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Hey everyone, welcome back to RMTransit.
I know it's a bold claim, but I'm gonna back it up, trust me.
Today, I'm finally doing it,
and I'm making a video talking about Québec City and its tramway plans.
Tramway, not light rail.
Let's talk about it.
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Québec City is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in North America,
being founded all the way back in 1608.
The city is the seventh largest metro area in Canada and the second largest city in
Québec after Montreal, with a metro area population of around 800 thousand people.
Now, before I dive into the Québec City Tramway,
I have to talk about a general trend we've seen in Canadian transit systems in recent years.
Ontario, Canada's largest province and Québec's next-door neighbor to the west,
has opened a number of new light rail systems in the last couple of years,
with two new systems opened in just the past five.
Beyond these two systems in Waterloo and Ottawa,
in the next five years two more systems are set to open: one in Peel Region and one in Hamilton.
And what that means is that Ontario will have as many electric rail transit systems as
all of Canada did just a few years ago in just the next little while,
and this really gives you a sense of the degree of transit investment going on in much of Canada.
Not only will this be a massive boost for the economy, but it
also means new housing options and more sustainable cities.
There's going to be a massive increase in the number of people in Canada -- but more
specifically in Ontario -- who will be able to access zero-emissions transport options,
and that's fantastic.
That said, while Ontario has been massively increasing its electric
transit options across the province, Québec, which is more than half as large as Ontario,
still only has one electric transit system: the Montreal Metro.
Now, I love the metro, but it only serves Greater Montreal.
Now, the REM network is also fantastic, but again that's only going to serve Greater Montreal,
and the rest of Québec is sorely in need of zero-emissions transit options.
Basically, Montreal is getting a lot of love,
but there are other cities in Québec -- cities that deserve to develop just like Montreal has,
and just like cities across Ontario and the rest of Canada have.
This is really important on a macro level because another city in Canada getting a high quality
electric rail transit system means another city where high-density housing makes even more sense,
and another city where economic development is going to increase significantly.
It helps to make Canada a more competitive place,
and it's going to help Québec further develop its cities outside of Montreal.
Interesting nerdy fact: it will also be the easternmost rail transit in Canada,
which I think is pretty cool, and it means people from the Maritimes will
have to travel a little bit less far to go and check out a metro or tram system.
Speaking of the fact that Québec with over 8 million residents still only has one electric
transit system, even Alberta, which is only about half the population of Québec, has two systems.
Basically, the time has come for Québec City, and I think that the Province of
Québec having a second city that's really starting to develop enough that it has
electric rapid transit -- that's exciting, and it's one of the biggest changes we're
going to see in the Canadian transit scene in a long time.
There are massive synergies - sorry for using the word
synergies - between the Québec City Tramway and projects like VIA HFR,
which will connect Québec City with Montreal Toronto and Ottawa with fast electric trains.
What this means is that new tourists, business people and students visiting Québec City,
they're not going to be loaded onto the city's already crowded buses and road networks.
Instead, they'll have an option to travel on trams, and I think that's fantastic.
Passengers already taking intercity rail are natural users of a high quality public
transit system in a connecting city, and so it makes a lot of sense to build high order
transit in those cities that are getting these major inter-city rail investments
Easy to use and high quality public transit connecting to inter-city rail
also means that passengers getting off VIA Rail trains aren't just going to stay
in the area around the station, but will likely travel to more of the city overall,
spreading the benefit of those improved intercity rail services.
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Now, I'm going to be honest, there's an elephant in the room here.
I've often been skeptical and downright negative on a lot of light rail plans in North America,
so how are things different here?
Well, for one, as I talked about in my video about when cities stop building subways up here,
the rate of a city's growth should have a big influence on the transit decisions a city makes.
Cities which are growing very fast should probably make investments
in higher capacity transit like metro systems and regional rail.
Smaller cities can get away with lighter forms of transit, and transit which has a narrower scope.
And the reality is that while Québec City is growing, it's growing more
slowly than other cities in Canada, and so a tram system does make more sense here.
When you're growing more slowly and when you're already a fairly developed city,
the cost benefit of investing in something like a tram system that isn't going to
be able to grow in capacity as much as say a metro in the future is different.
Basically, trams are well scaled to Québec City today, and probably in the future,
and they can help continue to structure the city
and develop it in a way that's human scaled and supportive of public transit.
There's also the fact that this is a tramway and not LRT,
and I do actually think that's an important distinction to make.
While tramways and LRTs look similar,
I think the distinction in terminology actually reflects a distinction in purpose.
North American light rail systems are far too often built as this sort of catch-all
mode that's supposed to do everything, from being a regional scale connector,
to a dense downtown local transit system, to a rapid transit system.
By comparison, tramways in Europe and in particular France (who has clearly
massively influenced this project) have a much more focused and reasonable niche,
which is high quality local transit service.
This is bus++, not every rail mode in one.
Basically, Québec City is using tram-style vehicles in the right way:
As a high quality urban form of transit, not as a regional connector, and not as rapid transit
And of course, nothing about Québec City's current plans limits the potential for future ones,
so a regional rail system akin to the REM in Montreal
but smaller scale could certainly still happen in the future.
The project is also doing a lot of the hard work to make sure the
quality of the transit and the quality of the design is high,
which is one of the most frustrating things about light rail in North America.
The French influence is front and centre, with beautiful proposed tram designs that
seriously got a lot of attention when they were first announced.
There's also a lot of talk about high quality urban integration and the like.
It just feels like this project has a lot more
heart and soul poured into it than many in North America.
So what's the tramway actually going to look like?
Well the system should have mostly, if not entirely, dedicated lanes sort of dependent
on some of the historical or super dense areas of the city where there may not be enough room
for dedicated transit and private vehicle lanes, but it should be high quality overall.
There's also going to be really high frequency service up to every five minutes during peak
hours, which is almost as frequent as you can go with this style of system, which is exciting.
There's actually also going to be a city centre tunnel, which is actually a pretty
cool feature to see, and something that's again quite uncommon in North America.
Now, the rationale of that city centre tunnel is twofold.
For one, the dense historic core of Québec City will be left uninterrupted,
and this also removes the challenge of trying to integrate a tram into that historic area.
And for two, the massive hillsides around the old part of Québec City present a lot of challenges
for rail transit, because those steep slopes don't really work well with steel wheeled vehicles.
Basically, this tunnel helps to soften out these slopes to make it so that it's tram compatible
Now, the city centre tunnel will feature two stations, which, of course,
will be fully accessible and weather protected, which is going to be really nice, especially for
people visiting the city in winter, which is one of the times you should really visit Québec City.
This will also interestingly make it the sixth underground rail transit system in Canada,
which is pretty cool, if only for a short portion of its route.
What's also cool about the tunnel is that it presents the opportunity to
add a second tramway route that passes through it in the future,
since the capacity through the tunnel will be higher than the capacity on regular city streets,
meaning you could have two routes operating through the tunnel at super high frequencies,
while still maintaining that five minute peak frequency on city streets.
This is something that's pretty common in German cities, known as the Stadtbahn.
Perhaps more interestingly, the vast majority of the system,
which will be at grade, will feature strong signal priority:
Something Canada's biggest cities are still struggling with.
Now, this will be helped along by traffic restrictions, which will help keep trams,
buses, and car traffic moving throughout the corridor.
The plans also call for redesigning streets and utilities so that future construction
doesn't disrupt trams, and so that more space is handed over to pedestrians and cyclists.
This shouldn't have too major of an impact on traffic either, since significant numbers
of people who would previously have been in private cars and buses will now be on trams.
And of course since the trams are zero emissions, air quality should improve in a big way.
Now since the trams are at the centre of the tramway project
(naturally), let's take a look at those.
The first thing to note - and I'm going to sound a bit like a broken record here - is that there's
a lot of inspiration taken from France, which is great because they are really masters of the tram.
North American cities have a spotty record at best at choosing attractive
light rail rolling stock, and so the sleek black tram models that were presented when
Québec City was saying “this is kind of what we're looking at”, they were very nice.
These designs resemble trams seen in places like
Luxembourg and a lot of newer trams in France, and that's great to see.
Though I would love to see the same trams used on T9 in Paris, which are very similar
to the specifications Québec City is looking for, just because of those beautiful lights.
What's also somewhat unusual is the vehicle configuration plan for the tramway,
which again is similar to systems in France.
Instead of relying on multiple trains connected up like you see in places like
Seattle and Edmonton and Toronto's Line 5, the system's instead going to rely on single-unit,
45-metre trams, which are more than double the length of an articulated bus and wider as well.
Since they'll be single units, passengers will be
able to walk the full length of the vehicle which is really nice.
The great thing about this size is that it provides a good mix of high capacity
while also being flexible enough to insert tram stops in lots of different locations,
which is another great feature of a tram system in general is that you can always
add future stops at a pretty low cost, since these stops can be pretty minimal.
Better yet, once again taking inspiration from France, the trams will have a lot more
doors than on the system seen in other places in North America like Ontario.
This might seem like a bit of a minor thing, but having twice as many doors as another
model of tram means that people will be able to get on and off of the vehicle much faster,
and that means a faster journey from end to end.
The cherry on top of all of this is that much like ION in Waterloo,
the trams are set to include wi-fi on board from day one,
which is just a nice feature quality of life-wise, so that passengers can enjoy watching a transit
YouTube video or just scrolling social media while they're riding to their final destination.
So what's the message here?
Well, North America has not done light rail
or trams well in the past, but Québec City really looks to buck the trend here.
The city is still relatively small, and it's in the stage of its development,
where investing in high quality public transit infrastructure makes a ton of sense in terms
of improving sustainability, economic benefit, and just improving people's quality of life.
What's more is that it's not reinventing the wheel, it's looking to high-quality world-class
examples of tramway systems in other countries and trying to do something similar in North America.
All of this can come together to give Québec City the best tram system in North America,
and despite my complaints, that's still a laudable achievement.
Now, while I am generally quite positive,
there are a few things I would probably change if I were to have designed the system myself.
For one, the connection to the VIA Rail station in Québec City isn't great,
and especially with High Frequency Rail, this is actually a really important thing.
Thousands of people use the VIA Rail station in Québec City every year,
and even though the walk from the station to the nearest tram stop will only be about 10 minutes,
that's going to be pretty rough if you're carrying luggage, or if it's the dead of winter.
At the same time, the original plans have been cut back in scope,
which means less coverage and less benefits than were originally expected.
That said, there are a number of fantastic elements of the plan as well
that you don't necessarily see that often anywhere.
For one, the plans call for really nice covered transit exchanges,
which will provide weather protection and make the transfer from bus to trams seamless.
At the same time, the choice of trams for the mode is really good, because what it means is
that the cost of extending the system or expanding it with more vehicles should be
much more within the ballpark of what the city can achieve, and so I wouldn't be surprised if
you see short future extensions to places like the airport and the VIA Rail station.
Better yet, with those extensions, you'd be taking buses off of those routes, and you could
reallocate them to other services to further feed the tramway and improve its ridership.
The project is also really exciting from a resiliency point of view.
As we know, weather is getting harsher, and more unpredictable and trams will perform a
lot better in winter weather in particular than the buses they'll be replacing.
The large underground stations and even just the standard tram stops will also be
a lot more hospitable, especially in winter than traditional transit stops in the city.
Even the operations and maintenance facility is incorporating some interesting winter
adaptations, which include fully enclosing the tram storage tracks,
which is something you don't really see very often.
I thought it was pretty cool.
So all in all, I'm positive on the Québec city tramway project.
It's scaled to the city appropriately, uses grade separation,
and best of all it's going to set the standard for design and planning for
North American tram systems, which is great to see for a city’s first rail transit system.
Beyond that, it'll help to spread the great transit development we've been seeing across
much of the country to a city that's for far too long not seen that investment,
which is huge not just for Québec but for all of Canada.
So what do you think about the Québec City tramway project?
Let me know in the comments down below.
And as always, thanks for watching.
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