As I drove by the abandoned Rona home improvement store in my community, I wondered if the sale of Bombardier to Alstom would result in substantial job losses in Canada. In 2016, the American hardware giant Lowe’s bought Quebec-based Rona Inc. The result was the closing of 34 stores.  In 2017, the transportation giants France based multinational Alstom and Germany based multinational Siemens AG wanted to merge to fight off the growing threat of the national Chinese rail company, China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC). Bombardier was also trying to merge with Siemens AG. Siemens AG picked Alstom to merge their train divisions with. European competition authorities nixed the idea. Now France-based multinational Alstom has come to an agreement to buy the half-a-century-old train division of Bombardier Transportation for US $6.7 billion. According to the Montreal Gazette newspaper, the deal will see the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec become Alstom’s biggest shareholder ...

  There has been 65 years worth of studies and there still is no monorail in Canada operating as part of public transit system.  TrensQuébec High Speed Monorail Conceptual Design Montreal to Quebec City High Speed Monorail Proposal - 2008 - Present Quebec physicist Dr. Pierre Couture spent most of his career working at Hydro-Québec, Between 1982 and 1995, working with a small budget, the team developed an electric-powered motor-wheel. Mr. Couture had developed a high speed rail suspended monorail based on this technology. A group formed with Jean-Pierre Marchand, director TrensQuébec , and Pierre Langlois, physicist and specialist in sustainable mobility to promote this technology.  The idea was to run a high speed suspended monorail from Montreal to Quebec-City and other locations. It could run at 250 km/h.

 Le projet de monorail à grande vitesse Québec-Montréal progresse NOTE: English version follows this article.  Agence QMI, Lundi 16 avril 2018  Les promoteurs du monorail à grande vitesse entre Québec et Montréal, qui ont dévoilé leur projet en novembre, poursuivent leur travail, qui progresse bien. Selon eux, le monorail se distingue de deux façons. «Le gros, gros avantage du monorail, c'est que toute la motorisation se fait au-dessus et est protégée par un dôme, a expliqué Patrick Leclaire, de la Coop MGV, en entrevue à TVA Nouvelles. Donc, toutes les problématiques par rapport au climat, bien, on ne les vit pas. On n'a pas besoin de déneiger, déglacer le verglas. On n'a aucune problématique parce que, non seulement c'est recouvert, mais, en plus, c'est un environnement contrôlé.» monorail à grande vitesse Québec-Montréal La première maquette présentée par les promoteurs montre de quoi aurait l'air le monorail: un train aérien qui filerait à 250...

TRENS Québec High Speed Monorail We have added the recent video  Un monorail Québec / Montréal? on our youtube page. It is a recent look at the idea of a high speed monorail in Quebec. It is in french. CLICK here to view it.

TRENS Québec Monorail Concept We have loaded the french and english CPAC videos relating to the TRENS Québec Émission spéciale Monorail on our  High Speed Rail Canada Youtube page. We did this preservce access to them for the future. Click HERE for the english versiona and HERE for the french version.

Opinion Column - I have blindly supported Bombardier for decades in hopes they would lead a passenger rail renewal in Canada. Sadly recent events have lead me to the conclusion that it may be time to look outside of Canada for passenger rail companies. These companies are willing to lobby the government for modern passenger rail service, build their trains here and deliver them on time. Here are a couple events in Bombardier's past.. In 2002, I advocated strongly for Bombardier and their Jet Train. They made the large financial decision to actually build a demonstration vehicle. They promoted the Jet Train for corridor use in several locations in Canada and the USA. Sadly the timing was wrong as both the Canadian and USA governments were being run by anti-passenger rail leaders in 2003 and funding was never given to buy any Jet Trains. I even supported Bombardier in 2004 when their Canadian made Las Vegas monorail had parts fall off the monorail vehicles to the gro...

Kim and Carol Pedersen It is with great sadness that I have learned about the passing of Kim Pedersen the founder of the Monorail Society. I started contacting Kim about 25 years. I had collected some local monorail history in Ontario and PEI and wanted to share it with him. I also thought at the time that Niagara Falls Ontario would be a great city to put a monorail in and wanted some advocacy suggestions. I was always amazed at his passion for monorails. His website was the bible on everything monorail. He even wrote a book on them. He helped update everyone about what was going on around the world as it related to monorails. A bunch of years had passed and I emailed him some questions and as usual he was gracious to answer them. He definitely influenced me in rail advocacy. His passion for monorails went far beyond what I could  ever muster up relating to fighting for improved speeds with passenger rail in Canada. Here is a neat video of when he built a small monorail ...

1964 Futuristic Vision of  Transportation Systems in 1980 A 1964 vision of what a typical highway running through an American City would look like in 1980. What really happened to this vision? CLICK HERE FOR LARGE SIZE OF ABOVE GRAPHIC   In 1964, the Philadelphia Enquirer posted a graphic of what a typical American city would look like in 1980 with a highway going through it. Looking at this graphic now in 2016, with the present state of our transportation systems and how our highways connect to our Canadian and USA cities, we see how badly we need a renewed vision for the future.  By 1964 the tearing up and elimination of the inner city streetcar systems was well underway, as the automotive and rubber tire manufacturers of the USA decided more room was needed for the cars they were building. Please watch this video “ Taken for a Ride ” for more information on this issue.  The massive highway building that started in the late 1950s and their contin...