Tag Archives: STM

| Montreal, Public transit

AMT fares going up too

$TM

Following the STM/STL transit fare increases announced last week, the Agence métropolitaine de transport has put out its list. Fare increases for monthly passes range between 1.0% and 3.8%:

Adult fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Intermediate fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Reduced fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase
TRAM 1 (Downtown Montreal) $77.00 $74.50 3.4% $61.50 $59.50 3.4% $46.00 $44.50 3.4%
TRAM 2 (Midwest/ mideast/ North Montreal) $90.00 $87.00 3.4% $72.00 $69.50 3.6% $54.00 $52.00 3.8%
TRAM 3 (Longueuil, Laval, Far West/East island) $105.00 $103.00 1.9% $84.00 $82.50 1.8% $63.00 $62.00 1.6%
TRAM 4 (Ile Perrot, La Prairie) $115.00 $113.00 1.8% $92.00 $90.50 1.7% $69.00 $68.00 1.5%
TRAM 5 (Vaudreuil/Dorion, Chateauguay, Kahnawake, north shore, Repentigny, Sainte-Julie, Saint-Constant, St. Bruno) $133.00 $131.00 1.5% $106.00 $105.00 1.0% $80.00 $78.50 1.9%
TRAM 6 (St. Hilaire, Mercier, Hudson/Rigaud, Blainville) $159.00 $156.00 1.9% $127.00 $125.00 1.6% $95.50 $93.50 2.1%
TRAM 7 (Mirabel, Oka, St. Sulpice, lower St. Jerome) $185.00 $182.00 1.6% $148.00 $146.00 1.4% $111.00 $109.00 1.8%
TRAM 8 (upper St. Jerome, Valleyfield, St. Hyacinthe, Sorel) $211.00 $207.00 1.9% $169.00 $166.00 1.8% $127.00 $124.00 2.4%

STM (Montreal):

Adult fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Reduced fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase
Monthly CAM $66.25 $65 1.9% $36 $35 2.9%
Weekly CAM Hebdo $19.25 $19 1.3% $11 $10.75 2.3%
Six tickets $12 $11.75 2.1% $6.50 $6.25 4%
Cash fare $2.75 $2.75 No change $1.75 $1.75 No change
Tourist card (3 days) $17.00 $17.00 No change
Tourist card (1 day) $9.00 $9.00 No change

STL (Laval):

Adult fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Intermediate fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Reduced fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase
Monthly pass $74 $72.50 2.1% $59.00 $58.00 1.7% $44.50 $43 3.5%
Eight tickets $18 $21 -14% $12.50 $12.25 2.0%
Cash fare $2.50 $3.00 -17% (None?) $1.80 ?

Still no word from the RTL about Longueuil rates for 2008.

UPDATE (Dec. 18): Finally the RTL releases their 2008 rates. The increase is substantial, especially for reduced fare monthly passes.

Adult fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Reduced fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase
Monthly pass $76 $73 4.1% $45 $42 7.1%
Six tickets $15.50 $15 3.3% $9.25 $8.90 3.9%
Cash fare $3.25 $3.25 No change $2 $2 No change
| Montreal, Opinion, Public transit

Family transit fares don’t make sense

St. Laurent’s Alan DeSousa wants the STM to introduce “family” fares, which would supposedly give group discounts if a household buys multiple transit passes. He says his borough offers family prices for leisure activities, and we need to get more cars off the road.

DeSousa isn’t specific about what he means by family fares. It could be discounts (or tax rebates) when buying monthly passes, or it could be discounts when travelling as a group.

Here’s the thing with the latter option:

  • Leisure activities tend to be done as families, because families spend their leisure time together. Public transit tends to be the opposite: Everyone headed in different directions at different times. How often do you board a bus with two or more members of your immediate family at the same time?
  • Even the most fervent public transit supporters will concede that family activities will almost always require use of a car, if only to transport all the food, diapers and other supplies they need to take with them.
  • How do you enforce such a thing? I’ve gone to Ottawa and travelled on their “family” fare with a female friend, pretending she was my wife. The drivers there don’t care, it’s not like they’re going to ask for a marriage certificate. So it really comes down to a group discount, usually for two adults and up to two or three children. And why should group discounts be limited to families?
  • Families travelling together is hardly the most pressing need environmentally. In fact, environmental policies encourage carpooling. What we need to get off the roads are people who drive alone to work during rush-hour, not the family carload heading to the amusement park.

The other option (giving families discounts for buying monthly passes) has its own problems:

  • We already get a federal tax break for buying transit passes.
  • Once again: Why is this treated differently from any other form of group discount? Certainly others, like offering a discount for someone who buys a transit pass for 12 consecutive months, would be more popular and more successful.
  • It increases paperwork, which benefits accountants and civil servants more than it does anyone else. This is especially true if families have to prove relationships before they can get the discount.
  • Unless more people start buying passes as a result, this would decrease revenue for the STM, requiring either more cash from the city, reduced services or higher fares for everyone else.
  • There’s no direct link between number of people in a household and ability to pay for public transit. There are plenty of poor people without families (indeed, for many of them that tends to be why they’re poor in the first place), and plenty of rich people with families (where mommy and daddy both have their cars and drive them to work, coming up with some flimsy excuse why they can’t take public transit).

It’s a gimmick, and I doubt it’s going to do anything to help public transit. Instead, more buses, lower fares and more investment in things like reserved bus lanes will bring people out of their cars. It’s boring, but it works.

| In the news, Montreal, Public transit

Transit fares going up (but down in Laval)

$TM

It’s about to hit December, which means it’s that time of year when the STM announces its fare increases for the coming year. It’s required to give 30 days notice of fare increases, so that’s why it happens now.

The skinny:

  Adult fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Reduced fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase
Monthly CAM $66.25 $65 1.9% $36 $35 2.9%
Weekly CAM Hebdo $19.25 $19 1.3% $11 $10.75 2.3%
Six tickets $12 $11.75 2.1% $6.50 $6.25 4%
Cash fare $2.75 $2.75 No change $1.75 $1.75 No change
Tourist card (3 days) $17.00 $17.00 No change      
Tourist card (1 day) $9.00 $9.00 No change      

The STM argues that these fare increases are modest (average of 1.9%, and lower than last year’s increases), and combined with a hefty increase in the amount Montreal is giving the corporation will help pay for increased capital expenditures and better services, some of which have already been announced or implemented. These include:

  • Running six trains all day on the Blue Line
  • Replacing 40-year-old train cars (currenty operating on the green line) with new ones
  • Increased metro service (26%), especially before and after rush hour on the green, orange and blue lines
  • Increased bus service on its 30 most popular lines, including the 121 Sauvé/Côte-Vertu, 18 Beaubien and 24 Sherbrooke
  • Longer service hours for rush-hour expresses 470 Pierrefonds and 194 Rivière-des-Prairies (running both during the day between rush hours), and running the 12 Île-des-Soeurs on Sundays.
  • General budget expenses to cope with a 2% increase in ridership.

Laval cheapens up

  Adult fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase Reduced fare
(Jan. 1, 2008)		 Now Increase
Monthly pass $74 $72.50 2.1% ? $43.00 ?
Eight tickets $18 $21 -14% ? $12.25 ?
Cash fare $2.50 $3.00 -17% ? $1.80 ?

The Laval transit corporation, meanwhile, is going in the opposite direction, reducing its single-use fares. A single fare will now be $2.50 instead of $3. There will also be cute little incentives like increasing the age at which children can travel freely from 5 to 11 on weekends and holidays.

The decrease makes sense, especially because now it’s cheaper to take the metro from Montmorency to downtown Montreal ($2.75) than it is to take an STL bus down the street ($3). The change will reverse that. (The fact that neither STL nor STM tickets are valid at the Laval metro stations is still a huge annoyance though.)

On the other hand, the price of a monthly pass is going up, from $72.50 to $74. This changes the math of how often you have to use transit for the monthly pass to be worth your purchase. Right now, if you use public transit fewer than 28 times a month (14 round trips), it’s better off to get tickets. That number goes up to 33 (16.5 round trips). So in the unlikely event that you travel by bus exactly 14, 15 or 16 times a month, you’re now better off getting tickets than passes.

The STL is also dramatically reducing fares on smog days to just $1, if a smog warning is in effect as of 3pm. That sounds great and all, but it takes effect during the evening rush hour, when people either have their cars at work with them or they don’t. It will also require some system to inform travellers (and drivers) when the reduction takes place.

Still no word from the AMT, which controls prices of regional transit passes, on what its 2008 rates will be.

| In the news, Media, Public transit, Technology, Video

If only bus drivers had writers like these

Via Martine, the WGA, the American writers union which is currently holding us hostage by denying us House-isms on strike for the rights to more than mere pennies from DVD sales and all of nothing from online publishing of TV shows and movies, isn’t lying down or holding useless marches with picket signs. They’re creating media to rally support for their cause.

In essence, it’s a tactic we’ve seen before but on a much larger scale. When CBC employees were locked out in 2005, they started producing blogs and podcasts to keep communication going. After it was over, the blogger for CBC Unlocked, Tod Maffin, was given the job of running Inside the CBC, a decidedly uncorporate, uncensored blog about the inner life of the Mother Corp., with its blessing.

Locked-out journalists at the Journal de Québec are still, since April, putting out a competing daily newspaper as part of their pressure tactics. The move has rallied support among other unions (who have helped them financially) politicians and newsmakers (who refuse to deal with Canoe reporters, a fly-by-night “wire services” and other scabs) and readers (who have cancelled subscriptions and are picking up the competing paper).

With Hollywood, the tactic that’s getting the most play is online video (ironic since the dispute is over how little they get paid for online video). Writers for popular shows like The Office, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have been cracking jokes on YouTube, and the actors are coming out to support them. Some like McDreamy and co. talk calmly about the issues, others like Sarah Silverman make the funny, and then there’s Sandra Oh.

The latest campaign, called “Speechless“, involves short black-and-white clips of actors in a world without scriptwriters. Most of them are of the actor-stands-blank-faced-and-says-nothing variety. Others are pretty funny. There’s a new one every day.

Some of my favourites below:

Continue reading →

| Navel-gazing, Public transit, West Island

Hindsight is 470/20

The West Island Chronicle looks at the new extended service on the 470 Express Pierrefonds, which you’ll recall had weekday daytime service added to it a couple of weeks ago.

Based on conversations with users, the article concludes that the extended service is popular, but people are annoyed with the fact that there’s no service after 7pm or on weekends. They’re also having trouble with connections, missing the bus by a few minutes:

“Anyone who has university courses until 7pm or right after has to take two buses to get home, it’s really annoying,” she said.

…

Another point of contention seems to be that the bus’ arrival and departure times at the Fairview shopping centre, which is the West Island’s largest bus terminal, do not line up conveniently with those of other buses leaving Fairview.

David Chernofsky, a Dollard des Ormeaux resident, said that he had to wait 15 to 20 minutes on average for the next 208 bus when exiting the 470 at Fairview.

Really? If only someone predicted exactly that before the service started…

That’s great news, unless you plan on staying downtown past 7 p.m. or want to go downtown on the weekend. And really, how many kids in the West Island would want to do that?

Another problem is with the schedule. About half the people who use the bus (based on my oh-so-scientific anecdotal guesstimation) use it solely for its metro shuttle part, and use another bus to get between home and Fairview. Most of those buses run every half hour on the half-hour, so they’re timed to arrive at the terminus and drop off their arriving passengers a few minutes before the half-hour mark.

Thing is, all but two of the eastbound departures from Fairview take place six minutes before the half-hour mark, about the same time as these buses are arriving. It’s a schedule that seems almost designed to make people miss connections from about a dozen different bus routes, and I can’t seem to find any reason why the schedule as a whole can’t be delayed by six minutes to make the transfers easier.

I-told-you-so’s aside, it’s good the STM is recognizing this so quickly. Expect more evening departures and schedule realignments. The STM will be meeting with West Island mayors today to discuss bus service further.

| In the news, Montreal, Public transit

Another STM strike?

It sounds a lot like déjà vu: Montreal risks being “crippled” again by a transit strike.

The STM union representing bus and metro drivers and ticket-takers voted 97% in favour of a strike mandate today. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll strike, but it does mean the union can call one at any time. Negotiations broke off last month after a long stalemate at the bargaining table.

To be clear, this is a different union than the maintenance workers’ union that went on strike in May. Those workers agreed to return to work (after a pretty serious public backlash) but reserved the right to go back on strike. They have not yet agreed to a contract.

The only difference between the two: If this union goes on strike, you can blame the bus drivers for it.

UPDATE: The STM wants the union to stop pressure tactics that involve making managers do more work, such as bringing buses to the wrong garage or not locking up metros at night.

| Montreal, Public transit

Better metro service in exchange for higher fares

Interesting how just after we hear the news that metros will run more frequently in the hours around rush hour (though not during rush hour when they run pretty well at capacity), we get the first hints that transit fares may go up again for the 11th straight year.

In 1997-1998, the last time fees didn’t go up, a regular monthly pass was $45 ($19 for reduced fare) and a single adult fare was $1.85. That puts today’s prices into perspective.

The problem, of course, doesn’t lie with the transit authority (or its 90% unionized workforce) but with the government, which is forcing the users of public transit to fund its operation to an increasing extent. In 1990, users were funding 42.5% of the STM’s revenues, now that number is above 50% (though not as high as the 58% of 2001).

How much the government should be funding public transit operations is a matter of personal opinion. If you think we should be paying all the basic operating costs, expect to pay $130 a month on transit passes, or up to $400 a month if you live in the suburbs. If you think it should be free, well you’re not going to be happy with this news.

| Public transit, West Island

A small step for West Island bus service

About two and a half years ago, the STM introduced a new rush-hour bus route to the West Island. The 470 Express Pierrefonds was a strange beast, running limited-stop along the western half of Pierrefonds Blvd., then travelling up St. John’s Blvd. on regular-stop duty to Fairview. From there it would run non-stop straight to the Côte-Vertu metro station where most people would get off. The route ran, in both directions, during both rush hours.

The route turned out to be a big success, particularly for its non-stop shuttle service between Côte-Vertu and Fairview, which was the first of its kind. (The closest thing they had to it before then was the 216 Transcanadienne, which took the service road of Highway 40 and was designed to serve the industrial buildings in that corridor.)

But the bus was still rush-hour only, much to the annoyance of students, stay-at-home parents or anyone else without a car who wanted to do something during the day, at night or on the weekend. Some people (like me) have suggested over and over and over that the service be extended to become a regular 7-day route, just like the 211 Bord-du-Lac, which is non-stop between the Lionel-Groulx metro and Dorval train station, and then continues westbound to Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue. Because it’s so fast and frequent, it’s the most popular bus route serving the West Island.

Starting Monday, the STM will be taking the first (small) step in that direction. They’ve announced that the 470 will fill the gap between morning and afternoon rush-hours and run “all day” (see the schedule in PDF) on weekdays. (A similar announcement was made about the 194 Métrobus Rivière-des-Prairies on the other side of the island, just to make sure us anglos aren’t getting special treatment.)

That’s great news, unless you plan on staying downtown past 7 p.m. or want to go downtown on the weekend. And really, how many kids in the West Island would want to do that?

Another problem is with the schedule. About half the people who use the bus (based on my oh-so-scientific anecdotal guesstimation) use it solely for its metro shuttle part, and use another bus to get between home and Fairview. Most of those buses run every half hour on the half-hour, so they’re timed to arrive at the terminus and drop off their arriving passengers a few minutes before the half-hour mark.

Thing is, all but two of the eastbound departures from Fairview take place six minutes before the half-hour mark, about the same time as these buses are arriving. It’s a schedule that seems almost designed to make people miss connections from about a dozen different bus routes, and I can’t seem to find any reason why the schedule as a whole can’t be delayed by six minutes to make the transfers easier.

Hopefully these things will become very apparent to the STM very shortly after the additional service is launched on Monday.

| Montreal, Public transit

The spooky metro car

I got on the metro the other day to do some grocery shopping and I finally stumbled on the one metro car that’s been retrofitted as part of an art installation.

For those who have never seen it, it’s easily recognizable by its dark blue interior (there are also buildings painted on the windows). When you get on, you don’t notice anything else unusual (it looks like just another one of those wrap-around ads they always have), but then you start hearing the sounds. Some are literally bells and whistles. Others are children talking. (There’s at least one video of it on YouTube)

It’s not immediately clear where it’s coming from. A lot of people on my train turned their heads wondering who was carrying speakers. The sound is surprisingly clear, and just a little bit louder than the station announcements. Reaction was sadly underwhelming. People coming home from work are amazingly uninterested in things going on around them.

I ended up taking the train all the way to Laval (with my groceries) to experience it (tangent: It’s surprising, anecdotally at least, how many people ride the metro to laval. Almost half of those passing Jean-Talon seem to go to either Cartier or Montmorency stations and transfer to the buses.)

Radio-Canada has a radio interview (third item down) with the artist, Rose-Marie Goulet, who explains that the purpose is to bring art galleries to people who don’t go to them. She also says that the STM was eager to help her with the project (though the fact that she went straight to the top with her request probably has something to do with that.) The interview also includes a couple of audio clips from the train.

The car (#78-007, at the centre of the 9-car train) is currently on the orange line, and will make the rounds on the blue and yellow lines over the next six months.

A little bit of irony: I would have missed the train entirely had there not been a metro delay earlier in the evening caused by a stroller on the tracks at Plamondon.

| Montreal, Public transit, Slow News Day

More suburbanites taking public transit

A pair of interesting bits of information are proving that more people are interested in public transit than even politicians might think. The metro extension to Laval has drawn in 20% more people than expected, enough that the STM has had to add a new train to the morning schedule. A cynic might suggest that the government intentionally lowballed the figure so it could herald the successes later, but that’s just crazy-talk.

The article hilariously compares the unexpected excess popularity to the unexpected excess price, even though the first is 20% over and the second is 450% over.

It also says that this means more cost to the STM because public transit is underfunded by the government. I’m not quite sure what one has to do with the other.

Some out-of-my-ass suggestions on why the Laval metro is getting so much action:

  1. It was hyped, like huge and stuff. Free transit on opening weekend turned it into more than a free ride. It was a circus. People brought their kids to see this thing. It was like a mini Expo. The AMT took advantage and setup special rides of the Blainville train. It was an event.
  2. On the same day the metro open, Laval’s entire public transit map was overhauled. Almost every bus route was changed. Most of the buses that service the western half of the island now go to the Montmorency metro. Most of the buses serving the eastern half go to Cartier. The move forced everyone to rethink how they had to get around, and for many that meant using the metro.
  3. It’s unclear how many people switched to the metro from the bus and how many people actually took up public transit as a result of this huge investment.
  4. There’s just plain more people living in Laval and north shore suburbs.

Meanwhile, ridership is up on the Montreal-Dorion/Rigaud train line compared to September of last year. Though the AMT is being cautious and waiting until the end-of-year numbers, it’s a good sign.

Unfortunately, service on that line is still less-than-stellar, due to scheduling problems with CP who run freight trains on the line west of Lachine, and the fact that the line from Dorval to Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue is rendered redundant by the cheaper and more frequent 211 bus.

| Montreal, Public transit

Students will seek junk food

When I was in high school, a 250ml carton of milk could be bought for $0.20 in the school cafeteria ($0.25 out of the vending machine), thanks to heavy government subsidies. Soft drinks, candy bars and other junk food were also freely available, for a price.

Last week, the Quebec government announced that they would no longer allow junk food to be sold in public schools, in an effort to get kids to be healthier. It’s a sensible move: if you want kids to eat better, don’t dangle sweets in front of their faces.

This morning, La Presse reports that a special STM shuttle bus is being used to take kids to and from Mount Royal High School to the Plaza Côte-des-Neiges mall during lunch – ostensibly because they want to gorge on high-calorie foods. And the Marguerite-Bourgeois school board is trying to get them to stop.

The STM’s response is simple: They’re there to provide transit service to paying customers, not to second-guess their motives. “School extras”, the extra student-only shuttles that usually start mid-route at the school to take students home, aren’t there because the STM wants to be nice. They’re there to avoid dozens or even hundreds of students suddenly trying to get on the same bus after the bell rings.

Quebec’s junk food plan will help a bit, if only morally, to help control junk food intake. But students will go out to get what they want, even if that means they’ll have to take a bus to get there.

Expect a lot of weekday-only fast-food restaurants to start opening up near schools as a result of this policy.

UPDATE: Le professeur masqué has some thoughts on this issue as well. Another blogger asks if we’ve all gone crazy.

UPDATE (Sept. 26): The STM caves, vowing to only run shuttles to bring students back to school, a compromise about as stupid as the entire controversy.

| Montreal, Public transit, Slow News Day

Oh no! It’s the bus pass loaners!

Here’s an interesting one from the Gazette: Apparently there’s “some” people renting out their monthly transit passes to make a little extra money. The article cites the Chinese-language sinoquebec.com website as a source of postings offering bus passes for short periods.

Is this really widespread? I’d never heard of this before and it doesn’t seem to make much sense.

First of all, would you hand over your $65 bus pass to a complete stranger in exchange for a couple of bucks and a promise to bring it back?

Secondly, at $2 a day or $5 for a weekend, these passes are clearly being rented at a loss. Nobody’s going to make any money from that. It’s just some people not using their passes who figure it can make a few bucks.

There’s a lot of borrowing of bus passes between friends, or groups trying to use one pass with more than one person (it doesn’t work for the metro turnstiles, and bus drivers can spot the trick a mile away). And there are certainly lots of people selling passes they bought in error or no longer need. But renting just seems silly, and unworthy of our attention.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the article is from spokesperson Odile Paradis:

“No, you cannot pass the bus pass to the person behind you in line, but it can be loaned to family members and friends,” Paradis said. “Just not for money.”

I can’t find anywhere in the STM by-laws that specifically prohibits borrowing bus passes (so long as two people aren’t using it simultaneously), so I guess that makes it official: Bus passes are transferable, so long as you don’t charge for it.

| In the news, Montreal, Public transit

Hybrid buses coming

The STM board of directors have approved a plan to buy new hybrid buses from NovaBus and run them on some routes next year.

The list of routes (66, 80, 103, 105, 162, 165, 166, 535) seems a bit biased toward Cote-des-Neiges and NDG (only one of the routes doesn’t travel through that borough), which also happens to be the home of Tremblayite Snowdon city councillor and STM vice-chair Marvin Rotrand. But we probably shouldn’t read too much into that.

Instead, let us celebrate the awarding of a new contract to NovaBus, a company that loves to create lemons when experimenting with new designs for buses, confident that because they’re the only Quebec company in the business, gross incompetence won’t stop the customer from coming back for more.

| 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.