Living near the REM track
Montreal’s Réseau express métropolitain light rail network made its debut with ceremonies on Friday. The first trips Friday on the 16.6-kilometer (10.3-mile) segment between Central Station and Brossard were a prelude to open-house events and free public rides today (July 29) and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Regular service will begin on Monday, July 31.
After new owners moved into their condo in Nuns island Pointe-Nord in spring, they spent a blissful afternoon out on their new balcony.

They basked in the sun, which washes their living room and bedroom with light from the southeast. They tilted their head up to the blue sky. And they looked out at the view.

Their buildings, Evolo, are facing to the Light Rail Transit. Beyond is the track on the Samuel de Champlain bridge serving the Réseau Métropolitain Express (REM). The new owners who paid $570,000 for their one bedroom condo, see the REM rolling by as they get ready for work in the morning.

And these days, the Griffintown and Nuns Island Pointe-Nord new owners are not the only Montrealers with light train tracks as front yards. As developers scramble for construction sites, parcels near light train tracks and elevated lines have been snapped up for new residential development. Many of the sites — previously occupied by vacant lands — are being used for condo and rental projects that are substantially taller than what was there before and, in some cases, decidedly high-end.
Brossard, Kirland, and Pointe-Claire and, in particular, are getting their share of track-side projects as development continues to spread out from Montreal.

Such projects may call for the addition of rubber pads on building support columns to absorb vibration; they most definitely require windows designed to buffer noise. “It’s not like in an old tenement building where you had the windows open and had to stop talking while the train went by and wait until it’s gone and then carry on.”

Of course, Montrealers have long lived in apartments where they might hear or even feel a distant rumbling of the subway underground, specifically in Côtes-des-Neiges Snowdon. But the fact that so many montrealers are living close to aboveground trains is a recent phenomenon.

The REM light train rolls at the maximum of 100 km per hour between the Panama station in Brossard and Griffintown station. As the train approaches Griffintown, the buildings layout form a barrier wall reverberating the train wheels sound. The noise is inconvenient, staying near the REM is by far the best location in Montreal, reaching soon Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in 30 minutes. Location, layout, view, buyers have another criteria, the train noise. Which building and which unit is the best?

As anyone involved in Montreal real estate is quick to point out, there is simply a limited amount of land to build on. With the city in the midst of a housing crisis, developers are reconsidering sites they might have rejected in the past, such as the Old Port Silo #5 site, part of the Montreal Bridge-Bonaventure future development project, snapped up by Devimco.

Improvements in window technology have made living by trains possible. As late as the 1970s, single-pane windows were still the norm. But in the aftermath of the energy crisis, double-pane windows — the ones with an air space between the inner and outer glass — were adopted in the name of thermal insulation. These windows also had the benefit of reducing outside noise from entering apartments.