Category Archives: Public transit

| Montreal, Public transit

Bus plans have good ideas and stupid gimmicks

The Gazette’s Linda Gyulai has a good run-down of the city’s transit plan for buses. Bus routes aren’t sexy like trams, metros and bike lanes, but they get the job done, transporting more people than any other method of public transportation.

Broken down, the measures fall in three categories:

Adding more buses

  • Increasing the fleet from 1,600 to 2,100 buses (which means a lot of bus-buying if they’re going to replace the death traps currently on the road)
  • Adding articulated buses on busy major routes (that don’t involve too many turns)
  • More express buses
  • Extending rush hour. This one just makes sense: How many times have you had to rush to make the last rush-hour bus of the day, or decided to travel during rush-hour mainly because wait times would be at their lowest? Making rush-hour-style service available all day will take pressure off rush-hour service.
  • Smaller buses for smaller areas. Currently they use a minibus in Ste. Anne de Bellevue (251) because the streets are so small.
  • More buses to the West Island. (Let’s just start with an all-day shuttle to the metro, and then take it from there.)

Making buses run faster

  • “Bus Rapid Transit”, basically a cross between an Ottawa-style transitway and a regular reserved bus lane. Right now they’re just talking about this on Pie-IX Blvd., where the old reserved centre lanes and stations on the median still stand unused.
  • More reserved lanes on major thoroughfares like St. Michel, Beaubien, Rosemont, Notre Dame, Sauvé/Côte-Vertu, St. John’s and Pierrefonds, where traffic is high and buses take a lot of passengers
  • Introducing special limited-stop routes (the article says they would be marked with an X like 67X, which would be confusing because such numbers are already used to indicate short-stop and school extras)
  • Reserved lanes on highways (badly needed for buses like the 211).

Cool technology and gimmicks

  • GPS technology on buses which will allow announcements on the bus and displays at bus stops to show when the next bus will arrive in real-time. (This sounds great and all, but considering this isn’t even done in all metro stations yet, maybe we should start there?)
  • Redo seating arrangements on buses to “create more room”. I guess this means more standing room, with fewer seats, which I think is a bad idea to encourage transit use.
  • More bus shelters
  • Free transit for university students. Funny, we usually hear this one from students trying to get elected. It usually involves imposing a huge tax on all students (regardless of whether they’d use public transit) that’s less than the cost of the passes to make up for the revenue shortfall.
  • More “seniors” buses, which have already proven a stupid idea.
  • A “shuttle service to Mount Royal Park”. There is one already. It’s called the 11. Problem is it only runs every half hour.
  • Biodiesel and “ecological driving” for the PR points.
| Montreal, Public transit

Montreal’s bus death traps

STM first-generation LFS

Back in 1996, it was seen as the biggest leap in Montreal transportation in decades. The STCUM was replacing the General Motors … MCI … NovaBus Classic series with a new, revolutionary low-floor (LFS) bus being developed by St-Eustache-based NovaBus. The new buses would be more accessible, both for people with low mobility who would now have one step up instead of four, and people on wheelchairs who would have a ramp at the back door and a place to park their wheelchair safely.

NovaBus wasn’t the only low-floor player, nor were they the best. But they were Quebec-based, which meant it was politically favourable to buy from them and have the buses produced locally, and tax incentives made it much more economical to buy from them.

The problems with the bus began rather quickly. First, there was the minor issue of the brake lines freezing in winter, which caused them to accelerate when the brakes were applied. Then there was their propensity to randomly catch fire. And a host of other problems that mechanics are having to deal with: the wheelchair ramps don’t work (the STM still encourages use of their adapted transit network), the back-door sensor doesn’t work reliably, two seats in the front faced a wall behind the driver (causing clients to hit their heads when the bus came to a sudden stop).

But the STM kept buying the buses. 480 of them over three years. After that, the STM stopped buying buses due to budget constraints, and NovaBus revamped their design. The second-generation LFS buses, which the STM started buying in 2001, solved most of those problems, but there aren’t enough of them on the road to take the first batch (or for that matter, 6-7 years worth of Classics) out of service. So we’re stuck with them.

And the problems keep coming. For the past two days, about 60 of them were taken off the street for various problems, cutting service during rush hours by about 1 per cent. (via mtlweblog) It’s gotten so bad that the STM prefers using the older Classic buses longer than the first-generation LFS, since they’re still working fine.

| In the news, Public transit

McGill metro evacuated after structural fears

It’s not just overpasses. The McGill metro was evacuated this afternoon after work on the de Maisonneuve bike path apparently caused a leak into The Bay next door and that led to the discovery of a large crack in the ceiling.

(The media is describing this as everything from a “crack” to a “depression” to a “cave-in”, but have settled on “crack” and “threat of collapse”)

Service on the green line is shut down between Berri and Atwater Lionel-Groulx. Alternative bus service is being setup (Eastbound on Ste. Catherine, Westbound on René-Lévesque), but during rush-hour with a major artery closed it’s probably faster to walk across downtown. Trains have been added to the Orange Line to help compensate.

The metro is expected to reopen on Monday if there’s no risk of collapse of the tunnel.

Blork was there. LCN has a video report.

| Montreal, Public transit

Cash transit refunds this week

From Tuesday to Saturday, cash refunds are being made available at select metro stations for those with May 2007 monthly passes who don’t plan on buying a September pass.

Metro refund stations

Special booths are being setup outside the turnstiles of these stations where special ticket-takers will exchange your May 2007 pass for $3.50 ($2.00 for reduced fare passes) and a receipt for tax purposes (but only from 6am to 7pm).

The STM has a PDF poster online, though curiously that poster isn’t put up at these booths, which means unless you’ve been paying close attention to the newspapers, you probably have no clue what they’re for.

Starting Sunday, when September passes go on sale, May passes can be returned in exchange for a discount on the September pass and the same tax receipt, and this can be done at any location that normally sells transit passes.

| Blogosphere, Montreal, Public transit

It shouldn’t cost $9 to get from one shore to the other

Midnight Poutine has a rant-post about something I’ve heard a couple of times recently: when taking a trip that spans two transit networks, it’s treated as two separate trips, and you’re charged full-price for each.

So imagine someone taking public transit from western Laval to Brossard. That person would have to take an STL bus ($3), the metro ($2.75), and an RTL bus ($3.25). Total cost: $9.

We have, thanks to the Agence métropolitaine de transport, a “zone” monthly pass, which allows unlimited travel in multiple transit networks at a price considerably below what you’d pay for the different network’s passes individually. Why can’t we do something about individual trips to save people some money?

Part of the STM’s plan as they introduce a smart card system next year will be to be able to control zoning better. This will probably mean that a trip between downtown and the West Island will cost more than a trip within the downtown area. Hopefully this might also mean it’ll cost less than $9 to cross three transit networks on a single trip.

| Montreal, Public transit

STM’s strike rebates coming this month

STM refund

As expected, the STM is offering a $3.50 refund for people who have May 2007 bus passes and had to endure a four-day maintenance workers’ strike that shut down service for more than half the day.

The details are in this STM press release, which, following their “Fuck You Anglos” policy, is available only in French.

Basically:

  • The price ($3.50) will come off the September bus pass (making it $61.50 instead of $65). You can get a cash refund if you don’t plan to buy a September pass, but only at select metro stations (Angrignon, Lionel-Groulx, McGill, Berri-UQAM, Honoré-Beaugrand, Côte Vertu, Snowdon, Bonaventure, Mont-Royal, Jean-Talon, Montmorency and Longueuil–Université-de-Sherbrooke), at select times (6 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.) and on select dates (Aug. 20-24). Not that they’re making it hard or anything.
  • Reduced fare passes will be compensated $2.00, making a $35 pass $33.
  • You must still have the May 2007 bus pass, to prove you’re eligible. Hand it in when you buy your September pass at any metro station, and you’ll get a receipt for federal tax purposes.
  • Holders of TRAM-3 passes must use the Montmorency metro station or AMT points-of-sale (like the ones at Central Station and Windsor Station). It’s unclear if this also applies to TRAM-1 and TRAM-2 passes, but I imagine it would.
  • Holders of weekly passes can apparently go fuck themselves, since they already knew about the strike when they bought their passes. (The news says they’ve already been compensated, but I don’t remember that.)
  • The compensation is calculated based on the hours during the month that service was not provided (60% of the day for four days).
| Montreal, Public transit, Video

Video fun in the metro

Documenting the metro

It’s been the subject of advertising campaigns, design criticism and ridicule. People with lots of time on their hands have created computer simulations of it. Others have shot strange foreign-language films there (familiar-language movies too).

It has a sound system nobody understands. It has buskers, some of whom play in front of giant ads with their pictures in them.

And then there’s the (sometimes drunken) dancing. Some use the poles to dance by themselves… upside down. Others aren’t so agile. Some dance with a friend. Some straddle. Some spin. Some twist. Some groove while sitting down. Some … uhh…

And, then, of course, some people party party party with lots of friends.

Love it or hate it, our metro will live on forever thanks to amateur videographers.

Bonus: Some metro-related things you don’t see every day: Decoupling. The view from the cabin. Door chimes.

| Montreal, Public transit

When justice fails, block public transit!

If you’re planning to take a train from Central Station next Tuesday at noon, you might want to arrive early, ’cause there’s some protestin’ goin’ on. No doubt disrupting the populace during their inter-city and commuter train travel will magically cause CN to drop lawsuits, George W. Bush to forget about a planned economic summit, and for everyone to start calling North America Turtle Island again. You know, in solidarity.

| Montreal, My articles, Public transit

The users provide the colour

No featured blog this week (sorry), but instead I have a short story about the Ile-Sainte-Hélène metro station (now Jean-Drapeau) and an interview with its architect and designer Jean Dumontier, for the Expo Artifacts series.

Most of the information is old news to metro buffs (like the fact that the large halls on the platforms used to house bathrooms), but I found it interesting that the lack of colourful artwork in the station was purposefully designed, since the large crowds wearing colourful 60s clothing provided plenty of colour.

The paper version also includes a (small) photo of Dumontier with a three-dimensional model of the station’s original (more elaborate) plans, which he still has at his house.

| Public transit, West Island

Fairview: No longer the centre of the West Island universe?

Apparently the STM is considering a major overhaul to the West Island bus network in the coming years, which will increase service and, more controversially, “do away” with having most of the buses go to the Fairview bus terminal.

Fairview bus terminal

Currently 17 buses go there, making it the largest STM bus terminal on the island. Only Bonaventure’s massive RTL terminal is larger.

I’m not sure how much I like this idea. As it stands, you can get from just about anywhere in the West Island to just about anywhere else using two buses. And where you have the option of more than one bus, you can just take whichever comes first to Fairview.

The STM is considering a grid system, in which buses go either East-West (like the 68 and 211) or North-South (like the 209 on Sources or the 201 on St. Charles). That way to get anywhere you’d still only need two buses, but could avoid an unnecessary detour.

The problem comes in their solution to the bigger problem: Shuttle service to the metro. Currently only the 470 Express Pierrefonds serves this function, and only during rush hours. Lots of people who go downtown take a bus to Fairview and then transfer to the 470. With a grid system, people might have to take two buses to get to Fairview, lengthening their trip.

Expanding express service is a brilliant idea (if only someone had thought of it earlier), but I’m unconvinced that enough people are taking trips where going through Fairview is a burdensome detour to justify such a shift in routes. Let’s start by getting more frequent service and faster service to downtown and we’ll go from there.

UPDATE: Wow, beat CTV News on this by over 48 hours. Someone sleeping on the job there? Or did their copy of the Chronicle arrive late?

| Public transit, West Island

Leave de Salaberry alone

Speaking of Mayor Ed and his wacky ideas, he’s changing his tune on the development of de Salaberry Blvd., an undeveloped East-West route from Kirkland to Sources Blvd. and beyond.

For those unfamiliar with de Salaberry, most of it is a two or four-lane road, starting from Sommerset Street in the West (where it crosses into Kirkland) and ending just east of Sources Blvd.

What makes this road unusual is that right next to it, for almost its entire length in Dollard, is a wide grassy area with power lines on it. The plan was to eventually turn this small road into a major East-West thoroughfare, halfway between Pierrefonds Blvd. and Highway 40. That never happened, mostly because it would just shift traffic onto Sources and wouldn’t solve West Island traffic headaches.

Unclear on the fact that nothing will solve West Island traffic headaches so long as the airport, the rail yards and Highway 13 stay where they are, he’s been trying to push through a development plan that would extend the street through the Bois de Liesse park:

De Salaberry development route

Needless to say, that plan didn’t win over too many people. So instead, he’s now proposing that it be a bus-only lane. Now you can’t accuse him of not being environmentally-friendly. He’s pro-transit!

There’s a few problems with the idea though:

  1. There’s already a dedicated public transit system running through the Bois de Liesse. It’s the Montreal-Deux Montagnes train line. And it’s used plenty.
  2. The big problem isn’t rush-hour service but the rest of the time when there’s no express shuttle between Fairview and the Côte-Vertu metro station. The success of the 470 Express Pierrefonds bus (which runs shuttles during rush-hour and then continues north and west) should give the STM the idea that a regular-service express shuttle (like the 211 between Dorval and Lionel-Groulx) is a good idea, but they haven’t done anything. Outside of rush-hour, the shuttle time is 20 minutes.
  3. The only logical place for a bus to go is the massive Fairview bus terminal. This would mean the bus would go north, then west, only to go back south again. Why do this when the highway is right there?
  4. It’s still just as bad in terms of developing one of Montreal’s few remaining natural preserves.

Sorry Ed. The Chronicle may love your idea, but I don’t see it being necessary. We need more buses to the West Island, not more bus lanes.

| Montreal, Public transit, Technology

New turnstiles in the metro

The STM has begun installing new turnstiles in the metro, starting at the De la Savane, Monk, Plamondon and Villa-Maria stations. The new turnstiles are designed to be used with electronic smart cards, which will allow the transit authority more control over payment (including, for example, establishing a zone system where you pay for how far you go).

Sadly, when eventually put into service along with the new electronic fare systems installed in buses last year, this will spell the end of Montreal’s notorious but still fully functional punch-card transfers.

| Montreal, Public transit, Video, West Island

Da train! Da train!

The Gazette’s Linda Gyulai has an article about some railway buffs criticizing Montreal’s plan for commuter rail service, specifically the route of the Train de l’Est (stupidly running from Terrebonne east to Repentigny instead of running west through Laval, using existing tracks, to the de la Concorde metro station) and the apparent abandoning of the plan to use the Doney Spur, which splits from the Deux-Montagnes train line near Highway 13 and runs between Hymus and the 40 west to Stillview.

One important correction to the story: It mentions the building of a Home Depot west of St. John’s Blvd on top of old Doney Spur right-of-way. In fact, it’s east of St. John’s, which mean any rail link to Fairview (which would still have to cross Highway 40 somehow) would have to run through, under or around this new hardware store.

Here’s a bonus for you: A YouTube video of rail buff Avrom Shtern asking Pierrefonds/Roxboro mayor Monique Worth about the Doney Spur in March, and having her give the kind of non-answer that you’d expect to find in a first-chapter exercise of Politics For Dummies.