Good morning everyone! It’s nearly 5am, I’m standing at a lonely bus stop and I’m in my way to try and visit every train and Metro station in Montreal in a day.
Follow along here to share in the mirth, and we’ll also see how long a single Mastodon thread can become!
Walking through Griffintown and again I’m reminded what a hostile place it is if you’re on foot:
• Tonnes of construction blocking sidewalks
• Lack of pedestrian crossings
• Fast moving traffic and aggressive drivers
• Car parks galore
• Pollution level off the charts!
There are some charming corners if you know where to look, but my god it’s in desperate need of that promised REM station.
You think it’s close to Gare Centrale until you try and walk it.
A couple of Gare Centrale observations for those interested:
You can use the REM platforms as a shortcut from Gare Centrale’s concourse to Bonaventure. Your single registers as a transfer going through the Metro gates after the REM, so you only pay once.
There was a large queue of people in Place Bonaventure waiting for people to come out of the REM through the fire doors so they could enter. It’s madness this isn’t an official exit. I don’t know how they screwed this up.
On one side, I can reload fares straight from my mobile phone. It really works like a bank card on buses/O-Train. The OPUS card requires preloading a fare onto the card from a dedicated terminal.
Second, just look at the thing, it just looks so much nicer. Red and white, instead of blue and orange.
Also, unifying public transport cards across the country is a hidden benefit. Take your card, tap and pay.
I’m sort of fascinated by this 1982 metro map I saw at Exporail:
• It shows the projected Blue Line extension, and in 2023 people are still waiting for it
• There used to be a train to Repentigny from du Collège, the precursor to today’s Mascouche Line
• The line to “Laval” is presumably today’s Saint-Jérôme line. Did it go all the way then?
• The Orange Line was still one stop short of Côte-Vertu
• No Laval extension of the Orange Line, yet
• Where the hell is “Beloeil”?
This is an impressive (but very long!) read with some great analysis and tonnes of photos along the proposed alignment. Very much worth your time to digest over the Christmas break if you’re following along with high frequency rail developments in Canada.
More artwork from my archives. More of a drawing this time, from 2018, in a small Stillman & Birn mixed-media sketchbook. Pencil, fountain pen, Copic markers. People waiting at a bus stop in downtown Montréal, dans le quartier latin, dressed for a mild, Canadian winter day. The woman in the centre of the composition was watching me, unconcerned but mildly curious, as I took their photo. #art#drawing#canadianLandscape#groupPortrait#Montreal#quartierLatin#QC
Paid a visit to Place-des-Arts yesterday, and it strikes me how whilst the surrounding area is now looking super modern giving me Tokyo vibes, the arts venue itself has some brutalist design going on. It reminds me a lot of a mini version of the Barbican Centre in London. #Montreal#architecture
Since I was in the neighbourhood this evening, here’s how Canora station is looking (photos taken from the south above the Mont-Royal portal) #REM#Montreal#transit
#Montreal / #Quebec folks: anyone know if the liquor/wine import monopoly (#SAQ) is going to bless us with availability on #Beaujolais Nouveau day, tomorrow? Or will this be like 2022 when they didn't bother and we're just out of luck because monopoly?
Montréal suburb Brossard has a traffic light in a school zone that defaults to red, and only turns green when an attached speed camera detects a car driving under the speed limit.
The light is on a 90-day trial, on a 2-lane residential street. Similar signals are widespread across Europe.
Before it was installed, average vehicle speeds of 40 km/h. But in the past week, average speeds have dropped to 29 km/h.
What is the ARTM for? An enterprising student adds missing signage for $50 whilst the ARTM are putting together a committee to look into something which should have been ready in time for the REM’s opening.
A question for the Montreal and transit historians. Is this the original site of Mile End station (On Bernard close to St Laurent)? The location seems to match my understanding of where it should be, but are these the remnants of the actual station building?
AEW RAMPAGE Discussion Thread 12/08/23
⚡ THIS IS RAMPAGE! ⚡...