Last week, the STM held a public consultation in the West Island, bravely exposing itself to the onslaught of residents with a lot of time on their hands and just as many complaints about how everything is run.

During the consultation, STM planning director François Pépin explained some changes that are coming to West Island bus routes over the coming years. Some changes will happen as early as next March while others will wait until 2009 or 2010.

Specifically:

• 40 new buses will be added to west island routes, 10 of which will be used for between-rush-hour service and 30 to synchronize with AMT train schedules, particularly at Roxboro-Pierrefonds and Beaconsfield.
• Buses, in general, will have headway reduced from 30 minutes to 18 minutes.
• 72 Alfred-Nobel, which serves the Ville-Saint-Laurent industrial park during rush hour, would be extended westward to the Fairview terminus.
• 207 Jacques-Bizard (which goes from Fairview to Ile Bizard) and 208 Brunswick (Fairview to Roxboro/Pierrefonds train station via Brunswick and Sources) will be merged in two years, making an East-West line along de Salaberry that doesn’t stop at Fairview. It would, for the first time in decades, mean no direct link between Fairview and Ile Bizard. (I find this move questionable, since the vast majority of 207 bus users take it to the shopping centre and don’t transfer to the 208.)
• 209 Des Sources will go from a rush-hour to an all-day (weekday) bus in March. It’s the only bus that goes all the way down Sources Blvd., from the Roxboro-Pierrefonds to Dorval train stations. Its southern end would reach Dorval via Donegani instead of Lakeshore.
• 210 John Abbott will begin operating in the summer and during school holidays, all day on weekdays, to better serve the growing industrial sector in Kirkland, starting in June 2008. It will also be extended eastward to Roxboro/Pierrefonds train station. Right now it acts mainly as a shuttle between Fairview and John Abbott College during the morning and afternoon.
• 212 would be a new bus route in a few years from Chateau-Pierrefonds to the Roxboro/Pierrefonds train station via streets just south of Pierrefonds Blvd. such as Antoine-Faucon, Oakwood, Shakespeare and Anselme-Lavigne. Montreal transit historians will remember 212 as the old Lakeshore bus line, which more or less doubled the 211 during rush hour.

New proposed 212 bus route - View Larger Map

• 218 Antoine-Faucon (serving northeast Kirkland and western Pierrefonds during rush hour) would be extended eastward from Fairview along Brunswick Blvd. and down Sources to Lakeshore and then to the Dorval terminus in the long-term, once that terminus is reworked.
• 219 Chemin Sainte-Marie (Rush-hour from Fairview to the Kirkland industrial park) would have a more simplified route starting in June, cutting the travel time by 5 minutes.
• 268 Trainbus Pierrefonds, which is a limited-stop one-way rush hour bus (which goes eastbound into Cartierville in the morning but starts its afternoon westbound run at Roxboro/Pierrefonds) would be extended to Cote-Vertu in June 2008. I’m not sure if this means it’ll operate westbound from the station as well, but that would provide a good option for residents of eastern Pierrefonds who have to use two buses to get to the metro.
• Two new direct-to-airport shuttles will be added, one from downtown and one from the orange line (I’m assuming either the Lionel-Groulx metro or Du College). Currently people have to take the overcrowded 211 and then transfer at Dorval, waiting up to a half-hour for the connecting 204 bus.

The last major reorganization of West Island bus routes happened in 1996, which saw the creation of the 207, 217, 218, 219, 225, 261 and 268 bus routes, and significant route changes to most of the others.

There was also discussion of the Doney Spur (not the Donnie Spur as the Chronicle calls it), a rail line that splits off from the Deux-Montagnes line at Highway 13 and travels along Hymus until just before St. John’s Blvd. But since commuter trains are the AMT’s jurisdiction, the STM couldn’t comment.

See also:

• August 26, 2008 -- STM adds service, but still short on buses
• July 22, 2008 -- Bus route suggestions on the cheap
• July 14, 2008 -- STM to add evening service to downtown routes