The Gazette’s Linda Gyulai has an article about some railway buffs criticizing Montreal’s plan for commuter rail service, specifically the route of the Train de l’Est (stupidly running from Terrebonne east to Repentigny instead of running west through Laval, using existing tracks, to the de la Concorde metro station) and the apparent abandoning of the plan to use the Doney Spur, which splits from the Deux-Montagnes train line near Highway 13 and runs between Hymus and the 40 west to Stillview.
One important correction to the story: It mentions the building of a Home Depot west of St. John’s Blvd on top of old Doney Spur right-of-way. In fact, it’s east of St. John’s, which mean any rail link to Fairview (which would still have to cross Highway 40 somehow) would have to run through, under or around this new hardware store.
Here’s a bonus for you: A YouTube video of rail buff Avrom Shtern asking Pierrefonds/Roxboro mayor Monique Worth about the Doney Spur in March, and having her give the kind of non-answer that you’d expect to find in a first-chapter exercise of Politics For Dummies.
Hi, it’s good to know that you saw the story, also even back on July 9th, I was on the phone with Avrom chatting about the mistake Ms.Gyulai did as to on what side of St.John’s that Home De(s)pot is building their store. Also even with the store there, it is still possible get around it by using street trackage on Holiday, but Home De(s)pot has just made things more complicated.
Though the a really big problem in regards to protecting the Doney Spur’s right of way is that the mayor of Pointe-Claire Bill McMurchie seems to be operating in a different world than that of normal people. For example I’d go to Pointe-Claire city council meetings and talk about protecting the Doney right of way to Stillview, then he’d come come back and say:”the right of way doesn’t exist”. Then I’d say to my self. WFT this is BS? I was there the other day. For the mayor to say that, he might as well have told me that Pointe-Claire suffers from nightly rampant elephant attacks. Dude, WAKE THE F*CK UP!
In transit, Andrew Dawson