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Trams, trains and airplanes in Montreal

prof's picture
Posted by prof on January 15th, 2008 at 10:32 am | 1 Replies

Small steps yet... but the City of Montreal appears to be seriously considering (again) a rail link to Dorval airport and the West Island - and Lachine is seeking to revive a tram line to downtown. (Tram-train link to West Island studied; http://tinyurl.com/3e2ltu ).

I'm all for the tram line, as I feel it could do a lot to reduce congestion in the downtown area. But is the Dorval train not just in time for a PO-induced reduction in air travel? Should we be encouraging more investment in the high-speed rail line between Montreal and TO (Quebec-Windsor)? Justin Bur of Transport 2000 Canada suggests the latter, but he seems to be walking carefully near the question of air feasibility.

"What the population [in this corridor] is not sufficient for, however, is building high-speed rail while also retaining all the air traffic. Airlines and politicians are legitimately worried about the risk of destabilizing the fragile Canadian air transport system. The way out of this problem is not for lobbyists to block high-speed rail, but rather for airlines to negotiate favorable terms for using high-speed trains to transport passengers bearing airline tickets. This is common practice in Western Europe and of benefit to traveller and airline alike." See http://tinyurl.com/2sqgcf .

Is anyone familiar with the European arrangements in this regard?

justinbb's picture
justinbb
February 23rd, 2008

European air/rail intermodality

I'm the author of the letter to the Gazette. When I wrote about airlines using rail services as part of their network, I was thinking of the following examples:

  • In Switzerland, poster child for intermodality, the Fly Rail program has since the 1980s offered train access to Geneva and Zurich airports with baggage check-in and delivery at the passenger's home rail station. See SBB - Check-in at the railstation
  • In Germany, Lufthansa offers ICE (high-speed rail) trips from Frankfurt airport to Cologne and Stuttgart. See Lufthansa - AIRail - The train to your flight
  • Between Belgium and the major airports at Paris–Charles-de-Gaulle and Schiphol (Amsterdam), Thalys high-speed rail replaces KLM or Air France flights. To and from Schiphol, Thalys may be substituted on request for KLM short-haul flights. The Thalys between Paris and Brussels operates as an Air France codeshare (there are no longer any Air France flights on this route).

There are other examples, and there is even a literature on the subject. See for example Potential and limitations of air-rail links – a general overview (2004), by Andreas Eichinger and Andreas Knorr of Universität Bremen, which includes a bibliography.

Justin Bur, Montréal