It's a French thing.

Anglos would write $50K.

North Americans also write 50G for $50,000 dollars. They also have 12 hour clocks.

:)

Now that you mention it, it's true that you hear "50Gs" in NA English speech now and then. My experience is that "50K" is as common or more common though. (Not sure about the geographic prevelance of either though - if such a thing exists.)

It seems to me that I see 50K way more often in writing though.

The project is not just an interchange.

Highway 20 and 720 are being rebuilt from scratch and widened on 6km between Montreal-Ouest and Atwater.

Highway 15 is being rebuilt from scratch and widened on 3km between Atwater and Upper Lachine. This involves rebuilding the St-Jacques and Lachine Canal Bridges.

Also, the CN tracks are being relocated north of the 20.

In terms of scope, it's like if Toronto was tearing down and rebuilding from scratch not only the 401/DVP interchange but also the whole DVP and the viaducts over it, all the way down to Bloor.

I noticed that outside Quebec, almost all urban public passenger operators use the 12-hour clock. The only exceptions I found were Ottawa, Moncton and GO Transit. (But TTC uses the 12-hour clock.)

VIA Rail uses the 24-hour clock of course, as does Canada's military.

It doesn't happen that often but it's weird to meet a person who's set off by something like 21h00 as a time.

"50Gs" means "50 grand", a "grand" being slang for a thousand dollars.

I don't know when I started, but I tend to use the 24 hr clock in anything written, while sticking to the 12 hour clock when I speak.

Something that I've noticed is that the 24 hour clock is slowly creeping into informal spoken French here. (It's already dominant in formal spoken French here.)

There are short cuts when people use it, so it's not the very long "vingt-et-un-heures-quarante-cinq" style you may hear in France...

The conversations would go like this:

- Quelle heure est-il?

- Dix-sept cinquante.

- Merci.

I think it would be a hard sell in spoken English - sounds too military, somehow.

Lots of these types of things are a hard sell with you guys! :haha:

Understand that, understand us!

It's like I have to dumb down my language for toothless plebes.

Going back a bit; At least YYYY/MM/DD is something everyone can agree on as opposed to MM/DD/YYYY vs DD/MM/YYYY.

Yup. Although MM/DD/YYYY is the most illogical one of them all by far, as there is no "order of size" and the English language logic it is based on (June 14, 2017) is not even used in much of the anglosphere, where today's date is actually written 14 June 2017.

It actually makes my blood boil in Quebec when I occasionally see electronic devices (Interac terminals, cash registers, etc.) are programmed with MM/DD/YYYY, automatically as a default I suppose. It just doesn't make sense to me, and makes even less sense in Quebec.

Criikey, life is far too short to let little things like that to make your blood boil.

OK maybe I exaggerated a bit.

Wow. I don't check in for a day or two and there are three pages worth of non-aviation bullshit to read through...;)

No such thing will happen. ADM is fully invested in YUL. They will expand the shit out of it before they ever consider moving anything back to YMX. Plenty of options available for YUL to expand. With a bit of taxiway tweaking, the runways can handle almost double what they do now, and that's with runway 10/28 out of the picture. So asphalt is not an issue. Only terminal space is. That will get sorted as well. Wait for a new master plan in the coming months. All will be revealed.

How much can they expand? If we are conservative (5% yearly growth), YUL will have 27 million passengers in 10 years. What about after (since you will need 2-3 years to build the terminal at YMX)?

I think the current terminal can handle 25 million passengers. Don't know where you got the 20 million number, but I think it is very conservative. 25 million can be easily reached with a bit of improvements to the currrent terminal. Road access to the building has to improve (which is in the plans), REM will help ease car congestion (in the plans), and congestion hot spots at the airport need to get adressed (in the plans, customs, intl baggage hall, check in desks). All these factors combined, and I think 25 million with the current infrastructure is achievable.

Second. With an additional terminal (remote aeroquay a la ZRH), YUL can easily handle 30-35 million passengers. That should be good enough for the next 20-25 years.

So your idea of moving to YMX in 5-10 years time, it ain't gonna happen, I can guarantee it.

I don't think we will ever go back to YMX .... its too far!...There is enough space to make YUL bigger.