City couldn’t do tram on its own: study
Building a new tram system would be too expensive for Montreal unless federal money and private interests were involved – at least, according to a new study by the chamber of commerce. Radio-Canada notes that what the CofC would like to see is a tram along Côte-des-Neiges; the study looked at how other cities managed it and weighed some of the options.
David Tighe 08:46 on 2012/10/17 Permalink
How is it that numerous small to medium sized European cities can afford a tramway network and Montréal cannot? The CofC seems to be stuck in a time warp where public transport is expected to be largely self-financing. Also they seem completely ignorant of the fact that trams are not buses. They offer a quality of service of a different order of magnitude.
That said, the indifference of the Federal government is striking. A large proportion of our taxes goes to an entity whose values, to put it mildly, I and I think many others do not share. As a result, financing social investment in Québec is impossible
Kate 09:06 on 2012/10/17 Permalink
Question of political will, I think you’ll find. It’s difficult to work against the pull of so many motorists making highway development and repairs a priority.
Stefan 12:52 on 2012/10/17 Permalink
As discussed before on this blog, the density of the Plateau, downtown and some areas is similar to medium-sized European cities with tramway network. Aside from political will, it may also be that not enough money is recovered from taxes to be able to finance it, as taxes are somewhat lower in Quebec than in many European countries (or too much of it eaten up by corruption). An indication for that is that road network size, which is clearly prioritized here, is surprisingly similar to European countries per inhabitant, but roads cannot be maintained as well.
Stefan 13:06 on 2012/10/17 Permalink
In the first link, Bergeron also raises the interesting point that the project is much more expensive than tramways elsewhere. It is true that there is a certain entry cost, but $76m/km is high, compared to a current tramway extension here in Vienna at $30m/km which includes a complete redesign/renewal of the street with enlarging sidewalks, plazas for pedestrians, adding bicycle paths, trees and overpassing for a business park and all that at higher labor costs. So it makes me very suspicious about those numbers.
Kate 16:29 on 2012/10/17 Permalink
Maybe the assumption is they pretty much have to contract with Bombardier, and they know what that would cost.
Herve 04:52 on 2012/10/18 Permalink
Mais mis à part le fait qu’un tram c’est joli, ne serait-il pas plus avantageux d’investir dans des trolleybus? On peut même leur donner une voie réservée si on veut. Il n’y a pas de rails à poser, ils s’intègrent beaucoup mieux dans le trafic, ils négocient mieux les courbes et les côtes, ils sont aussi silencieux et non-polluants que les trams, si une auto tombe en panne sous leurs caténaires ils peuvent la contourner et donc elle ne bloque pas toute la ligne, et si dans 5-10 ans on décide de modifier le plan du réseau pour mieux s’adapter aux mouvements de population il me semble que ça serait beaucoup moins coûteux de déplacer une ligne.
Ça prend plus de chauffeurs, par contre. Et c’est moins beau. Et ça brasse un peu plus.
Enfin, je ne suis ni ingénieur civil ni planificateur urbain, mais tout ce que je sais c’est qu’ici à Édimbourg les trams sont un désastre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Trams.
Et voici un article intéressant sur le sujet, écrit par un planificateur de transports en commun: http://www.humantransit.org/2009/07/streetcars-an-inconvenient-truth.html
ant6n 12:00 on 2012/10/18 Permalink
I don’t see how trolleybuses are advantageous – they are essentially buses, as we have them today, with a different source of energy. Sure today’s diesel engines are annoying, but the bigger issue are capacity (space per passenger) and ride quality, which trolleys as a system don’t solve very much. Plus, in a couple of years electric buses may be viable that do not require any of the infrastructure investment. Trolleybuses are most advantageous in hilly areas, because of their high power up steep grades, but you don’t really have those here in Montreal – on Cotes-Des-Neiges it’s possible to run Trams, as they used to until the fifties.
If you put transit on its reserved lane, then for trams there are basically no issues with cars blocking a track – this whole argument is quite the red herring. Montreal Trams would all be on a reserved track, otherwise the investment makes no sense.