Underground trams in Boston’s Green Line
Today’s Gazette reports that the Montreal agglomeration council’s transportation committee is studying a proposal by UQAM doctoral student Pierre Barrieau to convert the metro’s blue line into an subway/surface tram line. More detail:
Barrieau suggests replacing the métro cars that now run on the Blue Line with new tramway cars that would run inside the métro tunnel, then surface at either end and continue on above-ground lines that could be laid at a fraction of the cost of digging more tunnel.
Barrieau says that for the $945-million price tag to extend the métro’s Blue Line five kilometres underground to Anjou, as proposed in Tremblay’s plan, the city could renovate the 9.7 kilometres of the Blue Line tunnel to accommodate a tramway and add more than 40 kilometres of above-ground tramway.
So far, it’s just an idea, but one that seems to have impressed the transportation committee. They will now be considering its feasibility alongside other blue line extension options.
Subway/surface tramways are common in many parts of the world, where they serve as intermediaries between the metro and tram systems. In France and Belgium, they’re known as prémétro lines. In Germany, they’re called stadtbahn.
Closer to home, Boston’s Green Line is a prémétro par excellence, transporting more than 250,000 people per day on trams that run along the surface in the city’s western suburbs and in tunnels through the city centre. Even Toronto has a prémétro: the Spadina LRT runs on Spadina Avenue and Queens Quay before making stops at three underground stations.
Usually, though, it’s ordinary tram lines, not existing metro lines, that are converted into prémétros. Although the obvious advantage of Barrieau’s plan would be the cheap and quick expansion of rapid transit, what would be its impact on service along the existing blue line? Light rail trains are invariably smaller and shorter than metro trains, which means they hold fewer people. The blue line still runs shorter trains than the rest of the metro system (six cars compared to nine cars on the green, orange and yellow lines), but at least its current configuration affords it the possibility of substantially increasing its capacity.
Still, Barrieau’s plan is innovative. If it can work without compromising the effectiveness of the existing blue line, why not? The sooner that Montreal’s farther-flung neighbourhoods are served by rapid transit, the better.
13 comments
Having ridden both Boston’s Green Line and the Spadina streetcar, I notice that both are annoyingly slow, because of both physical construction (something that has no doubt been improved upon since) and the fact that they have to stop at intersections.
I can’t see any way this would not result in a slower, noisier and more cramped blue line.
I’ll admit that part of my opposition is a psychological distaste for the scrapping of a perfectly good existing system (which is compatible with the other lines). But even if it’s just going by my gut, I still prefer an underground extension for the blue line, going through such a dense area.
Save the trams for Park, Cote des Neiges, Old Montreal and other places that need it.
Subways require unusually high density development to be financially viable. It sounds sexy, but what are the real costs? Subway construction runs a bill(correct me if I’m wrong) somewhere around $150 million per kilometre, versus above ground rail, which costs one-fifth that number.
That said, I don’t belive bus rapid transit (or BRT) is the de facto cost effective solution to public transit. For example, the Ottawa Transpo system, which works largely on a network of bus routes, changes its routes and scheduling frequently because of the inherent flexbility of buses.
But that causes problems for riders seeking predictable routes and schedules, as well as developers and businesses who want to ensure a reliable transit link. And then there’s the problem of competing with traffic and traffic signals. Also, there’s a fundamental chicken-and-egg question here: does development follow established transit links, or do transit links follow highly developed places? (It’s clearly something of a symbiotic relationship, but I believe that constructing permanent transit links do induce development.)
But back to above- versus below-ground rail transit. One casualty of above-ground rail transit is the immediate urban vicinity. In a Jane Jacobsian way, above-ground rail networks (just like highways) tend to create what she calls “border vacuums” — essentially places where pedestrians tend to not cross, and thus visit less frequently altogether. (If you don’t believe it, just look at the expressway border between Westmount/NDG and Petite-Bourgogne/St-Henri. Or the railroad border between the Plateau and Rosemont. These divisions would be far more fluid without their respective border vacuums.)
Given the cost and border vacuum problems, Montreal has to settle two issues before building.
(1) If it wants to build a subway, it better be prepared to properly densify the corresponding urban corridors. (No mega-projects please.) This might come in the form of more lax zoning, which could permit landowners to densify their own buildings with less red tape (i.e. by adding a floor onto a duplex, or turning a laneway garage into a loft apartment).
(2) If the city wants to build an above-ground rail line, it must also think of a way to increase fluidity across the tracks once they’re laid, especially for pedestrians. Otherwise the line will succumb to the “curse of the border vacuum.” And that’s no joking matter.
The idea for converting the Blue line to a lower capacity tram system has lots of advantages.
– The trains currently used on the blue line could be redeployed to the saturated orange and green lines
– The speed of the trams on the underground segment would be roughly the same as the existing system.
– The speed of the trams on the above ground segment would depend on the type of grade separation or traffic light control that would be used.
– The above-ground portion could split (say at PieIX) with one branch going north to Gouin and another going east to Anjou instead of a linear arrangement that would be required with the existing technology.
There are some technical challenges that would have to be solved:
– Harsh and frequent temperature cycling caused by entering and exiting the tunnel.
– The tunnel is not high enough to install a catenary wire like the above ground segment will be equipped with. The tram would have to have 2 methods to pick up the power (3rd rail & pantograph) or an energy storage system for travel between stations in the underground portion.
One problem with Spadina is that the technology to ensure the streetcars force a green light has never been turned on, AFAIK. If they implement this in Montreal they’d hopefully have it on from the start.
Park doesn’t need a tramway, it’s already a rush hour service route and since the old spaghetti exchange got taken out for a “prettier” intersection it’s slow as heck.
Another thing worth noting – Brazil, Toronto and Boston don’t get the same winter we do here, and while I realize we did have tramways in Montreal at one time I’ve seen Toronto streetcars derailed with ice & snow on Queen Street let alone the peaks and valleys of Park avenue…
Be careful with using Boston as a reference. I live here, and is the most inefficient subway system I have seen. It breaks down all the time. It is slow, old, and the tram portion is always delayed when it snows. Well, snow you do not have that problem over there in Montreal.
N’importe quoi mais faites de quoi avec la ligne bleue! Il serait vraiment temps qu’il la modifie pour en faire une “vraie” ligne de métro, comme la verte et la orange.
Boston has done a good job with some of the oldest subway infrastructure in North America, but has suffered immensely from 30 years of terrible vehicle procurement decisions that has left them with substandard trolleys. The problems seen there are not inherent to running light rail belowground.
While the blue line is a white elephant at the moment, it’s not a great candidate for tramway conversion in some ways. The tunnel portion is not, as in European examples, a high-capacity link through the central city, and is so deep that getting streetcars in and out of it will require long ramps at either end (and limit the potential for interlining with surface services). Getting a vehicle that is suited for street running yet fast enough to make it competitive for trips from the east end to the central part of the island, and that can muster enough power to handle the grades inside the tunnels and at ramps, would be a challenge.
Quality over quantity should prevail here. I’d prefer to see that 10km of extra metro line to Anjou than over 40km of a cheap sub par unreliable and frankly ugly tramway system to nowhere that will handicap the current blue line.
And when it comes to the West Island, the current system of trains works well, and we should focus on making that more reliable and convenient.
Wouldn’t converting the blue line to a tram require ripping up all the rubber-tyred track, and putting conventional track in its place? It would also require lowering the height of all the platforms so that low-floor cars can be used. This would require a prolonged shutdown of the line.
Surely the mention of the Spadina LRT points to a third possibility: the blue line could be run as is, but the eastward extension could be a below-ground interchange with a new LRT system, which could then serve multiple routes east, north and (possibly) south of St-Michel station. (Have never been there, but how do they handle the Scarborough RT interchange at Kennedy? Seems like a similar situation).
Regarding the point raised about third-rail/catenary – this has surely been dealt with in numerous systems in North America and Europe, whether for trams or prémétro systems. As for platform heights, there’s a bit of info on one way this was resolved in Buenos Aires at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tram#Argentina
I’ve lived in both Boston and San Francisco, which also has tram lines (routes in the Sunset district.) The platform height issue in SF was solved with trains which had steps that lowered for the street level and raised for subway portions of the routes. (I stood on them many times as they lowered or raised.) I believe the trains were made by Bombardier.
Boston’s service has always sucked in terms of keeping to schedules and frequency. But one should bear in mind how chronically underfunded mass transit in the States has been for a long time, and that it’s usually poorly run. (The NYC subway system may be an exception.) Limited usefulness for comparison to here. People complain about bus service here, for instance, but at least the routes actually pretty much keep to the posted schedules, unlike SF, where they were a complete joke.
Even without snow & ice problems, the SF ones sometimes had delays because of auto traffic, much like busses, since the lines were in the center of regular streets for some portions of the route, though in most sections the tracks are set off from the auto lanes. Even with the separation they still have to cross major streets and gridlock can be a problem at rush hour. So implementing a tram line here might be a lot cheaper for construction costs but pose other problems inherent in integrating it into existing arterial flows.
I’d hope they could keep the tires on the above ground sections – having to change the tracks in the tunnels would be a showstopper, I’d think.
The lesson from Toronto is NOOOOOOO!