The actual improvements to bus service aren’t quite as dramatic as the long press release would make it seem. Part of the reason is that the STM simply doesn’t have enough buses to meet up with all the increased service it wants. More are being manufactured, but won’t arrive here until next year.

Nevertheless, there are some highlights in the new schedules:

New route: 480 Pointe-Nord-Île-des-Soeurs (plus collective taxi)

The 480 route, which was first announced back in April, finally gets started. It’s an express link between downtown and Nuns’ Island’s new Bell campus. That route will also be paired with a collective taxi service which will run between the campus and Nuns’ Island’s commercial area during lunchtime.

New “seniors” routes: 252, 253, 254

What do you do when a pilot project fails miserably? Try it again in another place without changing any of the things that were wrong with it, of course. After trying “seniors” routes in NDG and Côte des Neiges, the STM is repeating the experiment in Montreal North, Saint Michel and Rosemont.

Like the previous incarnation, these buses will only run on certain days (and it’s not the same days for each bus), during midday, on a confusingly circular route at unreasonably large intervals of between 50 and 80 minutes. The latter two will also use minibuses, which are high-floor buses (it’s unclear if they’ll have lifts like adapted transit buses do) and tough to get into for older people.

The stops will be identified with the same yellow signs as the previous versions, even though yellow signs also indicate temporary routes (like the shuttle running through Georges-Vanier metro) and tourist routes (like the 515 Old Port bus)

470 adds weekend service

As part of its incremental increases to service to the 470 Express Pierrefonds, a route described (repeatedly) as a “home run” by STM director Marvin Rotrand, the STM has finally added weekend service for the first time. Service will be provided in both directions between 6:30am and 6:30pm, at intervals ranging from 20 minutes (during weekend rush-hour times) and 30 minutes (around noon). That’s great, only it took them a year to do it.

103 service intervals to plummet

Service intervals on the 103 Monkland will drop dramatically next week during all hours of service. On weekdays during the day, intervals will be closer to 10-12 minutes than the current 15-20, and during rush hour it will drop below the 6-minutes-or-less threshold.

On Saturdays, morning eastbound service will be at 15 minutes instead of 20. Westbound, intervals will drop from 20 minutes to 15 from 1-4pm, and from 30 minutes to 20 minutes during the evenings.

Sunday’s schedule stays mostly the same.

Neighbourhood routes get later evening hours (but only during weekdays)

Following up on a promise to offer late-evening service to certain routes, new schedules for five seven-day routes show less truncated weekday schedules, which will now end closer to the metro’s closing time of 1am. Weekend service, however, will remain unaffected and still end as early as previously:

• 29 Rachel (service ends at midnight instead of 11pm)
• 31 Saint-Denis (service ends at 1am instead of 7:30pm)
• 61 Wellington (service ends at 12:30/1am instead of 9:15pm)
• 78 Laurendeau (service ends at 1:30am instead of 11pm)
• 138 Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (service ends at 12/1am instead of 7pm)

Sundays start earlier on the West Island

Anyone who’s tried to get around the West Island early on a Sunday morning quickly realized that it’s not possible before 9am. For some arcane reason, service starts at 7am on Saturdays, but everyone’s expected to just sleep in on Sundays. Only certain routes like the 68 or 211 offer any service before 9am. That changes next week, as the late-rising routes through Fairview start getting up at 7am instead of 9:

• 200 Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue
• 201 Saint-Charles-Saint-Jean
• 202 Dawson
• 203 Carson
  
• 206 Roger-Pilon
• 207 Jacques-Bizard
• 208 Brunswick
• 217 Anse-à-l’Orme
  

Seven-day buses with slightly improved service during rush hour:

• 47 Masson
• 95 Bélanger
• 97 Mont-Royal
• 140 Fleury (except for westbound morning rush-hour which goes from a 30-minute interval to a 17-minute one)
  

(Barely) extended rush hours, up to 1 hour on each side:

• 143 Métrobus Charleroi
• 148 Métrobus Maurice-Duplessis
• 182 Métrobus Sherbrooke
• 184 Métrobus Bout-de-l’Île
• 410 Express Notre-Dame
• 460 Métropolitaine (though mitigated by a slight reduction in frequency)
  

Existing “all-day” (but not evening or weekend) routes whose service will end at 7pm instead of 6:30pm:

• 159 Métrobus Henri-Bourassa
• 173 Métrobus Victoria (Westbound only)
• 190 Métrobus Lachine (Westbound only)
• 199 Métrobus Lacordaire (plus slightly tighter schedule with more departures during morning rush hour)
• 420 Express Notre-Dame-de-Grâce

Service reductions advertised as service increases

Perhaps there was a mixup of some sort. But comparing schedules, it seems there are actually slight reductions in the service on two routes where the STM has advertised slight increases:

• 268 Trainbus Pierrefonds: Two fewer departures eastbound cutting service after 4pm, three fewer departures westbound cutting service before 9:30am. In exchange, two extra departures at the end of rush hour westbound.
• 430 Express Pointe-aux-Trembles: One fewer departure westbound in early morning

UPDATE: The papers have stories on the schedule changes. La Presse, notably, mentions nothing about the 470 weekend service nor the earlier Sundays for routes going through Fairview. I guess they think the West Island doesn’t matter.

See also:

• July 22, 2008 — Bus route suggestions on the cheap
• July 14, 2008 — STM to add evening service to downtown routes
• June 25, 2008 — On the 515

Ad for Terry DiMonte in Monday's Gazette

Corus announced today that Terry DiMonte, the former CHOM morning man who left for Q107 in Calgary because CHOM wasn’t prepared to offer him a long-term contract, will return to Montreal’s airwaves starting Sept. 8 with a noon-hour talk/music show on Q92.

What’s missing from Corus’s press release, and the Presse Canadienne rewriting of it, is that DiMonte isn’t physically returning to Montreal. He’s still hosting his morning show in Calgary. Only now, after his morning shift, he’ll stay in studio and do the Montreal show remotely.

This isn’t the first time that a broadcaster has done “local” programming remotely and tried to fool people (Joe Cannon was famous for it and Global Quebec is introducing it), but the fact that Corus left it out of its press release suggests that their goal is to deliberately mislead Montreal listeners.

Fortunately, I’m relatively confident DiMonte has the moral fortitude not to outright lie to his listeners (saying “here in Montreal” or pretending his weather is the same as ours).

The Gazette’s Bill Brownstein has more.

See also:

• June 25, 2008 — MP3 isn’t good enough for Corus
• May 15, 2008 — The Mario Dumont Show
• February 13, 2008 — Terry DiMonte’s secure financial future

It’s even worse if “other people” is “the general public”

See also:

• August 15, 2008 — Take a bike tour of Rosemont
• August 2, 2008 — Name at least three things wrong with this picture
• July 13, 2008 — Street sale mania

Victory.

(Full results, including Vancouver and Toronto. Canada and China are the only countries represented by more than one city.)

UPDATE: The loser cities are taking it in stride:

• Toronto’s mayor says his city is “affordable” (read: sketchy). (Also: there’s a Spider-Man 3 version of Monopoly?)
• The Vancouver Province calls its finish “not bad,” and then makes fun of Toronto for landing the less-valuable States Avenue. Except Toronto is on Virginia Avenue. Then to illustrate its point, it posts a picture of States Avenue in Atlantic City. Except it’s actually Massachusetts Avenue.
• The Winnipeg Sun says ‘Peggers did a “great job” in its attempt to get in as a wild card, but ultimately failed. (And can we stop with the “passing Go” puns, please?)

See also:

• February 5, 2008 — Boardwalk

A similar thing happens at the West Island Chronicle, which issued this “clarification” for an article it printed last week (which is no longer online):

In an article called “Catering to a tinier crowd,” (The Chronicle, Aug. 13, 2008, Back to School p. 3), it was implied that Yummy Tummy Catering will provide individual hot lunches for schoolchildren as well as for larger daycare centre orders. The company will only provide cold lunches for individual order. The article also implied the catering company was told by Lester B. Pearson school board it could go meet with individual schools to see whether or not they could do business with them. However, this was the company’s own initiative. Yummy Tummy can be contacted at 514-967-9318, not the number reported erroneously in the original article. The Chronicle regrets the error.

First of all, there is more than one error here. “Clarification” and “error” should be plural.

The first error says that it was “implied” that the company would provide individual hot lunches. But the article more than implied it:

When Andrea Levy and Stacey Park noticed some of their acquaintances simply did not have the time to prepare food for their children to take to school but did not want to leave them without a home-cooked meal for lunch, they had an idea. … “Not everybody takes part in the hot lunches (provided) at the schools,” explained Levy … The idea is to provide hot lunches to kids who need it at school … Officials at the latter told them they would have to meet with individual schools to find out where hot lunches are provided …

The second and third errors are simple factual errors (bad phone numbers are a common problem, and this one was off by one digit).

This isn’t a clarification, it’s a series of corrections.

Let’s get it right next time, folks.

See also:

• August 14, 2008 — CTV Montreal’s $23,600 “clarification”
• August 12, 2008 — NBC is lying to you
• August 7, 2008 — CBC needs to check its watch

(A comment could be made here about these municipal and borough-funded parties that only civil servants and their friends even know about, and how they waste taxpayer money on things that are completely pointless, but that’s another post)

See also:

• April 14, 2008 — Suburban border security
• November 23, 2007 — Gas company critics are hypocrites
• November 15, 2007 — Greek flag is visual pollution

See also:

• September 24, 2007 — YAGB: Fashion shopping blog
• August 6, 2008 — More traffic to Gazette blogs solves newspaper crisis
• August 2, 2008 — Gazette starting Olympics page, photographer blog

See also:

• August 12, 2008 — By-election politicians on Facebook
• July 26, 2008 — The by-election campaign has begun
• July 5, 2008 — ALD for NDP

When I first wrote about the battle in April, I was unsure of my position, but leaning toward the idea that because journalists did not make any promises of anonymity to their subjects, there should be no reason why they can’t co-operate with police.

But after the more recent riot in Montreal North, where a La Presse photographer was attacked, I’m leaning more toward the idea that journalists can’t do their jobs properly if they can be forced to act as an arm of law enforcement (especially when that law enforcement sits blocks away waiting for backup while the journalists enter the war zone).

I won’t for a moment defend rioters, but I take some comfort in the legal precedent that journalists won’t be seen as cops. Of course, anything they end up publishing can still be used by police, so it’s still a good idea to avoid journalists, or not riot in the first place.

See also:

• August 11, 2008 — Montreal North riot OMG BBQ
• April 23, 2008 — Media won’t cooperate with Habs riot investigation
• August 14, 2008 — One question for the Journal de Montréal

This week’s Justify Your Existence is an interview with a member of Anonymous, the anti-Scientology group. Though she’s unnamed, you’ll recognize her as the same young woman I made fun of talked about earlier when a video was posted on YouTube in which she said Scientology conspired to get her fired from her job. Though I suggested she was weird, to her credit, she was willing to sit down with me and explain herself. Reaction on their forums is starting to build here.

There’s also a protest today at 11 near Lafontaine Park, for anyone interested.

UPDATE: For those of you who are reading this article because it was posted on the Anonymous forums and have never read it before, Justify Your Existence by its very nature takes a tough stand against its interview subjects — part of the reason it’s tough getting interviews sometimes.

Also, from the Enterbulation forums:

NO WAY!!!!
His name is Steve Fagay?????

Actually, no it’s not. But I’m touched by the maturity.

Finally, I’ve already got hate mail. Sweet.

NFL vs. CFL

This week’s Bluffer’s Guide is about the Buffalo Bills game in Toronto this week, and what the NFL testing the waters in Canada could mean for our national football game. There’s suggestion that the Bills might move to Toronto after its current owner dies and the franchise is sold off. Such a move, worryers say, would spell the end to the Toronto Argonauts, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and probably even the CFL itself.

It comes the same day as this piece from The Gazette’s Herb Zurkowsky, quoting league officials worried about the NFL threat. He also has some interesting history in his notes that I wish I’d stolen from is useful for context.

UPDATE (Aug. 21): A reader points out that other NFL games have taken place on Canadian soil. This will be the first time that regular-season games take place in Canada, however.

See also:

• July 14, 2008 — Fair Game
• January 19, 2008 — TWIM: Kenya and bus schedules
• December 29, 2007 — TWIM: Griffintown and telemarketers

See also:

• August 14, 2008 — Killer cops

Route for SODER's bicycle tour of Rosemont

The tour starts at Bellechasse and 16th Ave. at 1:30pm on Saturday (Aug. 16). For more information, consult the press release (PDF).

See also:

• August 20, 2008 — Nobody picked “bicytron”?
• August 2, 2008 — Name at least three things wrong with this picture
• July 13, 2008 — Street sale mania

Oh, and the riot was justified and rioters aren’t criminals.

“No justice, no peace” indeed. (Doesn’t that just mean “wage war until you get what you think you deserve?”)

See also:

• August 15, 2008 — OMGsclusives on Fredy
• July 15, 2008 — The metro car ice cream parlor, and other Just for Laughs outdoor fun
• July 13, 2008 — Street sale mania

Last July 15, we reported on several occasions that Bill McMurchie, mayor of the city of Pointe-Claire, had spent $23,600 on meals at taxpayers’ expense.

We wish to clarify that the mayor actually spent less than $1,500 on meals during 2007 as shown in a statement prepared by Lyne Goulet, Pointe-Claire city treasurer and posted on the city’s web site.

CTV apologizes to Mayor McMurchie and the elected council of Pointe-Claire for any embarrassment or prejudice that may have been caused.

I can’t find the original story, since CTV Montreal doesn’t archive its news, so I have to go on what’s being written here.

But “clarify”? You inflated a figure more than ten-fold, accusing a man of corruption and left the record unfixed for almost a month, and you’re clarifying?

Unless I’ve missed something, this is a correction. And a major one.

See also:

• August 20, 2008 — More “clarifications”
• August 14, 2008 — CTV Montreal gets kudos for diversity
• August 12, 2008 — NBC is lying to you

St. Jacques Street, looking east from Madison

St. Jacques Street in NDG has a reputation, and not a good one. It’s lined mostly with used car dealerships, auto repair shops, seedy motels and deteriorating parking lots. The neighbourhood around it is known more for being on the “wrong side of the tracks” than anything else.

The borough, as part of its master plan, is trying to change all that. It’s proposing a by-law (PDF) that would disallow the creation of new gas stations, auto parts shops and car dealerships on St. Jacques between Madison and the Decarie expressway. Instead, it wants to see more other kinds of commerce (restaurants, grocery stores and the like) on the south side and more residential development on the north side.

Midas shop on St. Jacques

While some major franchises are located in this area (such as this Midas shop and an Ultramar gas station), the vast majority are Mom & Pop shops with fading signs and improvised setups.

The draft by-law, which will see public consultation next month, would not force these businesses to close. But it would prohibit new ones from forming in their places if they do.

This used car dealership used to be a hardware store

And considering how often that happens in this area, it might not take too long for it to be completely reborn.

A fenced-off empty lot sits unused

But until that happens, expect some painful times for local business. Restricting the kinds of businesses that can open up on these lands will make them harder to sell, and may lead to more vacant lots like the one above.

Abandoned ex-Ultramar gas station at St. Jacques and Oxford

This gas station, should the law pass, would never be allowed to become a gas station again, despite the tanks already having been installed.

As the sign indicates, the station has moved further West, but not far enough to be free of this rezoning.

Hyundai dealership just outside the rezoning area.

Since existing businesses are grandfathered, I suppose it would be silly of me to start coming up with conspiracy theories, but I note that this Hyundai new/used dealership sits just outside the rezoning area, which ends at a patch of trees and grass between Madison and Cavendish. The by-law doesn’t affect any areas west of Cavendish, which also include storage facilities and car dealerships.

Hardware stores such as this one may or may not be allowed under the new scheme. “Renovation centres” aren’t allowed, but small shops would be okay.

The car in this sign looks far too nice to be parked anywhere near here

It’s hard to imagine what this street will look like when everything that makes it what it is will be gone.

The draft by-law’s public consultation takes place Sept. 2 at 6pm at 5151 Côte-Sainte-Catherine. The borough mayor will be present to listen to concerns.

See also:

• September 24, 2007 — The Marois Mansion (next to) government land
• September 20, 2007 — Balcony BBQ taboo

Traffic sign gives taxis special privileges at Peel and René Lévesque

So what is it about taxis, anyway, that gives them all this special treatment on our roads? Above, left turns are prohibited on René Lévesque Blvd. in order to keep traffic flowing smoothly. But taxis, for some reason, are exempt from this rule. So if a taxi wants to turn left, it can just sit there in the middle of the intersection waiting for an opportunity to do so.

But what’s more frustrating is that taxis get to use Montreal’s reserved bus lanes, whether or not they are carrying any passengers. Why is that? Are taxis considered small buses? Does a taxi carrying one person pollute less than a personal car carrying one person? Are taxis so vital to the economy that they should be exempt from downtown traffic?

My attempts to find an explanation have so far been fruitless. As far as I can tell, the reasoning behind it is the same as that which gives newspapers an exemption from Canada’s Do Not Call List regulations: Taxis have a very powerful lobby.

See also:

• January 16, 2008 — Montreal Geography Trivia No. 8
• October 9, 2007 — Self-centred drivers have short-sighted views
• September 20, 2007 — Unions can be sued for protest inconvenience

But don’t worry. The mayor is advising environmentally-conscious citizens to (wink, wink) break the by-law which specifically bans their use.

That makes perfect sense.

See also:

• July 27, 2008 — The Great Apple Store Opening of 2008
• June 22, 2008 — TWIM: Dion’s carbon tax idea
• June 12, 2008 — Conditioned

As a champion of minority rights, AffiliationQuebec calls on Quebec’s cultural communities to select effective candidates to run under the AQ banner in order to elect relevant representation to send to the National Assembly.

The tense situation in Montreal North offers a unique opportunity for these communities to ‘break free’ from Quebec’s nationalist agenda, and to play a direct role in their own governance.

It’s amazing how many new causes are dummed up every hour to replace the apparently inadequate “kids mad ’cause cops shot other kid.”

See also:

• January 16, 2008 — Journal does it again
• August 16, 2008 — Media win battle over riot footage
• August 14, 2008 — Yves Bolduc’s spending spree

On a slightly more serious note, an analysis of Toronto media coverage of its susprise breaking news. Toronto media were caught especially off-guard because the incident happened in the middle of the night on a weekend, when few (if any) people are on the job.

Montreal’s media got lucky, in that the riots started before midnight, before newspapers were put to bed and everyone went home for the night. In addition, the top story was about the police shooting that prompted the riot, so newspapers (like mine) could combine the two together and not have to rip apart their front pages.

La Presse has the best roundup of the action (including a column by Patrick Lagacé, who was on the scene and has some stories to tell about it), as well as the best photos from photographer David Boily. LCN was on the scene live with its helicopter coverage, and though suffering from the usual breaking-news confusion saying-stuff-off-the-top-of-your-ass time-filler, was enough to keep us journalists glued to the set. (LCN/TVA reporters, meanwhile, repeatedly ignored police demands to retreat to a safe area once shots had been fired, making the anchor’s half-transparent “are you ok?” clichés seem almost silly.)

The best anglo coverage came, of course, from Canadian Press, whose reporter Andy Blatchford (a former classmate of mine) had a story filled with quotes.

Unfortunately, most of the other media are playing catch-up today, and you’ll see more photos of day-after busted up businesses than the riots themselves.

As for blog and “new media” coverage, it was pretty well nonexistent. Some posts with “this is bad” comments, but no citizen journalists stepping up and doing a proper reporting job.

See also:

• August 16, 2008 — Media win battle over riot footage
• August 28, 2008 — Patrick Lagacé wants to be your friend
• August 18, 2008 — I have hair too!

Interactive Koodo ad at Peel metro

Last weekend, some metro station platform ads were replaced by a television screen inviting people to “train” with some Koodo-branded games. Koodo, you’ll recall, is the Telus-owned “discount” cellphone service which competes with Rogers’s Fido and Bell’s Solo Mobile services. It unexplicably uses cheesy 80s workout clichés as the basis for its branding.

A user interacts with a Koodo ad at Berri-UQAM metro station

Lo and behold, it worked. People on a metro platform waiting for a train are a notoriously bored bunch (even if they’re in a hurry). Shiny things with buttons will quickly find people willing to press them.

Unfortunately, the games themselves weren’t that good. In fact, one wasn’t even a game, it was just a menu filled with information about Koodo’s cellphone plans. The only actual “game” is a Where’s Waldo-style search game that requires the user to “scroll” through the map because it doesn’t all fit on the screen.

The game had clearly not been usability tested, because I couldn’t figure out how the scrolling worked. Tapping near the corner caused it to slowly scroll in that direction by about an inch. Dragging a finger toward the corner caused the screen to quickly scroll in that direction and then quickly scroll back. Dragging a finger away from the corner caused about the same thing to happen. (UPDATE Aug. 27: I’m not the only one to notice this failure.)

Also:

Unexpected click gives a 404 error

I’m not quite sure how I did this, but I somehow created a new tab in Internet Explorer (which this apparently runs on) and sent it to a page which doesn’t exist.

Closeup of Koodo ad 404 error

So apparently these ads are running on Windows servers using a two-year-old version of the Apache web server. (On the plus side, the system resets itself after a minute or two of inactivity)

I have to give Koodo credit for this one. After all, I’m blogging about it, which was the point. But it doesn’t make me want to get a Koodo phone plan any more.

See also:

• August 19, 2008 — Another gigantic waste of money from Bell
• July 23, 2008 — 168 fonctions différentes*
• July 15, 2008 — The metro car ice cream parlor, and other Just for Laughs outdoor fun