STM needs more buses
Andy Riga reports that the STM needs more buses – the impression here is that the bus system, although it’s gradually been expanding, is a transit bottleneck. If we had more buses on the road could we get more people out of their cars and into the transit system?
TC 19:49 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
Probably not. Buses get stuck in traffic, like cars, and people would rather sit in a car than a bus, given a choice. An inspiration I had while sitting in an overcrowded bus, hemmed in by other traffic, was that during rush hours street parking should be turned into bus-only lanes. This exists in some areas of Boston (where I live), but any vehicle can use the lane. Limit it to buses, and it would make a real difference in bus travel times.
Kate 19:51 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
Isn’t that what they do on René-Lévesque already? Also on Park Avenue? The bus lanes are marked with a diamond and you can’t park in them during rush hours.
C_Erb 20:04 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
I’d rather sit in a bus than in a car. I can read and people watch in a bus. In a car, I just look at other cars.
Blork 20:10 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
I’d like to think that more buses would have that effect. As it stands, there are plenty of routes where you have to wait half an hour for a bus, which is doubly unattractive if the ride is only 15 minutes. More buses = less waiting, so more likely to not bother with the car.
SN86 20:17 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
It is interesting that the STM needs buses now since they recently got rid of the popular and highly reliable Classic buses (http://imgur.com/9Y3nE) and instead got 100s of low quality Nova LFS’. These older buses were capable of staying in service for many more years but were taken off the road anyway.
Kate 20:20 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
SN86, why do you think they’d do that? To create jobs?
C_Erb, I tend to agree. I always have some podcasts and some things to read with me, and there’s often something interesting to see from the window.
TC 20:23 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
@Kate: then this practice should be expanded, as much as possible. Buses make stops, it slows them down, more dedicated lanes compensates for that. Give some priority to mass transit.
@C-Erb: assuming you can get a seat
@Blork: more buses means more drivers, and paying them.
Kate 20:26 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
@TC: granted, you need more drivers, but if there were more buses more people would find them a viable option, and then the STM would collect more revenue from passengers.
Also, even standing you can listen to a podcast or look out of the window. It only gets truly unpleasant if the bus gets so crowded you’re sardined in. Which does, I admit, happen sometimes.
SN86 20:29 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
Job yes but the big picture is that bus purchases are almost completely subsidized by government dollars. The STM is run mostly with govt $ and the Quebec govt subsidizes buses built in Quebec so it’s simple when compared with repairing old buses. If the STM was spending more of their own farebox money then I bet this would not be happening.
Marc 21:38 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
@ SN86: Oh I miss those Classic buses. Miss the New Look (fishbowl) ones even more. Ah well. The TTC is the most fare-dependent transit system in Canada, possibly North America. They ain’t using those awful Nova buses.
More people would swap their cars for sitting in a bus if it were A/C’ed and the seats didn’t give you a backache like the new ones (29-xxx, 30-xxx, 31-xxx) do.
Poutine Pundit 22:12 on 2012/10/09 Permalink
The Novabuses in Quebec City go 15 to 20km an hour on average, even on dedicated lanes, so I imagine it’s similar in Montreal. The Montreal Metro is faster at 40km on average, and so is a personal car. Moreover, bus rides are bumpy and uncomfortable, reading makes you sick, and those crappy plastic seats aren’t going to encourage anyone to trade in their car for an OPUS card. Most buses in Western Europe at least have proper padded seats.
There is so much to be done to improve public transportation in Quebec, and more crappy Novabuses are not the answer.
Stefan 02:07 on 2012/10/10 Permalink
personal cars can only go at 40km/h average if drivers do not respect the speed limit (which is 40 In Montreal for all but arterial roads). i guess it’d be more like 25 km/h if you time an A-B trajectory. Much less when you are stuck in traffic.
I’m not sure the quality of buses is so different, but in Vienna they feel much less noisy. The bumping is caused by the crappy roads in Montreal, though. Overall impression is a big difference, but also bus intervals are much higher, therefore you usually find a seat and they are much more punctual. interesting strategy that i recently noticed: a bus may short-cut a loop if delayed, so that the remaining passengers going to the final stations have to wait for the next bus (which usually arrives shortly because it is not delayed) in order to guarantee punctuality for the next loop traversal.
But in order to make people switch, a clear advantage must be offered: e.g. right of way for collective transport (tramways or buses) vs. jammed traffic. Modern tramways are also quiet to the point that it becomes dangerous because people don’t notice them crossing(!), and are very stable in the tracks unlike cars, so reading, working on a laptop etc. is not a problem.
In Vienna many two-lane streets are converted into left lane for cars, right lane for buses/taxis/bicycles, thus allowing proper throughput for collective/active transport and channeling more passengers with less traffic. I can see that for the major streets in the Plateau (st. laurent, papineau, st. denis).
Jo Walton 09:11 on 2012/10/10 Permalink
Kate, they got rid of the old buses for accessibility — all the Nova buses kneel and have wheelchair ramps, the Classics had stairs. We now have close to 100% accessible buses, which considering how inaccessible the metro is, seems like a good idea.
Taylor C. Noakes 09:22 on 2012/10/10 Permalink
Replace urban buses with tram lines in isolated lanes on our major urban thoroughfares.
Move buses to suburban areas where population is expanding.
Use the Métro and communter trains to link both systems together.
SN86 11:47 on 2012/10/10 Permalink
@Jo Walton, it is true they got rid of the Classic buses for accessible low floor LFS buses however, it turned out all the LFS’ bought between 1996-2008 had poor quality rear ramps so they were rarely used to pick up wheelchairs and kneel feature broke down as well so ramp couldn’t be used anyway. These were accessible buses only if you couldn’t climb 3 stairs and in Montreal many people have to deal with more than 3 steps entering their homes.
Jo Walton 15:36 on 2012/10/10 Permalink
SN86: Yes, many people can deal with three stairs. Other people are in wheelchairs. I think it’s at least worth making an effort to make Montreal accessible to those people even if the result isn’t always perfect.
I think the kneeling buses are better for everyone. I’ve noticed if the bus has to stop out in the road because some jerk has parked in the bus stop, the driver will make the bus kneel so that it isn’t a huge leap down to the ground.
mare 17:37 on 2012/10/10 Permalink
I have several friends in wheelchairs that stopped going with the bus. Drivers simply refuse to stop when they see a person in a wheelchair at a bus stop because it fucks up their schedule because it takes so much longer for them to board. If you’re in a chair in mid winter and have to wait for the next bus (or the one after that) you learn to stop using buses very fast.