Monthly Archives: January 2008

| Montreal, On the Net, Public transit, Technology

AMT commuter train schedules on Google Transit

The AMT has quietly become the first transit agency in Quebec (and only the third in Canada behind Vancouver’s TransLink and Fredericton Transit) to add its routes and schedules to Google Transit.

Now, people using Google Maps to plan trips in Montreal will be given the option of using the train. Schedules for all five lines are included, but no buses so far. Google has some examples, like St. Jerome to Lucien-L’Allier station at 7pm (where the first available train is more than 12 hours later, assuming the next day is a weekday).

The search is still a bit clunky (it refuses to calculate routes from some general locations, and while it accepts “Gare Lucien L’Allier” as a location it doesn’t recognize “Gare Vendome” or “Gare Parc” or “Gare de la Concorde”), but it’s still pretty cool.

The next step is to see the STM, STL and RTL (as well as all the smaller AMT-run agencies) add their route information to the service. The STM already has a similar service with its clunky Tous Azimuts interface (which was nevertheless a technological breakthrough when it first came out). Hopefully converting data used in that service to Google’s Transit Feed Specification won’t be too difficult.

| In the news

Those wacky Concordia kids are still at it

“I believe it’s time to set petty politics aside and come together to build a stronger Concordia community.”

— Angelica Novoa, Concordia Student Union president, during the election campaign

If you’ve been anxiously awaiting more news about Concordia student politics (and we all know you have), the student media have returned from the holidays and they give you the latest:

  • An appeal was filed about the blatantly leading referendum questions in last November’s CSU by-election. It was summarily rejected by the brand new judicial board for apparently technical reasons. Now the CSU can get all the money it scammed out of students.
  • Minutes of a suspiciously-called student council meeting last April that suspiciously disappeared without a trace have now mysteriously reappeared. The meeting was nothing important, just the legislative branch of a political organization arbitrarily overruling the judiciary over a common-sense judgment that two politicians were ineligible to run in the category they filed for because they were not part of that category of student. Convinced that everything has been resolved now, the council has voted to restrict itself from ever discussing the issue again.
  • The Concordian features a mid-term report card of the CSU administration, focusing on the things they’ve accomplished.
  • But their assessment of the CSU’s commitment to accountability is scathing at best.
  • A loser in the November by-election (and, for that matter, March’s general election) publishes an open diary in The Link in which I guess she tries to be funny, but comes out sounding like the kind of get-a-life bitterness that has consumed Concordia politics for far too long.
  • The Graduate Student Association had to call in mediators because the executive and council refused to speak to each other. The meeting was held in secret so we don’t know what they said.
  • Concordia’s Board of Governors (that’s the corporate CEO grownups who should know better) apparently found it necessary to rename its “Interim President” position. Well, actually it “abolished” the “Interim President” position and created the position of “President for an Interim Period.” The person filling that position, whatever it’s named (wasn’t it “acting president“?) is Michael Di Grappa.
  • Meanwhile, administrators still refuse to acknowledge the existence of the “risk assessment committee” that was setup after the Netanyahu protest in 2002. The Acting Interim President for an Interim Period has refused to testify at an access-to-information hearing about it.
  • The search for a new provost and VP academic (the No. 2 administrative position at Concordia which is also being held on an interim basis) has drummed up a whopping two candidates: Katherine Bergman, who has been dean of science at the University of Regina since 2001; and David Graham, who was appointed dean of arts and science at Concordia in 2005.
| Montreal, Opinion, Public transit

STM’s service improvements are actually service reductions

18 Beaubien at Beaubien metro
You’ll actually be waiting more, not less, for the 18 bus outside of rush hour.

The STM is trumpeting huge, noticeable improvements to bus and metro service that finally came into effect on Monday. The additions come in two parts:

More metro trains, less wait time

The STM is adding 145 new departures every week to all but the yellow line. The goal is to reduce waiting times and get more people using the metro.

The change is most visible outside of rush hour. That means the very early morning, during the day, late evenings, at night and on the weekend. On weekdays outside of rush hour, the waiting times will all be reduced by at least a minute and a half – a rather noticeable change.

Going out today, I decided to time the intervals between metro trains. Sure enough, for orange line trains going through downtown at 6:45pm, the trains were just under six minutes apart on average, which the STM says is an improvement on the previous eight minutes.

Though the wait times during rush hour (when almost all trains are already in service) won’t come down much, this move might serve to eventually lighten that load a bit. An extended rush hour means that fewer travellers will organize their schedules around rush hour to take advantage of the short waits.

I can’t be the only one who prefers to travel during peak hours because of how much faster it is. Extending rush hour will spread this tendency out a bit and hopefully make it spike a bit less as the whistle blows at 5pm.

More bus service means less bus service?

The other part to this service improvement is the more interesting one: the STM has announced additional buses being added to three popular lines: 18 Beaubien, 24 Sherbrooke and 121 Sauvé/Côte-Vertu. It’s also making the 54 Charland/Chabanel a rush-hour-plus-between-rush-hours service, which is becoming more and more popular (but to me only seems frustrating because the service stops by 7pm).

Today I went to the Beaubien metro bus stop for the 18 bus and observed as buses passed to pick up passengers headed east for the evening rush hour. Most of the buses had their seats filled, but none were so packed that nobody else could get on. They were running on intervals of about 3-4 minutes during rush hour’s peak (5:30pm), and 6-7 minutes just after rush hour (6:30pm).

This, despite complaints from the employees’ union that there’s a bus shortage affecting service.

Here’s the problem: The schedule itself hasn’t improved. If anything, service is being reduced on these three lines.

Continue reading →

| Montreal, Pop quiz, Public transit

Montreal Geography Trivia No. 7

(Admit it, you missed this during the holidays)

Here’s another one of those what-do-these-names-have-in-common lists. Except this time, you can’t find the answer on Google Maps.

These names (in alphabetical order) meet a threshold of having at least three of something in Montreal. What is it?

  • Côte des Neiges
  • Gouin
  • Henri Bourassa
  • Jean Talon
  • Notre Dame
  • Parc
  • Pierrefonds
  • Pie IX
  • Saint Denis
  • Sainte Anne (de Bellevue)
  • Sainte Catherine
  • Saint Laurent
  • Sherbrooke

UPDATE (9:30pm): After quite a few interesting guesses, the correct answer comes from HCD below. All of these names have at least three STM bus routes named after them:

  • Côte-des-Neiges: 165, 369, (535)
  • Gouin: 69, (89), (183), 205
  • Henri-Bourassa: 41, (159), 171, 215, 380
  • Jean-Talon: (92), 93, (141), 372
  • Notre-Dame: 22, 189, (195), (410), 362
  • Parc: 80, 365, (535)
  • Pierrefonds: 68, (268), 382, (470)
  • Pie IX: 139, (355), (505)
  • Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue/Sainte-Anne: 200, 251, 356
  • Sainte-Catherine: 15, 34, 358
  • Saint-Denis: (30), 31, 361
  • Saint-Laurent: 53, 55, 363
  • Sherbrooke: 24, 105, (182), 185, (186), (195)

Numbers in parentheses are for routes where the names form part of the bus route’s name, combined with “Est,” “Ouest,” “Metrobus,” “Express,” “R-Bus,” or the name of a second street.

In some cases, the duplication is due to having overlapping routes at different times (a regular route, a rush-hour reserved-lane route and a night route). Others, like Gouin, Henri-Bourassa and Sherbrooke are just so freakin’ long they have different routes stacked end to end.

| My articles, Technology

Blogging for a better tomorrow

Today’s paper features an article by yours truly about Ryan Costello Jr., a playwright who’s using blogging (specifically, Facebook’s excuse for blogging) to focus his energies on fixing those little things about himself that he wants to improve.

Though he admits it’s not for everyone, it seems to have worked well for him. He’s healthier, stronger (as you can tell from the photo, he has the frame of a football player, so this is all relative) and he feels better about himself.

The website has a posted excerpt from his blog so you can see how he does it. There’s also a link to the Facebook group he setup for self-help blogging.

Who knew peer pressure could be used for good things too?

UPDATE: Ryan points out one of the many things that could have used more expansion in the article, the source of the idea:

The article says I got the idea from someone’s MySpace blog. This wasn’t just a random blog I happened upon. That someone is David T. Oliveri McGovern. He started a blog called 40 in 40, where he tried to improve 40 things in his life over a 40 day period. He seemed pessimistic at the end, but within a year of making such a run at self-improvement, he launched the Man Of The House (MOTH) virtual mentorship charity. http://www.mothboys.org/ Since I started my Obligations blog, I’ve produced my third play, my first variety show, and executive produced my first short film. Just making an effort to be better has made the two of us more productive and improved our lives.

| Media, Montreal

Quebecor the big loser in journalistic ethics rulings

Raymond Viger, in his 2007 look back, decides to evaluate local media based on decisions rendered against them by the Quebec Press Council. An interesting quantitative measure if there ever was one. Quebecor’s various properties, led by the Journal de Montréal (unsurprisingly), get top “honours.”

I think it’s also worth looking at who’s not on that list:

| Business, In the news, Navel-gazing

Business contacts are like magic

La Presse reports that a Montreal company has been given a contract by the Pakistani government to run a voter registration database which will be used in an upcoming election.

The company in question is Cronomagic, a tiny ISP that I used to work for (my first, and so far only, job in the IT industry). I was their 4th employee at the time, so I got to makeup my own job title (Executive Vice-President in Charge of Doing What My Bosses Told Me To Do). It was there that I learned how to manage a room full of computers, how to setup Windows 2000 Server (ugh) and how to make Bash and Perl do funny things together.

Most importantly, I learned the power of connections. Back then a lot of business came from Pakistan because the president had business contacts there. Now it seems those contacts have gotten the company some sweet business.

UPDATE: A story from CanWest and another from Agence France-Presse, with basically the same information.

| Opinion, TV

Discovery Channel wants game shows

CTVglobemedia, which owns Discovery Channel Canada, has applied to the CRTC for a change in its license to allow for game shows as part of its lineup, up to 15% (or 25 hours a week).

CTV argues that allowing for “a trivia-based show intended to enrich viewers’ base of knowledge” would make it “more attractive to its target audience” while still keeping with its mandate of programming that focuses on “the exploration of science and technology, nature and the environment and adventure.”

This is all code for the fact that Discovery wants to import Cash Cab, a highly successful game show launched in the U.S. last year that has unsuspecting cab riders being offered money if they correctly answer trivia questions. It has versions all around the world, including on the U.S. Discovery Channel.
But does the fact that it’s trivia automatically make it part of Discovery’s mandate? Mythbusters (which is currently aired ad nauseam) answers interesting pseudo-scientific questions. But Cash Cab asks people to name the seven dwarfs or the characters from Clue. How are these things either science, technology, nature, the environment or adventure?

In principle I think game shows should be allowed on Discovery (as they point out, other specialty channels like the History Channel already allow such programming), but Cash Cab sounds like it’s more about a cheap ratings grab than a desire to educate young viewers in an innovative way.

Deadline for comments is January 25. 

| Business, In the news, Montreal, Opinion

GST, PST, MST?

Montreal is pressuring Quebec to approve a 1% municipal sales tax so that cities can get a piece of the lucrative extra charges tacked onto our purchases, just days after the federal GST got reduced from 6% to 5%.

I hope this isn’t a selective thing, in which some cities will charge different tax rates from others. That would be a recipe for disaster and rampant loophole-exploitation.

Instead, perhaps the provincial government should increase the provincial sales tax by one point, and put that money into something important like health care.

UPDATE (Jan. 8): No dice, Quebec says.

| Media, Slow News Day

Le Devoir’s 6 big media issues for 2008

Le Devoir looks at six big issues the media will have to tackle in 2008:

  1. What do we do with TQS? Its current format isn’t working, what should we change it to?
  2. How do we finance television? Should cable providers be forced to hand over money to over-the-air broadcasters?
  3. How long will the Journal de Québec situation go on? MédiaMatinQuébec has been running for eight months now, and the two sides are just now getting together to talk. What will an eventual agreement say, and how will that affect other media?
  4. How do we handle journalist multitasking? Media are expecting reporters to write, take pictures and edit video reports without paying them anything extra. La Presse’s union has already ordered journalists to stop blogging. The Journal de Montréal is knee-deep in union issues about convergence (which is in part why it doesn’t have a real website). Will the media eventually realize that more manpower is needed to produce for different media, or will the quality of journalism drop as journalists spend more time formatting stories than finding them?
  5. How will online distribution royalties be handled? The WGA will solve this eventually when it reaches a deal with U.S. movie and TV producers. But Canada has problems too. Quebecor is still trying to figure out how to get more programming onto its crappy Canoe.tv site. Will content creators get what they deserve, or will they be screwed over en masse?
  6. Will we have Internet CanCon? Or will the pseudo-CanCon we already have get even worse? How will the CRTC deal with the blurring of the line between the Internet and cable providers, television/radio broadcasters and telecom companies?

Do you have any answers?

| Opinion, Radio

CRTC looking at eliminating top-40 radio restrictions

In one of those “we have a law for that?” moments, the CRTC has decided to (again) take a look at a rather archaic regulation they have that limits FM radio stations on the use of “top 40 hits.”

The regulation was created to protect AM Top 40 stations from the FM Radio Menace that sought to kill them off with their better sound. Sure enough, now AM stations are disappearing, being replaced with talk radio, all-news stations, all-sports stations and some community and student radio stations. Portable music players are being built with FM-only tuners (where radio tuners are built-in at all), which will lead to further erosion of the AM listening base.

What does this law say about our radio broadcasting industry? Sadly, radio stations are failing to realize that having a 1,000-song playlist and virtually no indie content or DJ autonomy means that nobody wants to listen to your stations. Now they’re really starting to feel it as people tune to podcasts, Internet radio and songs they’ve ripped from their own CD collection.

I certainly hope their solution to that problem isn’t “more top 40 hits.”

Deadline for comments is March 4.