Officials with the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) have announced new mitigation measures to dramatically reduce the noise emanating from the trains on the line to the South Shore.
New brick-size rubber absorbers will be installed on the sides of the tracks at key points between the Montreal Gare Centrale station and Nuns’ Island. These sound dampeners are supposed to reduce the noise and vibrations emitted just beneath the rail bed.
Officials also plan to have the tracks go through a sort of sanding process known as power grinding, to reduce the noise made between the contact point of the steel wheels and the tracks.
The two measures are supposed to reduce noise levels by five to 10 decibels, making the trains three to 10 times quieter to the human ear.
“It’s not something that is designed out of nowhere. It’s really measures that have been implemented in other rail systems,” Jean-Marc Arbaud, the CDPQ-Infra CEO, said at a press conference.
Complaints about the noise have been piling up since tests began last spring. Arbaud says some sound measurements were initially taken and more recently noise levels were read at seven points near residential neighbourhoods.
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People living near the tracks are hoping the new mitigation measures will work but they’re not convinced.
“I can be skeptical and I am because I’m surprised they haven’t done that from the start,” Marc Vidricaire told Global News.
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The homeowner lives in a condominium that’s at eye level with the elevated tracks of the REM.
He says he could rarely sit on his balcony during the summer because of the noise.
“We really did not enjoy the outside as much as we did in the past. We had no dinner outside because it was too noisy,” he said.
REM officials considered installing new sound barriers but ruled it wouldn’t produce the desired results.
Power grinding all the tracks on the line to the South Shore is scheduled to occur over five days in November. Train service is supposed to stop as of 10 p.m. so workers can do the job overnight.
The rubber sound absorbers are scheduled to be installed on the side of the tracks between mid-October and mid-December.
The entire sound reduction measures are anticipated to cost less than $10 million, according to Arbaud.
The CEO says the grinding of all the tracks on the entire 67-kilometre network in greater Montreal is also being planned.
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