The new bus 41 Quartier Saint-Michel/Ahuntsic
The Société de transport de Montréal does its quarterly schedule change on Monday. There are the usual minor improvements to bus schedules.
The biggest change is a whole new line, the 41 Quartier Saint-Michel/Ahuntsic (PDF), whose route is above. It links the Sauvé station on the orange line, the Saint-Michel station on the blue line and upper Pie IX Blvd. (The result is a pretty sharp U shape, which makes it unlikely people will use it for its whole length, and makes you wonder why they didn’t just split it in half at Saint-Michel and create two routes.)
Service will be weekdays excluding holidays, from 5:30am to 9pm, with departures spaced about 20 minutes apart.
In other changes to bus schedules and routes:
- 12 Île des Soeurs: Instead of service ending at 6 or 7pm, departures are scheduled up to 9pm, seven days a week.
- 21 Place du Commerce: This morning-only bus linking the LaSalle metro station with the Bell Campus on Nuns’ Island will now be bidirectional (though still morning-only, 6am to 9am).
- 46 Casgrain: This tiny route in Mile End adds service between rush hours, at 30-minute intervals.
- 47 Masson: The westbound route will take St. Denis southbound and St. Joseph eastward toward the Laurier metro instead of Berri. Otherwise unchanged.
- 515 Vieux-Montréal-Vieux-Port: Giant gaps are being introduced in the route that heads eastbound through Old Montreal on weekday mornings. Rather than departures every 20 minutes, they’re at 8am, 9:20am, 10:40am and 11:40am. Departures at 1:40pm and 3pm are also deleted, leaving 40-minute gaps. (via @stm_info). Westbound service is unchanged, and only a couple of departures are deleted on the weekend. It’s another sign of the disappointing lack of popularity in this route.
The next schedule change comes in June. That’s when the STM’s major overhaul of its night service (including the addition of three new routes) is expected to take effect. The changes were supposed to be approved at the last board meeting but were pulled off the agenda at the last minute.
On the South Shore, the RTL is planning its own changes the following week (starting April 4). They are outlined in pamphlets for Brossard and Boucherville.
The 41 prompts one compelling question: ¿Ouate de phoque?
I think it IS essentially two routes, with one driver covering it. I don’t think most folks ride most routes their whole length.
Yes it is 2 routes joined into 1 and I think it’s more efficient this way. I know 37 Jolicoeur is just like that. Do you know of any more conjoined routes?
The 535?
The 128 Ville-Saint-Laurent… Used to be the 116 and 118 bus routes. (From what I remember)
I road one of the first runs of the 41 on the first day of service. I was surprised to see that their was already a steady amount of passengers aboard. The 41 is actually pretty good, it fills in the gap between the East part of the Blue line and the Orange line. Usually it takes 2 or more transfers to get from St.Michel Metro to the Orange line, now it’s just 1 bus that does it all. The 140/Fleury does not come often enough, so this bus increases service and eases congestion on Fleury St. It also eases congestion on BLVD St.Michel since it does not require commuters to transfer from the 467 onto the 121 in order to get to Sauvé or Cote-Vertu Métro, and also does not require commuters to transfer onto the 140/Fleury since it covers most of Fleury St. I’m not sure if one of the plans for this route was to ease congestion from Jean-Talon Métro, but I could see it as a possibility.
The reason for not cutting the line in two, its like that is simple, its collecting people on PIE IX who want to go to the blue line. Its a significant improvement for those people. There was a version of the blue line that actually went north instead of following Jean-Talon (like its supposed to eventually do), so this makes sense.
The upper Pie IX and upper St-Miichel (above Jean-Talon) have a very high traffic. This
adds buses on both sections and links them together by another high traffic lane (the St-Michel to Pie IX
Jean-Talon segment which is supposed to get a metro line eventually. Right now, many people transferred on the 141 to get to Pie IX from St-Michel.
As for the Ahuntsic section, its mainly to collect people from Ahuntsic for the Sauve Metro.
Indeed! D’amiens would have been the location of a métro station in the northbound version of the blue line
After looking the road over a bit, there’s a definite advantage also for St-Michel and Ahuntsic students wanting to go to Cegep ahuntsic (my old Cegep), corner Louvain @ St-Hubert. Its the nearest Cegep to St-Michel, but it was a pain to get there when I lived at Legendre @ St-Michel. Many transfers and a long slog! to get to a place which only took me 15 minutes by bike! No wonder I biked there until November even though I hate biking in cold weather.
Its a versatile road, that passes on or close to 4 of the top 10 bus routes n the city: 141, 121, 139, adding sprinkle on top of them, for user of the area.
The more I think about its a wonder why they didn’t do it before. The Pie IX to St-Michel station link will be especially popular and the 67 to Jean-Talon crossover at last giving easy access to a major commercial area to
people in upper which have been isolated from one unless they wanted to transfer buses a lot. Bus transfers are a major reason for people not liking to take the bus to go someplace, especially when coming back from shopping with a few bags.
I’m now about 13 min away from the Pie IX @ Jean-Talon intersection. My father, who’s 82, who lives in the same area as me, goes there 2-3 times a week. It will be a boon for him.
I’ve noticed that new bus stops are up on René Lévesque with what appears to be new routes for the night buses. Have we seen a map of the changes yet?