Completing the last phase

This last preparatory phase lasted 41 days, according to Daniel Choquette, assistant to contract administrators at the Metropolitan Transport Agency (AMT). The dry runs were intended to test the crossing times of trains and the patterns of arrivals and departures at the new stations under the central management of the Montreal Metro, explained AMT spokesperson Mélanie Nadeau.

The trains going back and forth between Montreal and Laval these past weeks were not the first to roll on the tracks, having been preceded by trains that were part of reduced-speed trial runs held for the past couple of months. The aim of that exercise launched in December of 2006 was to test the 15,000 networks of the system, with signals coordination getting top priority.

The value of these simulation exercises became clearly evident during one of these recent daily tests, when a minor derailment occurred, necessitating some adjustment to the faulty track which had been placed at a curve deemed much too sharp for the trains to handle effectively.

The simulation and dry runs of the Laval Metro took four months to complete – from December 2006 to end of April 2007.

(Photo: Martin Alarie)