Dorval-downtown train project resurrected

"This time, all the parties concerned are on board," said Henri-Paul Martel, director of the Aéroports de Montréal's engineering centre. The costs of the $300,000 feasibility study will be split between the airport, the AMT, Transport Canada and the government of Quebec.

The line is expected to cost $500 million to $700 million. According to Martel, the partners of the project are looking to follow a similar model to the current Vancouver Canada line. Expected to be finished in 2009, that rail linking the Vancouver International Airport to the city and its suburbs will be financed mostly by Transport Canada, the city of Vancouver, the province of British Columbia and the Vancouver Airport Authority, with one third of costs paid through private funding.

Martel said the high-speed train should ideally run every 20 minutes, the same time it would take it to reach downtown Montreal from the airport.

This projected increase in frequency, along with an extension of services from 4 am to 1 am, would give West Islanders who take the Montreal/Rigaud or Montreal/Deux-Montagnes lines to get into town now a clear advantage. Currently, twenty-three trains per day depart from Montreal/Deux-Montagnes toward downtown Montreal on weekdays, and eleven from Montreal/Rigaud.

It is unclear which parts of the West Island the rail line would go through on the western side of the airport, but Martel said that ideally it would go further than Rigaud, currently the last station.

Dorval Mayor Edgar Rouleau also welcomed the news, though he hoped for service every 10 to 15 minutes. "The Highway 20 is always stuck in traffic," he said. "This train could take some of that traffic away."

He said the priority should be linking Montreal to the airport, with the remaining links to the West Island coming in afterward. He compared the trip from Montreal to the airport with its equivalent in Atlanta. Whereas there, you can grab a subway or train right from the airport and head downtown, in Montreal, "you get off the plane and you have this list of 20 different buses you have to take," he said.

A study commissioned by ADM years ago on a potential decrease in traffic due to a rail line between the airport and downtown estimated that 450,000 cars a year would be taken off the road based on airport access alone.

The companies hired for the consultation are Tecsult, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Convercité. The latter's mandate includes talking to any West Island boroughs or municipalities that the rail line might cross.

The results from the feasibility project for the Dorval-Montreal-West Island rail should be available by the end of summer 2008, according to Martel.