, which is 16~20Km, depending on which route you choose. This should be doable in about 10 minutes using 120Km/h trains (that new dual mode train the AMT has goes up to 200Km/h in electric mode)
So a 45~50 minute connection should be possible without even going close to high speed rail (>200km/h), without needing dedicated tracks, i.e. sharing tracks with commuter rail.
If one builds the connection via the Deux Montagnes line, then a 40 minute connection to Downtown should be possible as well, but with a bit more construction (i.e. a new right of way) to connect to the airport.
Of course if the airport itself is flawed, a fast train won’t fix that.
steph 23:08 on 2012/08/26 Permalink
Highway 50 isn’t going to join highway 40, it goes straight to Hull/Ottawa. It will should actually be completed this year. There’s only about 17km and a crucial bridge over Riviere Rouge left! http://www.thereview.ca/story/crews-will-work-through-winter-have-highway-50-open-2012 I wonder if it will become a proffered route to drive from Montreal to Ottawa instead of he 417.
Bert 06:55 on 2012/08/27 Permalink
@Steph, slightly off-original-topic, the eastern part of the 50 is complete between the 15 and Montebello. The bridge over the Rouge was completed last year, after having been re-poured due to the initial pouring taking too much time. On the other western end it starts back up at Thurso, as last I saw, which was last fall.
There is quite a bit of traffic on the 50, including many trucks. It has taken a lot of traffic off the 148.
A full-blown 4-lane 50 (it is currently a mix of 2, 3 and 4 lane) would have put Mirabel at 1h20-1h30 from Ottawa (downtown, the suburbs are typically on the other side of that). IMHO that is a bit far from the Capital to be really useful for them. There is a rail line on the north short of the Ottawa River, but I doubt that it is useful for high-speed cars.
For Mirabel to be properly served by rail, I think a dedicated high-speed line, straight to downtown would be required. 25-30 minutes, maximum. Perhaps a service hub (car rental, long-term-parking, etc.) in Laval would have been a possible stop.
Taylor C. Noakes 08:44 on 2012/08/27 Permalink
@Marc – YUL benefits by being adjacent to the Taschereau Yards, one of the largest train yards in the country. Removing freight from the branch lines which go to Mirabel would in turn permit those lines to be used by passenger trains serving the train station already built into the basement of Mirabel.
As for the curfew, that would have to be lifted, but the absence of passenger flights to YUL would in turn mean far fewer landings anyways. Further, YUL is also adjacent to three highways, right near the middle of some prime industrial space. Fewer flights to YUL would allow for some expropriations for increased industrial activity. All of this serves to cut down enormously on transport costs and operational inefficiencies. Given that Mirabel is in a semi-rural area on a massive plot of land, we could have passenger traffic operate on a 24-hour schedule.
Also, as to the design of the airport itself, I think it has far more going for it than meets the eye.
For one, the terminal is an award-winning design, wherein you walk less than 200m from the airport entrance to the gate. If the concept was completed as per the original design, a total of six terminals of identical design would serve six runways handling an excess of 50 million passengers annually. YUL cannot handle such a load. It’s maxed out.
The primary flaw was not the design of the airport but rather lack of connectivity to a) two of Canada’s five largest metropolitan areas and b) to the city centre. The federal gov’t has been pushing the idea of limiting flights to Macdonald-Cartier Int’l ever since the attempted ‘underwear bombing’ over Windsor-Detroit. I think the Tories would prefer it was for their use only. So be it. If all that’s keeping this airport from working is a couple of train lines then we’d be wise to commit to the project and complete it. It’s only a White Elephant if we choose to accept defeat.
ant6n 10:24 on 2012/08/27 Permalink
@Bert
“For Mirabel to be properly served by rail, I think a dedicated high-speed line, straight to downtown would be required. 25-30 minutes, maximum. Perhaps a service hub (car rental, long-term-parking, etc.) in Laval would have been a possible stop.”
Why spend 3 billion to build a dedicated HSR line that does it in 25~30 minutes, if less than 1 billion gets you a 35~45 minute connection using fast public transit technology on tracks shared with commuter rail? The 747 bus takes like 45 minutes in traffic as well…
Bert 11:44 on 2012/08/27 Permalink
Because the existing tracks are saturated. They can not support anything more than 4-5 trains per rush hour. DFW runs 20 trains a day, VHHH runs trains every 15 minutes of so. Further to that, having travelers share the trains during rush-hours would make for very congested trains. With all the stops, I am dubious of the 35-45 minute estimate. The AMT line from Two-Mountains takes 40 minutes to downtown. The train from St. Jérome clocks in at more than 50 minutes to get to Parc Avenue.
Fortunately all this conversation is moot, since the only thing Mirabel is going to be used for is the filming of Elvis Gratton 4: Allo! Santa! Banada!.
ant6n 12:11 on 2012/08/27 Permalink
I don’t know about the Blainville line – they would need dedicated passenger tracks (sharing with commuter rail) for it to work out (And I was counting from St Therese, which is 35 minutes away from Parc, and assuming there are dedicated tracks from there).
But I do know about the Deux Montagnes line. It has no freight traffic, and sees currently traffic at a rate that is maximally every 20 minutes (ok, there exist two train departures 18 minutes apart). Your 40 minute figure is for rush hours only; other than that the scheduled time is 35 minutes.
Now let’s assume we want 15 minute service on the Deux Montagnes line, and 15 minute express service to the airport on the Deux Montagnes line. This means that without any overtakes, the express train can be 11 minute faster than a local (i.e. the express starts 2 minute ahead of a local, and arrives 2 minutes behind the previous local). So Let’s split the difference, and assume a local takes 38 minutes for the Deux Montagnes line. The Express will then take 27 minutes. Now to get from Deux Montagnes to Mirabel, it’s ~22 Km. We’ll assume 120Km/h operation on a train with decent acceleration, so we’ll need 15 minutes. This means 42 minutes in total.
Of course this assumes the locals are served by the relatively slow MR-90 trains (~0.5m/s^2 acceleration), which entered service in like 1995. In ten years they may be replaced by trains with faster acceleration, meaning the schedule could be tightened further.
=== Organisation before Electronics before Concrete ===
Taylor C. Noakes 13:44 on 2012/08/27 Permalink
@ant6n and @Bert
We’re making too many assumptions about how to half-ass this project.
The only solution in my eyes is to go full-throttle with electric express trains from Gare Centrale that simply would make at most two stops between the City and Mirabel. Additional ‘regular speed’ trains heading out from Parc would be useful too, but there ought ot be as direct a line as possible between the centre of the city and the airport.
Ideal train running time should be less than 25 minutes.
Every effort should be made to isolate the track (via walls, no level crossings) so as to hit highest possible speeds, not to mention using existing branch lines.
And this doesn’t change the fact that highways will be needed to compliment the rail link. Reserved lanes would be an absolute necessity.
As the train link is being built, additional 700-series buses (707, 727, 737, 787 etc) could do exactly what the 747 does from multiple points throughout the metro region – large shopping malls with large parking lots would be ideal.
Point is, YUL is an accident waiting to happen and cannot expand any more. It’s served us well, time to move towards establishing ourselves as an eastern gateway once more. We could do so simply by better connecting Mirabel to Montreal’s city and suburban centres, not to mention Ottawa and Quebec City. That way, we’d be feeding a population roughly equivalent to Pearson.
ant6n 16:29 on 2012/08/27 Permalink
It doesn’t make sense to spend several billions of dollars for vague improvements for air travellers, while there’s a huge deficit in transit throughout the metropolitan region.
You hit crazy diminishing returns, spending more than a billion dollars to save 10 minutes — just think about how much time you spend in the airport — don’t you think there are cheaper ways to shave a couple of minutes off the whole process? Why is it unacceptable to have an airport train that is as fast as today’s 747 bus? Where would you even built the right of way for that imaginary train of yours — all in a tunnel?
Asking for a dedicated high speed rail line when there are two public transit ROWs to use is like asking for a dedicated skytrain from Dorval to downtown that runs parallel to a commuter rail line. It’s a waste of money. And this is exactly the boneheadedness that results in no improvements whatsoever.
Using existing infrastructure as best as possible is not “half-assing” anything, it’s being economical. In North America, the public sector in general is really good about first pouring concrete, only benefiting consultants and the construction industry without useful improvements. In Europe (especially Switzerland) it’s organisation before electronics before concrete, and that’s one of the reasons they have one of the best transit systems in the world.
David Tighe 09:30 on 2012/08/28 Permalink
I worked on the study of the Mirabel Airport link (TRAMM). As far as I remember we proposed a loop taking in most of the northern suburbs using existing lines. It was shelved of course. The study was probably an expensive pretext for doing nothing. Re using existing infrastructure it is done in most rationally managed cities unless there is heavy demand for an expensive dedicated link (London for example). As someone remarked, the idiotic battles fought out here have the effect of indefinitely delaying any action at all.
ant6n 10:33 on 2012/08/28 Permalink
@David
Do you have a link to the study?