Category Archives: Public transit

| Montreal, Public transit

Here it is, your bus ride of zen

Paper with quotation on a traffic light post on St. Denis St.

Paper with quotation on a traffic light post on St. Denis St.

Sunday night on my way home, I noticed a piece of paper with a quotation on it taped to a bus stop post. I didn’t think anything of it until I passed by another stop and noticed another quote on another piece of paper. In the end, there were similar pieces of paper taped on or near bus stops along the 361’s route from Old Montreal to Ahuntsic.

No idea why. Naturally, their flimsy construction and unauthorized nature meant they didn’t last long.

Quote and bus stop sign

| Montreal, Public transit

AMT ends paper tickets on commuter trains

Opus card validator at Central Station

Opus card validator at Central Station

The AMT has issued notices to users of its five commuter train lines that it will be ending the use of paper tickets this month. Saint-Hilaire and Candiac riders get cut off on Friday April 17 and Blainville, Deux-Montagnes and Dorion users get cut off on the 24th.

This move is part of the metropolitan area’s move from paper and magnetic-strip based fare systems to the new Opus smart card, whose long phasing-in process is expected to be complete in June.

As of the dates above:

  • Monthly train-only passes (which are only available for Zones 4-7) will no longer be issued in paper form
  • Ticket machines will no longer issue single-fare paper tickets
  • Six-packs of train tickets in paper format will no longer be sold (even though the vending machines they use to sell them are barely five years old)
  • Paper ticket validation machines will be removed from service

That leaves commuters with three options:

What’s not clear here is what option there is for someone who just wants to take one ride on a train. Unless the Solo card is available in single-use format (which would be a huge waste), tourists who want to explore the city using its public transit system will be forced to purchase an Opus card or get more tickets than they need.

I’m hoping I’m mistaken.

| In the news, Montreal, Public transit

Longueuil dreams of more metro stations

The City of Longueuil is doing what every transit fan has done at some point in their lives: dream of extending Montreal’s metro lines far beyond their current terminuses into places it may or may not make sense for them to go.

Laval’s Gilles Vaillancourt makes a hobby of this. Even after getting an insanely overpriced extension of the metro into his territory fast-tracked before much-needed extensions into poor dense neighbourhoods in Montreal, he complains that the loop needs to be closed on the orange line with more stations on his territory.

Longueuil’s plan would be to add four metro stations in the Vieux-Longueul area, including a stop at CEGEP Édouard-Montpetit.


View Larger Map

Of course, it’s better to have suburban mayors dreaming about metro extensions than strip malls and highways. But maybe there’s something behind the argument that politicians shouldn’t be in control of public transit.

| Montreal, Public transit

RTL adds service to St. Bruno

RTL bus

The Réseau de transport de Longueuil, which handles public transit in Longueuil and its merged and demerged suburbs, is making a big effort to add service in a new schedule which began on Monday, especially in St. Bruno, which it had served with a handful of bus and collective taxi lines through an agreement with Veolia Transport. The contract (which the RTL points out predates its own existence) expired on Sunday, and the RTL is taking over service directly.

Among the additions, some of which are outlined in the press release:

  • 55: One new departure in the afternoon rush hour
  • 73: Two new departures in the afternoon rush hour
  • 80: Two new departures in the afternoon rush hour
  • 98: This route, which had previously only served St. Bruno locally, has been extended to Terminus Longueuil (but only during rush hours). A section on Grand Boulevard has been cut from its route, and will be served instead by the T99 taxi service.
  • T-20: Two new departures in the morning rush hour
  • T-89: Service extended to Saturday and Sunday rush hours
  • Other service improvements have been made on routes 20, 47, 91, 92, 99, 132, 192, T-23, and T-99
  • Other changes have been made to schedules on routes 10, 14, 15, 21, 30, 31, 34, 37, 38, 42, 44, 48, 49, 54, 73, 78, 85, 115, 132 and 142
  • Two lines, 93 and T94, have been removed from service. They both served St. Bruno and are being replaced with added service to other lines
| Public transit

STM adds Saint-Michel express bus

The STM moves to its spring schedule on Monday. Here’s some of what bus users can come to expect:

Welcome to the Saint-Michel Express

The biggest change comes to the 67 Saint-Michel, the STM’s single busiest line, which like its counterparts along Côte des Neiges, Parc and Pie-IX will get a little brother. The 467 Express Saint-Michel takes the same route as the 67, but with only 15 stops. The STM estimates this will cut 10% off travel times (via CPTDB), thanks to the help of two McGill urban planners (thanks Dave). Other measures, such as a reserved bus lane (coming this summer) and priority traffic lights (coming in 2010), are designed to shave another 5-20% off.

The route will have 126 departures from 6am to 7pm in both directions, Monday to Friday.

The 467’s stops are:

  • Henri-Bourassa
  • Fleury
  • Sauvé
  • De Louvain
  • Émile-Journault
  • Robert
  • Jarry
  • Villeray
  • Saint-Michel metro
  • Bélanger
  • Beaubien
  • Rosemont
  • Masson
  • Saint-Joseph
  • Joliette metro

72 extended to Côte-Vertu and Fairview

The 72 Alfred-Nobel, which connects the Saint-Laurent industrial park with the Du Collège metro, is having its route extended on both sides. On the western side, the route will end at the Fairview terminus (via Hymus), and on the eastern side, continuing on Decarie up to the Côte-Vertu metro (where all the other West Island buses stop). Service intervals will also drop slightly for this route, which operates Monday to Friday from 7am to 7pm.

Other notable scheduling changes I stumbled across

  • 12 Île des Soeurs: Dramatic increase in weekday departures, which are now 23 minutes apart instead of 30 during most of the day.
  • 16 Graham: New eastbound departure at 7:20am
  • 68 Pierrefonds: Service intervals westbound on Saturdays drop from about 22 minutes to about 16 minutes in the afternoon, with more buses in the morning and afternoon going all the way to Timberlea/Anse-à-l’Orme. Eastbound Saturday mornings a departure is added at 8am. And for some odd reason, the 1:40am westbound departure on Saturday nights (half an hour later than the rest of the week, consistent with a later metro closing time) has been eliminated.
  • 150 René-Lévesque: Weekday departures are now 31 minutes apart instead of 30, in order to remove a departure from the schedule.
  • 173 Métrobus Victoria: Service intervals decreased from 20 to 15 minutes during high-traffic times (eastbound during the morning rush hour, westbound during the afternoon rush hour)
  • 201 Saint-Charles-Saint-Jean: Midday Saturday service intervals drop from about 32 minutes to about 22 minutes between departures.
  • 207 Jacques-Bizard: An annoying schedule quirk for this predictable (every half hour on the half hour) schedule has been partially removed. After 10pm, the departures in both directions would happen every hour instead of every half hour. Those who didn’t look at the schedule closely enough might get stuck wondering why the bus didn’t come. On weekdays, the departures return to being every half hour, but still every hour after 10pm on weekends.
  • 209 Des Sources: Added departure northbound at 11:39pm. Previous final departure was at 10:55pm
  • 215 Henri-Bourassa: Between 9am and 12pm Saturday mornings, time between westbound departures drops from 30 minutes to 20.
  • 480 Pointe-Nord Île-des-Soeurs: Service intervals drop from 15 minutes to 10 minutes at rush hour peak
  • 515 Vieux-Montréal-Vieux-Port: Service intervals increase from every 13 minutes to every 20 minutes during the day (it’s unclear if this reduction in service is a seasonal thing, as more people are expected to walk places in warmer weather, or if it’s a reaction to how little the bus is used)

Notice anything I haven’t seen? Comment below.

| Public transit

More AMT coupon fun

AMT Deux Montagnes rebate coupon

AMT Deux Montagnes rebate coupon

The AMT announced today that it is adding yet more coupon distribution dates for coupons for partial rebates for its April passes. Originally it was only supposed to be Wednesday (March 18). But March 23 and March 30 have been added to the schedule.

On all three dates, the coupons will be handed out:

  • At all stations on the Deux Montagnes line from 5:45am to 10am
  • At Central Station from 10:45am to 3pm
  • At Central Station again from 7:30pm to 12:30am

As per the AMT’s compensation plan, the idea is to give 25% discounts on April passes only for users of the Deux-Montagnes train line. Another 25% discount is planned for May.

Though the reduction is less than last month’s 50% discount, my TRAM scam will still get you a (modest) discount if you just take the bus and metro. A TRAM 1, which gives access to the entire STM network (except metro stations in Laval) as well as commuter trains in the areas immediately surrounding downtown, costs $59.63 with the discount (normal price is $79.50), which is $8.87 less than the regular $68.50 STM pass. The TRAM 2, which will get you as far as Roxboro or Cedar Park, would cost $69.75, which is only $1.25 more.

That probably won’t be enough to repeat the experiment I did last month, but for those who think $9 is worth the effort, the option is there for you.

| Public transit, Slow News Day

Andy Riga explores trainspotters

AMT train

Newly-appointed transportation reporter Andy Riga has a feature story in today’s paper about local trainspotters, complete with an audio slideshow from photographer John Kenney. The picture with the story is of Alex Tipaldos, aka KellerGraham, a transit photo nut and Friend of Fagstein.

Bastard copied my story idea His story complements a short one I did last year about bus fans who rent older transit buses and take pictures of them.

Both groups use the montrain.ca website (disclosure: run by a friend of mine) to organize their activities. The bus group, by the way, is organizing a pair of special bus charters for the first weekend of May.

| Business, Montreal, Public transit, Video

H&R Block tries social media marketing

The big wigs at H&R Block have apparently heard that social media marketing is the new thing, so they’ve apparently hired some kids to shoot videos of themselves going places as part of a campaign called “Refund Road Trip”

The one-minute “webisodes” (20 seconds of which are text intros, teasers or ads for H&R Block) are on their website at RefundRoadTrip.ca and on YouTube, where they’ve gotten a massive modest pathetic view count ranging from 348 views to three views (plus about 800 for the trailer).

On the website, visitors are encouraged to enter a contest (for a whopping $5,000!) where they put together maps of their proposed road trips, where they do the responsible thing and blow their hard-earned money playing tourist.

To me it seems kind of silly in this recession environment to be encouraging people to spend tax refund money on unnecessary trips instead of retirement savings or paying down debt, but those things just aren’t as fun as taking an RV and going across the country.

I mention this (and sadly give H&R free publicity) because the Refund Road Trip makes a stop in Montreal. The videos of the Montreal portion of the trip start at Episode 24 (which is on YouTube but hasn’t been posted to the H&R website yet).

After that you can see the fun of hauling luggage up stairs, putting on makeup and walking around taking pictures.

My favourite though is Episode 27, in which “Cassidy” (who knows/cares if that’s his real name) walks out of an apartment next to Café Chaos on St. Denis and somehow ends up on an OC Transpo bus holding a copy of Ottawa’s 24 Hours daily before the sun comes up. That’s some fast walking!

| Media, Public transit

La Presse in the metro

Yesterday as I left my apartment to go to work, I was surprised when my paper wasn’t there to greet me. Instead, there was a copy of La Presse in its place. It’s not the end of the world if I don’t get a paper once in a while (it’s not like I pay for it, and I can just grab another one at work), and since my apartment is the only one of 11 units in the coop that gets any sort of newspaper subscription, I’m guessing it was just the delivery person throwing out the wrong paper.

The cover certainly piqued my interest (though I was aware of its contents having read a Montreal City Weblog item earlier that day): a special report on life in the metro.

Saturday’s stories include discussions with the various people you see in the hallways: buskers, shopkeepers, cleaners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, old people, and some of the less common sights like monks and blind people figuring out station layouts. There’s also a multimedia component online that includes some audio slideshows of interviews with other people.

Jean-Christophe Laurence also has a peek into the shift of a metro changeur, who says the most annoying thing about working there is having to be confined in a box and asking permission whenever you want to leave it.

But more interestingly, there are articles from Katia Gagnon on the workers who perform maintenance on the tracks between 2am and 5am when no trains are circulating and the power to the rails is cut, as well as those who monitor the tracks while the trains are running.

It reminds me of a piece that Alex Dobrota did for the Gazette three years ago in which he spent the night with maintenance workers.

Intervention des ambulanciers

Today, La Presse continues on a sadder note, talking about suicide in the metro. Hugo Meunier discusses the statistics, the most interesting of which is that 2/3 of people who throw themselves in front of metro trains survive, though they’re left with serious injuries and disabilities. He reports on a specific incident as an example (an article with a staggering seven anonymous sources, perhaps demonstrating how little people want to talk about it) and asks whether the STM, police and media’s policies of pretending suicides don’t happen is actually helpful at preventing copycats.

I’ve never actually witnessed a metro suicide (though I’ve seen the cleanup), so I can only imagine how disturbing it can be.

I can’t help but think that the statistic that shows you’re more likely to be seriously hurt than die attempting suicide in the metro would make a lot of people think twice about using that method to end their lives. Of course, then they’d just choose a method that wasn’t so public and we’d never know.

| Public transit

Un gros merci

About a week and a half ago Mike Boone wrote a column about a discarded tea bag he found at the Georges-Vanier metro station (hey, it’s a slow news week), asking why we’re so disrespectful to our public places that we can’t walk the extra five feet to the trash can. The column sparked a lot of response.

I found it funny because at about the same time he spotted that tea bag, I used the station for the first time since its renovation and found this, thanking users for dealing with the station’s summer-long closure:

Un gros merci

| Public transit

Nuit Blanche Part 3: The all-night metro

Télécité time

The count stands at three. Only three times since it opened in 1966 has the Montreal metro run throughout the night:

  1. March 4, 1971, during the “storm of the century”
  2. Jan. 1, 2000, to help New Year Decade Century Millennium partiers get home
  3. March 1, 2009, during the Nuit Blanche

There are reasons beyond financial ones for the metro to stop running during the night. Overnight is when the tracks are cleaned, when maintenance is performed, when money is transferred. Subways that are open 24 hours (like in New York) have extra tracks that can be used when one is closed, but Montreal doesn’t have that luxury (unless it wants to run the metro only one way).

But, as in the examples above, exceptions can be made once in a while. The STM decided to make one this year, and organized itself to keep all 68 metro stations open throughout the night, and have trains running on all four lines.

Continue reading →

| Opinion, Public transit, West Island

Beaconsfield applies NIMBY to parking

Here’s a really short-sighted idea: Beaconsfield town council has approved a measure that would reserve 30 parking spaces near the Beaurepaire commuter train station only to permit-holding Beaconsfield residents.

While 30 spots at a station in Montreal’s equivalent to the middle of nowhere won’t make much of a difference in the long run, the worry is that this will become a trend. Other municipalities might enact similar measures, making it more difficult to park near train stations. Imagine if Pierrefonds restricted parking near the Roxboro and Sunnybrooke stations to only its residents, or if Montreal did the same for the Du Ruisseau station on the Deux-Montagnes line.

Such NIMBYism (while not foreign to Beaconsfield) is counter-productive to traffic problems and only serves to build walls between neighbouring towns.

| Pop quiz, Public transit

Nuit Blanche pop quiz

I had fun at the Nuit Blanche. I’ll put together a longer post with lots of pictures over the next day or two, but since it’s 6am and I want to get some sleep, I’ll just post this quickie.

Nuit Blanche pop quiz

When was this photo taken?

(I’ve scrubbed the EXIF data in case any of you want to be cute)

For bonus points, where was this taken?

UPDATE: Alex gets it right below, and I’ll just quote him: “Assumung 24:00:00 is midnight, then 28:00:00 would be 04:00:00 and 28:58:20 would be at 04:58:20, which means that if the metro left at 04:58:20 and there are 00:02:40 left before departure, the current time is 04:55:40 (AM)”

Some background: These are clocks installed at every terminus to tell the train driver when to depart. The top number is the time of departure, bottom left is the number of the train, and bottom right is time remaining to departure (it counts down to zero and then counts up until they reset it for the next train).

For scheduling purposes, the STM’s daily clock doesn’t reset at midnight. As far as bus and metro drivers are concerned, there are departures at 25, 26, 27 and 28 o’clock instead of 1, 2, 3 and 4am, as these departures (of day and night buses) are considered part of the previous day. You can even have two schedules running simultaneously if a night bus and early morning bus are on the road at the same time.

What’s so unusual about this sight, of course, is that trains don’t normally run at 4am. The last terminus departure is at 1:30am on Saturday nights on the yellow line. The last train leaves service 25 minutes later when it arrives at the Côte-Vertu station, making it 1:55 am or 25:55. Seeing the clock go up to 28:58 pushes it to new heights. (For those curious, the clock reset itself minutes later to 5am.)

Christelle got the second part of the question right (without getting the first). The picture was taken at Snowdon on the Saint-Michel-bound platform.

| Fun, Montreal, Public transit

Nuit Blanche: Metro doesn’t close tonight

What, you were planning on sleeping tonight? What are you, crazy?

The city opens up with free exhibits, events and parties all across downtown from the Old Port to the Canadian Centre for Architecture for the Nuit Blanche all night (though most of the fun ends around 3am).

All-night metro

The STM, which runs free shuttles between locations, has agreed to keep the metro running all night long, and even has a contest going related to finding metro art at various stations throughout the night. Details and forms are available at the Berri-UQAM service centre or Nuit Blanche info kiosks.

The extension of service doesn’t apply to buses though. Most day routes are timed to coincide with the last metro trains, which depart Berri at 1:30am on Saturday nights. If your trip home involves bus travel, you might want to be on that train.

Otherwise, the night bus network runs as normal, and because it’s Saturday the busier routes (358 Sainte-Catherine and 361 Saint-Denis) run about every 10-15 minutes.

Stuff to see

I was going to give some suggestions for stuff to go to, but I’m not an art critic, so I’ll leave it to these guys instead.

The official site (unfortunately) has been turned into a Facebook page, and the link to the official PDF is dead.

Here are some quick tips for tonight, for those still near a computer who are going out:

  • Go to the Old Port. Some of the best free stuff happens there and it’s a fun atmosphere
  • Bring something to drink if you’re planning on being out all night
  • Dress warmly, preferably in layers if you’re spending time inside and out (or, like me, just ignore that and bring a big coat you can put on and take off)
  • Don’t try to go to too many events, especially if they’re far from each other. The shuttle system is efficient, but with all the people on them they’re not terribly fast.

Finally, it seems my favourite event, the free 5am breakfast at Complexe Desjardins, isn’t happening this year.

See you out there.