Last year’s guide seems to have been well received, so I’m doing it again.
Here’s what to expect from the Montreal-area transit authorities for service this holiday season, including special holiday service schedules and free service days.
Once again, I ask that you have some sympathy for the bus or metro driver who has to work during the holidays getting whiny vomiting drunk people from A to B in thick snow.
La Presse on Wednesday had a story that discussed an apparent flaw in the new smart-card fare system being used by the STM and other transit agencies in Quebec. The story concluded (with Journal-de-Montréal-style undercover anecdotal investigation) that people could make use of this flaw to get free transit rides. The Gazette matched the story within hours.
Here’s how it works: Users take the paper/magnetic cards that are distributed as tickets, transfers and proof of payment on buses and in the metro, and bend them to make the magnetic strip unreadable. When the cards are placed into magnetic readers, it produces an error. The STM personnel are instructed to let the people through, even though no fare has been deducted from their card.
Of course, there’s nothing new here. We’ve known about how easily the magnetic strip can be rendered unreadable for months now, among all the other problems inherent in this card. And people have been attacking the fare payment system through its most vulnerable part – the employees – for a long time now. The computerized fare system just makes this easier.
What this story shows are the two major problems with the way the STM (and other transit networks) deal with fares. One is new, the other is old.
1. The new fare systems are not human-readable. The previous modes of fare payment all could be verified by a human employee simply looking at them. Even the punch-card transfers given out by bus drivers had a timestamp printed on them.
The new magnetic card has information printed on the back about how many fares have been deducted and how many are remaining, but there is no way for a driver to manually deduct a fare from them (this will become an issue if and when multiple-use disposable cards come back – The Gazette’s article says these cards will be phased out in June, but I think the writer is confusing them with the old system which is being phased out).
The Opus card is even worse. There is no way to tell without a card reader how many fares remain on the card. There is no way to manually deduct a fare. And a bus driver can’t simply throw away a bad Opus card and issue a new one.
2. No one forces you to pay your fare. This problem, which has existed since the beginning, really leads to all the others. Bus drivers are specifically instructed never to leave their seat while a bus is in service. If people get on and refuse to pay, they’re just let through. The alternative – a potentially physical confrontation between a bus driver and a hostile passenger – is to be avoided at all costs.
The metro is a bit better, with physical barriers in place, but jumping a turnstile is only going to get you in trouble if the cops are nearby.
Sure, there are fines of hundreds of dollars for people who refuse to pay their fares, but bus drivers and metro ticket-takers aren’t empowered to give them. Only when a security agent or police officer is present do these tickets get issued (and nobody’s stupid enough to refuse to pay a fare when a uniformed agent is around).
Some transit systems such as the AMT get around this with a proof-of-payment system. In these systems, fares are checked at random by officers with the power to issue tickets. You can take the train for free, but eventually you’ll get caught and face a hefty fine. The STM is moving to this system with the new cards, but won’t be able to implement it until June when the old system has finished being phased out. They’ve also promised to post agents on buses, but the ratio of agents to buses needed to seriously cut down on fraud is far higher than would be financially feasible.
Sure, the fare system is flawed, but it has nothing to do with bending a magnetic strip.
Now that the debate is over, I guess we can assume that the party platforms are out there. I was interested in how each party is looking at public transit. Even though the economy and health care are the big issues, it’s never been sexier to be green.
From news interviews and party platforms, here’s what I’ve been able to piece together about what the parties have promised for public transit in Quebec.
The promises are about what you’d expect: practical but uninspiring from the Liberals, pandering and expensive from the PQ, non-existent from the ADQ and completely unrealistic from the Green Party and Québec solidaire.
Nothing radical or even particularly interesting comes out of the main parties (the PQ’s promises, in particular, involve many things that are already being planned), but it does give an idea of what portions of the electorate each party is targeting.
Total cost: $260 million ($200 million through the province, $60 million from the AMT)
Sources: Charest promises increased transit to Laval, Longueuil
Total cost: $3.6 billion, not enough says Normand Parisien of Transport 2000
Sources: PQ promises $3.5B for public transit, Transit union boss backs PQ
The ADQ has nothing in its platform (PDF) about public transit beyond a vague promise to “modernize its management”, though Mario Dumont has said in the past he would make public transit an essential service, removing from its unions the right to strike.
Total cost: $1.2 billion over five years
Source: Party platform
Total cost: $40 billion over 20 years (includes non-public transport measures), financed by a carbon tax and road tolls
Sources: Party platform (PDF), Transport plan announcement
What do you think? Which party has the best public transit platform?
UPDATE (April 21): After being cancelled because the stickers peeled off, the STM has restarted the project.
The STM has begun a pilot project in an effort to reduce boarding problems at metro stations, particularly during rush hour. The idea is to mark where the doors open (they always open at the same place), and create a buffer zone so that people can exit the train safely while others wait off to the side to get on. Believe it or not, this is actually a problem: people are so desperate to get on that they crowd the doors and don’t leave any room for people to get off. Sometimes it can be like trying to get to the stage of a rock concert.
The project is in place at three platforms, each with a different design.
There were rumours that the fares would go up again (not exactly going out on a limb), but the STM last night made it official. The new rates (PDF) are as follows:
| Regular | Reduced | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly CAM | $68.50 ($66.25 + 3.4%) | $37 ($36 + 2.8% |
| Weekly CAM | $20 ($19.25 + 3.9%) | $11.25 ($11 + 2.3%) |
| Three-day tourist pass | $17 (no change) | N/A |
| One-day tourist pass | $9 (no change) | N/A |
| 10 trips (Opus card only) | $20 ($2/trip) | $10.75 ($1.08/trip) |
| Six trips | $12.75 ($2.13/trip, $12 + 6.3%) | $6.75 ($1.13/trip, $6.50 + 3.8%) |
| Single fare | $2.75 (no change) | $1.75 (no change) |
Transit agencies have to give 30 days notice for fare changes, which means they have until 11:59pm on Dec. 1 to announce any changes to take effect for Jan. 1, 2009.
The STM has announced that, starting Dec. 6, adults who pay their fare to get on the bus or metro will be able to take up to five kids under age 12 for free on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. (Via Transport in Montreal)
The STM has pulled $400,000 out of its ass as the projected “cost” of this program.
It’s part of a campaign by the city to get families out doing stuff (going to museums and other attractions) on weekends by reducing prices.
New schedule for 175 bus with added departures highlighted (via CPTDB)
The STM has announced some changes to bus lines, primarily in the area of the St. Laurent industrial park:
Also approved by the STM’s board of directors last week is the creation of a new line, the 467 Express Saint-Michel, which would provide limited-stop service along St. Michel Blvd. during rush hours. The 67 Saint-Michel is the busiest single bus route in the entire STM network with about 40,000 riders a day (the Côte des Neiges, Parc Ave. and Pie IX Blvd. axes have more ridership split over regular and rush-hour reserved lane routes). Expect this new line to come into service either in January or March.
Turnstiles at Peel metro
As students were forced into the new Opus smart card system when their reduced-fare passes expired on Oct. 31, the STM took the opportunity to change the configuration of turnstiles at metro stations, switching more to the newer smart-card machines.
Instead of one or two newer turnstiles and the rest using the old punch-card and magnetic-strip systems, the ratio is now reversed with a single older turnstile and the rest on the new system. Besides working with different cards, I’ve noticed the newer turnstiles are also lower, which means that instead of being whacked in the gonads when the turnstile locks up, you’re smacked in the legs.
The change quickly began irritating riders using the magnetic bus passes, who have already taken to writing letters about their frustrations.
I’m going to miss quite a bit about the older turnstiles when they’re eventually phased out entirely. Instead of reading miniature punch cards, they’re scanning RFIDs. Instead of a welcoming two-tone acknowledgment of a fare paid, there is only a single soulless beep.
You’ve seen Il fait beau dans l’métro and Attention la terre, pollution.
The following videos are … not nearly as cool. They’re from the dark period of lame 80s/90s Quebec song commercials. All three have the same message: the bus and metro are much faster, cheaper and less stressful than driving a car and dealing with traffic and parking and accidents and stuff.
An eagle-eyed netizen tells me that Google’s Transit service, which allows you to choose “by public transit” when finding directions via Google Maps, has been updated to include route and departure information for the STM’s buses and metro.
For an example, here’s a route by public transit from Fairview Pointe-Claire (where all the anglos hang out, didn’t you know?) to The Gazette’s offices on Ste. Catherine St. downtown. (Et, bien sûr, c’est aussi disponible en français)
The service, which is also available in Vancouver, Ottawa, Fredericton and dozens of U.S. cities, and had previously included AMT train service (which was much easier since there are much fewer departures to put in a database), is effectively a competitor to the STM’s existing Tous Azimuts service, which although revolutionary when it was introduced is now over a decade old and doesn’t meet today’s usability standards. Google Transit is slicker, faster and easier to use.
Like Tous Azimuts, Google Transit suggests alternate routes, says how long they’ll take, and provides the time of departure and arrival of each bus or metro.
This is no simple undertaking. Google requires the transit agency to provide a database of all departures for all routes in a specific format. We’re talking thousands and thousands of departures here.
This might also make other third-party STM trip-planning services obsolete, as Google Maps becomes a must-have application for cellphones.
UPDATE: I’m told by a helpful reader below that this also includes off-island transit networks like the Société de transport de Laval and the AMT-administered CITs, but not the south shore RTL network yet RTL data just went live so it now includes all the networks.
UPDATE (Oct. 29): Google, the STM, STL, RTL and AMT are making the joint announcement today, 10am at Google’s Montreal HQ (1253 McGill College) (Thanks Jean). Google Transit has already been updated to list all the transit agencies in the area (thanks Dumitru).
Expect media coverage of the new service during the evening news. Some technology media are already covering it. UPDATE: more pieces from The Gazette, Branchez-Vous and RadCan. And Tristan Péloquin has some background about this project.
Google has also setup a special page with an introductory video in French and English, thought the English version has a British narrator and uses New York as an example.
Remember back when I suggested that the new Opus smart-card transit pass was working well (at least relative to the disastrous magnetic card)?
Well, now that the STM is forcing all students to get Opus cards, it seems problems are arising with those as well, as this post suggests. And lineups and delays are leading (indirectly) to kids getting ticketed for not having the passes on them.
After recent injuries to pedestrians due to rear-view mirrors on STM buses, some are asking why these predatory reflective objects are allowed to keep recklessly and deliberately attacking poor bystanders whose only crime was standing less than four inches from the driver’s side of a moving bus.
The STM has refused to retrofit their buses in order to remove these threats to our (taller) children, even after discovering that people can get hit with them.
This is about safety. The ability of a bus driver to look at himself or look back at roads he’s already driven through should not get in the way of keeping our streets safe for pedestrians.
We must not rest until our buses are mirror-free.
As part of its promise for vastly increased service for users (and in order to meet government-imposed quotas to get extra cash), the STM has announced sweeping improvements to bus service across the island, as well as better service on the Orange Line of the metro (which will now use renovated MR-73 trains exclusively), all starting next Monday (Sept. 1) as the new schedules are released.
The actual improvements to bus service aren’t quite as dramatic as the long press release would make it seem. Part of the reason is that the STM simply doesn’t have enough buses to meet up with all the increased service it wants. More are being manufactured, but won’t arrive here until next year.
Nevertheless, there are some highlights in the new schedules:
The 480 Pointe-Nord Île-des-Soeurs route, which was first announced back in April, finally gets started. It’s an express link between downtown and Nuns’ Island’s new Bell campus. That route will also be paired with a collective taxi service which will run between the campus and Nuns’ Island’s commercial area during lunchtime.
What do you do when a pilot project fails miserably? Try it again in another place without changing any of the things that were wrong with it, of course. After trying “seniors” routes in NDG and Côte des Neiges, the STM is repeating the experiment in Montreal North, Saint Michel and Rosemont.
Like the previous incarnation, these buses will only run on certain days (and it’s not the same days for each bus), during midday, on a confusingly circular route at unreasonably large intervals of between 50 and 80 minutes. The latter two will also use minibuses, which are high-floor buses (it’s unclear if they’ll have lifts like adapted transit buses do) and tough to get into for older people.
The stops will be identified with the same yellow signs as the previous versions, even though yellow signs also indicate temporary routes (like the shuttle running through Georges-Vanier metro) and tourist routes (like the 515 Old Port bus)
As part of its incremental increases to service to the 470 Express Pierrefonds, a route described (repeatedly) as a “home run” by STM director Marvin Rotrand, the STM has finally added weekend service for the first time. Service will be provided in both directions between 6:30am and 6:30pm, at intervals ranging from 20 minutes (during weekend rush-hour times) and 30 minutes (around noon). That’s great, only it took them a year to do it.
Service intervals on the 103 Monkland will drop dramatically next week during all hours of service. On weekdays during the day, intervals will be closer to 10-12 minutes than the current 15-20, and during rush hour it will drop below the 6-minutes-or-less threshold.
On Saturdays, morning eastbound service will be at 15 minutes instead of 20. Westbound, intervals will drop from 20 minutes to 15 from 1-4pm, and from 30 minutes to 20 minutes during the evenings.
Sunday’s schedule stays mostly the same.
Following up on a promise to offer late-evening service to certain routes, new schedules for five seven-day routes show less truncated weekday schedules, which will now end closer to the metro’s closing time of 1am. Weekend service, however, will remain unaffected and still end as early as previously:
Anyone who’s tried to get around the West Island early on a Sunday morning quickly realized that it’s not possible before 9am. For some arcane reason, service starts at 7am on Saturdays, but everyone’s expected to just sleep in on Sundays. Only certain routes like the 68 or 211 offer any service before 9am. That changes next week, as the late-rising routes through Fairview start getting up at 7am instead of 9:
Perhaps there was a mixup of some sort. But comparing schedules, it seems there are actually slight reductions in the service on two routes where the STM has advertised slight increases:
UPDATE: The papers have stories on the schedule changes. La Presse, notably, mentions nothing about the 470 weekend service nor the earlier Sundays for routes going through Fairview. I guess they think the West Island doesn’t matter.
Nameless new STM fare/transfer card
This spring, after outfitting all buses and metro stations with new equipment, the STM introduced a new, smarter fare system which uses smart cards instead of magnetic-strip passes, and cards with magnetic strips instead of … tickets with magnetic strips. Both not only serve as fare payment, but also as transfers.
Though Opus, the smart card, is the sexier and more revolutionary of the new fare cards, the STM started with this flimsy paper thing that has caused nothing but confusion and problems (even its website is down)
Below is a list of the problems I’ve noticed with the non-Opus paper card, even though I’ve never actually used one:
Have you noticed any problems with the card apart from these? Comment below and I’ll add them to the list.
The local media is busy rewriting this STM press release (or republishing this Presse Canadienne piece with its incorrect web address) about how students will be forced to use the new Opus smart card as a transit pass this fall. The card, valid for two years, will have a picture and personally identifiable information on the back.
For some bizarre reason, the STM started this campaign without updating its web page on the card so that students could learn more about the new system.
One of the claims by the STM, as highlighted by The Gazette, is that the card will eliminate fraud and, hence, taxing by fellow students. The way this will be done, it suggests, is by revoking the card’s credentials once it’s reported stolen.
Let me repeat that: Once it’s reported stolen (This is assuming, of course, that the student in question knows the serial number of the stolen card or the STM can search a large database of personal information to find it).
Now, to those who have never been bullied in high school: What do you think is going to happen after someone has taxed you for your transit pass and you report it stolen?
Of course, the fact that ID and pass are on the same card, and that ID should be checked any time the card is used, should automatically make it impossible to use the card of anyone but an identical twin. But, as we all know, verification of student ID cards is hardly 100 per cent.