[nfitz]

Northern Light makes a good point here. It was a lucky coincidence that the new bridge and old tunnel were already done/planned prior to REM construction. However, it's still really impressive the cost per km for effectively doubling the rail rapid transit network in Montreal with automated 'express' metro with double the potential capacity of L5 Eglinton (pphpd). Even if taking $18 billion CAD for 67km, that is still $270 million per km, which is likely going to be 1/3rd the per km cost of Line 5 Eglinton.

Or the 5(?)-station Blue Line extension to Anjou they committed to 45 years ago (if they haven't cancelled it yet - I haven't been paying much attention in the last month).

Apples and oranges. Compare to the hundreds of mile of converting the 5 GO lines to frequent service. Or the Bowmanville GO extension. Or even the Finch LRT.

And also, when looking at Eglinton - look at the capital portion of the cost (not sure what you used here). The usual published version includes 30+ years of maintenance in future $ (including the vehicles themselves), financing costs, and operational subsidies. Ditto for Finch - which is why we see both a 1+ billion price and a nearly $3 billion price floating around. And an even smaller when done in the 2010$ or 2020$ they used for planning.

 

[Bojaxs]

It is worth pointing out that Exo operates most buses outside of the STM, STL (Laval) and RTL (Longueuil) areas, when AMT merged with the outer suburban CITs to create Exo. They certainly have not done a good job of linking the two modes together since amalgamation. There’s still definitely a need for commuter/regional rail on its remaining routes, even if the St. Jerome and Mascouche Lines are truncated to meet REM rather than going Downtown.

I have a feeling the plan (or restructuring) will be for EXO to shutdown the commuter rail and just run buses to REM stations.