I thought it worth noting that Quebec City this week signed a $1.3 billion contract with Alstom Canada to buy and maintain 34 electric light rail vehicles (LRVs) to serve its new rail transit system. Construction of the 19.3 km long "Tramway" is set to begin by the end of this year or early next and be complete by 2029.
The Quebec project was first proposed in 2000 and it has gone through several iterations since then (including a short-lived proposal to convert it to a bus rapid transit system). The line will include a 1.8 km underground section and will have 29 stations.
Earlier plans for extensions to the suburbs of Charlesbourg and (across the St. Lawrence) to Charny and Levis were dropped, at least for now. The projected construction cost, somewhere around $4 billion, will be shared by the city, the province and the feds.
The LRVs are Alstom's Citadis Spirit model, built at its (former Bombardier) plant in La Pocatiere QC. OC Transpo in Ottawa and Metrolinx in Toronto have bought the same model. One LRV will carry up to 260 passengers, and the system is designed to deliver 3900-passenger miles per hour.
Alstom Citadis Spirit LRV in Ottawa. Source:
Youngjin, Wikimedia Commons
The
city says the LRV will "alleviate road congestion, reduce the impact of mobility on the environment and air quality, improve the quality of life for residents and further enhance the attractiveness of Quebec City." They're projecting an additional 10 million transit trips a year, a 30% increase over current ridership.
Quebec will become the eighth metropolitan area in Canada with rail transit; Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal are the others. Systems are also at some level of planning or development in Gatineau, Hamilton, and Peel/Brampton.
The population of the Quebec CMA is 840,000. compared to Halifax's 481,000; planning for the system began in 2000, when the population was at 680,000.