Transit fares to see 3.1% rise in 2013
STM fares are going up in the new year, inevitably – a monthly pass from $75.50 to $77.75 but other fares aren’t explained in detail yet.
In tangential news, the AMT is going to do another awareness campaign to remind motorists to stay out of bus lanes at rush hours.
Dave M 06:48 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
I think they need to create an awareness campaign reminding cyclists to stay out of bus lanes. It’s something I see way more often (at least on Parc at rush hour), and is one of the most dickish things I can think of that you can do on a bike. If you’re afraid of being in the car lanes, then I’d rather see the cyclist on the sidewalk then see them completely ruin the point of a reserved bus lane.
Stefan 07:12 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
@Dave M: cyclists have the advantage over a car that they can stop quickly and escape to the side/sidewalk if a bus is approaching (which can’t really be overheard). Buses do not pass that often (at most every 10 minutes in the regular schedule) and therefore I think that that lane should be taken advantage of for other active/collective transport to become more fluid and encourage more people to switch from the overpopulated individual motor vehicle lanes.
Here in Vienna, we often have two lanes, left for car, right shared between bus, taxis and bikes.
Tangential idea for enforcing cars out of reserved lanes: smartphone mounted on bus front interior with plate detection, sending photos of detected plates via data transfer automatically to a law enforcement agency. That’s a project a computer science student could do, hardware cost + data plan cost is minimal, not to mention that it’d pay for itself.
C_Erb 07:28 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
I ride in the bus lane on Parc every day, southbound in the morning and northbound in the afternoon during the times when the most buses are travelling. I wish I didn’t have to because I see myself slowing down buses almost every day but what other choice do I have? I’ve tried riding in the car lane to the left and buses get spooked by having me so close to them on the left side and still wait for me. Also, it seems to be the best way to piss off motorists who honk incessantly at me for doing it, so I’ve gone back to riding in the right side of the bus lane and letting it pass me. Generally, with the stops the buses have to make and the number of red lights I can burn, I’m usually way ahead of any bus I pass along the route.
What it comes down to though is that Parc really needs to have it’s centre lane removed in favour of a bike lane. Similar to what happened to Jarvis Street in Toronto (minus the bafoonish mayor removing it a year later).
Dave M 09:36 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
@Stefan from when I remember of Vienna (I’ve only been there once and it was a long time ago), there’s a large network of those bus/taxi/bike lanes and they can’t really be directly compared to Montreal’s reserved bus lanes. In Vienna, there’s a large network of windy/low volume lanes throughout the whole city, 24 hours a day and most of them lower volume than the routes in Montreal that have reserved lanes. In that context, it makes sense to use them to try and encourage active transportation. In Montreal, the reserved bus lanes are (mostly) only during rush hour, (mostly) on routes with high volume articulated buses that are (supposed to) come every couple of minutes. Their purpose is to make the buses more rapid by bypassing the rushhour traffic, and thereby encouraging people to take transit instead of their cars. In that context, a cyclist, makes the transit slow, and breaks the reserved bus lane so it might as well not be there. I’m all for using them a little more for other higher speed traffic (taxis, carpool lanes) so the space doesn’t go to waste when there’s no bus, just not bikes (in Montreal’s context)
@C_Erb I used to bike down Parc every morning before I changed jobs to one that was too close for biking, and I always stayed on the left, straddling the lanes so that I could move over and let bus pass when one came. They never seemed to be too spooked, but I might be misremembering. Other than that, options are: 1. Use the bike path on the east side of Parc (admittedly, not very useful in the morning, there should be one on the west, at least going south) 2. Get up on Olmstead road when you can (only useful for a small portion). 3. Take St. Urbain (I don’t know what your route is, so I don’t know if the bike path going down there is feasible for you or too much of a detour)
If you are on the road, I fully support you going through the red lights between Parc and Pine, though. I think they should have a sign saying they don’t apply to cyclists, since they don’t obey them anyways and it’s safer for everyone if they ignore them.
C_Erb 09:46 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
I come down from Parc-Ex so I ride Parc all the way to des Pins before getting onto the bike path that connects to the McGill Ghetto. The alternate bike paths make no sense for anyone who needs to take Parc in its entirety and then travel west as I have to. Once and awhile, if I’ve managed to get up early and am not risking being late for work, I take Hutchison for some of the trip but still need to take Parc between Jean-Talon and Van Horne and Mont-Royal and des Pins (which are easily the most dangerous sections). The only bike path that would work for me and a lot of other cyclists is one on Parc as the mountain to the south and old train yard at the north make it a bit of an awkward trip with very few possibilities for alternate routes.
Going through those red lights is the only way I can stay between buses and get a head of traffic. If I were to obey them, my being on the road on a bike would be much more dangerous for everyone.
John B 10:02 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
I seem to have submitted a comment & nothing happened.. @Kate: Feel free to delete this one if it’s just being held for moderation.
Transit is getting, (actually, already is), too expensive. With today’s fares, if you already own a car, it’s usually cheaper to drive than it is to take transit. This is the case even if your car, (like mine), is kind of an old beater. It’s also often faster to drive.
A round-trip, when buying 10 tickets at the discounted price, costs $4.80. I can buy 3.5 litres of gas for that, which can probably get me 40 or 50 kilometers. Parking can be an issue, but unless I’m headed downtown where parking is expensive it’s not really a problem. Most of the city has some free parking, or fairly inexpensive parking, (like near Jean-Talon market). If I’m heading downtown I’ll take the metro, (I live a block from the green line), but going elsewhere it’s faster, and cheaper, to take the car.
If I didn’t already have a car my thinking would be different, but I have a car, and I’m not super-likely to get rid of it, so I’m already paying registration, insurance, and some repairs.
For mass adoption of transit to happen it has to be cheaper, or at least as cheap as, driving. Being faster and more comfortable would help too. Continually raising the price isn’t going to get the whole city riding the STM.
owl 10:03 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
I’ve used the restricted bus lane on Côte-des-Neiges Rd. – sometimes it just makes sense and is in everyone’s best interest (car and bus drivers too).
I don’t like disrespecting the law, but occasionally safety (not just mine – everyone’s) has to take priority.
In Ottawa it’s not unusual to see officially-designated bus/cyclist shared lanes – they’re not ideal but sometimes it’s the best cost-effective solution.
In the National Capital Region we’re now talking about shared pedestrian/cyclist sidewalks in certain problematic areas. A city councillor endorsed the idea after yet another horrific accident.
marco 10:10 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
When travelling on Parc Ave., cyclists have to ride in the bus lane to comply with the Quebec Highway Safety Code:
478 – “No person may drive a motorcycle or a moped or ride a bicycle between two lines of vehicles moving on contiguous lanes”
1986, c. 91, s. 478.
487 – “Every person on a bicycle must ride on the extreme right-hand side of the roadway in the same direction as traffic, except when about to make a left turn, when travel against the traffic is authorized or in cases of necessity.”
1986, c. 91, s. 487; 1990, c. 83, s. 176; 2010, c. 34, s. 69.
David Tighe 10:52 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
It is common in other countries to allow cyclists (and motorcyles) to use reserved lanes. Personally I would not unless they were made wider. Otherwise buses trying to keep to their schedule (not easy during the rush hours) could be obliged to pass to close to you. It is better to insert a bike path between bus lane and sidewalk
dwgs 11:41 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
While I’m generally okay with bikes using the bus lane, please don’t be like the d-bag who was holding up the 420 I was on a couple of weeks ago. Cycling down the middle of the lane with the bus right behind him and refusing to get out of the way. When the driver asked him to keep the lane clear (while stopped at a red light) he gave her an earful about his rights and then made sure to get out in front of us again. So one idiot held up 65 or 70 people to make a point.
Michel 11:53 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
@DaveM, I can’t remember when it appeared, but bus drivers and taxi drivers were asked their opinions about cyclists using the reserved lane. Bus drivers thought it was a fine idea. Taxi drivers? No so much, but fuck those assholes.
Oh, and stop using the “cyclists should use the sidewalk” argument. It’s a douchebag move and also against the law.
Carrie 12:39 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
Shame about the increase but the current monthly rate is pretty cheap. I was telling a friend in TO about the cost of public transit just recently, and she couldn’t believe how cheap it was. I don’t know what it is in TO, but it’s close to double I’m sure. And given I’ve just started riding the Metro regularly to get to and from work, I am loving it. 20 minutes door to door no hassle. I may just sell the bloody car after all.
dwgs 13:30 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
$126 for an adult Metropass in T-dot.
John B 13:57 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
“The TTC is more expensive” doesn’t change the fact that transit is often more expensive than driving. Just because Toronto is mucking it up doesn’t mean that we have to.
No\Deli 14:43 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
Any indication what the non-French-speaker rate will be? Since the STM seems to think they can be treated as a distinct class – complete with their own level of service! – I assume they get their own fare schedule.
MB 15:36 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
@John B
Transit is more expensive than driving?
How do you factor that without ignoring gasoline prices, insurance payments, car payments, maintenance, and parking?
Commuting by car is typically a lot more expensive than $126/month.
John B 16:06 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
@MB Transit is not always more expensive, but often is, or is perceived to be, (see my first comment, way up there).
Commuting, with a monthly pass, transit is probably less expensive, however if you need to go somewhere less than once a day, (like me, who works from home, or C_Erb, who usually bikes, but perhaps on rainy days may prefer some enclosed transportation), it’s more expensive, if you already own a car and are already paying insurance/maintenance.
I’m saying that for someone who already owns a car and is already paying the fixed costs, (insurance, maintenance, maybe a car payment), then the only incremental costs are gas & parking. If you’re going somewhere with cheap or free parking, (so not downtown), it’s much cheaper & faster to take the car.
For example, if I go to Jean-Talon market, it’s 24 kilometres round-trip, which burns approximately 2.9 litres of gas, (assuming 12 liters per 100km, more than many cars sold today). At today’s gas price that’s $3.91 of gas, throw in a dollar for an hour of parking that’s $4.91, or 11 cents more than the round-trip would cost me on the STM, however, it takes half as long, and if my wife comes with me, (and she usually does), we save $4.69, and can carry more back home than in the metro. That’s a long trip, and it’s to somewhere that I have to pay for parking. Most of my trips are shorter, and to somewhere with free parking, yet the price that the STM charges remains the same, so our savings increase, (or if I’m going myself, we go from an almost break-even price to saving both money and time.
About Toronto, they may be mucking up the TTC a bit, but the GO system is great. We may have a better metro, but they have much better trains.
jeather 18:17 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
John’s describing a real problem. (And even if you’re talking downtown, once you have 2 people it’s nearly break even for driving vs public transit.) If you want to make people use public transit, it needs to be much cheaper. I’d support higher taxes on cars/gas/whatever if public transit (for locals, fine, you need an ID that shows you live in Greater Mtl) were in turn made cheaper than the marginal cost of driving. (I don’t think it’s hugely less comfortable, and the speed thing is nearly inevitable.)
Jack 19:21 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
@John and jeather there is no way shape or form you can compare the economics of a transit pass to operating a motor vehicle, it is empirically impossible.You argue that fixed costs shouldn’t be included in the calculation…….what?
JS 19:46 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
Biking on Parc, or Saints Urbain, Laurent, or Denis, etc. is strictly for foolhardy morons. Sidestreets & alleys are the way to go.
MB 20:31 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
Just had a comment disappear into cyberspace…Kate feel free to delete this one if need be.
@John and jeather
You are saying: Public transportation costs money to use. If you already own a car, public transit costs additional money to use.
What’s your point? The car still costs more than public transit.
Just because some of the costs don’t accrue on a per-trip basis, doesn’t mean they disappear, it means you are cherry picking which costs to compare.
Let me put it this way: I can get to nearly all my required destinations by foot, bike, public transit, and the occasional taxi cab. I do not own a car.
Guess which one of us pays more for transportation on a yearly basis? On a monthly basis? On a weekly basis? On a daily basis? (Hint: not me!)
You’ve got it backwards. Your CAR is too expensive. Why don’t they make it cheaper so that it can compete with the low cost of public transportation?
John B 21:12 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
@Jack & MB:
I’m not saying my car isn’t too expensive. I’m saying that if I’m already paying the fixed expenses of a car I’m not going to pay additional per-trip price of transit. If you have to pay $200/month, (or whatever), anyway, are you going to choose the method of going to a movie that’ll cost $3, or the one that’ll cost $10? The car’ll cost $3.
@MB: I’m *sure* you pay less for transportation than I do, but for me a car is useful. It lets me, (among other things), bring the family to see the in-laws every few weeks. At the moment, because my only child is an infant, the economics of car vs. train/bus are still debatable, but when I have to start paying for his seat, as well as mine & my wife’s things get expensive, and a car looks a lot more economical, (I haven’t run the numbers, and I don’t know exactly the situation when a car becomes cheaper on an annual basis, but I’m sure it happens at some point).
Transit/biking/walking is great when you’re single, especially with the long spring/summer/fall we’ve been having. However if you have a car for some reason, and you’re already paying the fixed expenses, the STM isn’t giving us much of a reason to leave it at home.
jeather 22:26 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
You’re misunderstanding me. If you are looking just on the economics of it, a car is more expensive than public transit. But lots of people currently have cars, and what we want is for them to forgo use of those cars and to use public transit instead when possible. This might well lead them to not replace the cars.
So here I am with a car because of whatever reasons. On any given trip, I can either drive or take public transit. I have the car; the fixed costs are irrelevant for that trip (I have to pay for the car and insurance whether I take the bus or the car). So if you want to get car owners to use public transit for more of their trips, you need to make public transit at least not more expensive than the car, given that it’s probably already less convenient and slower.
John B 22:32 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
@jeather Amen!
MB 23:45 on 2012/10/23 Permalink
@John B & jeather
I don’t think I’m misunderstanding you at all. I see what you are saying, but I think you are making an illusory correlation. There are two points to be made: what we ACTUALLY pay per trip is different from what we FEEL we pay, and the mode of choice for transport depends on a lot more than cost alone.
Maybe I’m not being clear, it has happened before! haha.
(P.S. John, we all have different transportation needs, I am not going to get holier-than-thou because you own and operate a car!)
You are both cherry picking the costs for the trip; you cannot ignore the fixed costs just because you pay them anyway. They still go on the cost for the trip because you can’t use the car WITHOUT paying them. It doesn’t FEEL like you’re paying more because you aren’t paying at the pump or the parking meter, but the costs are still there. Even using John’s calculation, public transit remains competitive in cost for a single rider (obviously being able to transport multiple riders and cargo is an advantage to the motor vehicle, but you’re still paying a lot more than the transit rider is at the end of the day).
Additionally, when you have an unlimited transit pass, by the end of the month each trip has come out to pennies apiece. For commuters where transit is viable, even those who have a car, it should be a no-brainer.
In other words, the car is too expensive, not everything else that costs money to use or consume.
THIS POINT IS MORE IMPORTANT I THINK:
There are myriad reasons why people select public transit over using the personal automobile. Cost is only one of them; if the price goes down, you WILL NOT see a large modal shift, but you WILL see a significant decline in revenue for the transit company. The STM and the TTC especially recover a large portion of their revenue from the farebox, so they’d be royally hurt, and the few people who make the switch and ditch their cars are hardly going to cover the shortfall. It may seem like drivers would ditch their cars en masse if transit were cheap enough, but it won’t happen. Even on car-free days in places when they are literally handing out tickets for free, most people with a car will still choose to drive. It’s a fascinating but terribly complex subject.
Here’s some more food for thought: New York City, Mexico City, Montreal, and Toronto have the four most well-used public transit networks in North America, with similar per capita ridership rates and similar riders-per-kilometer. However, car ownership in each city does not correlate, nor does the fare.
John B 01:14 on 2012/10/24 Permalink
@MB When I am going somewhere, my thought process goes something like “will this cost me more in gas & parking, or more in metro tickets” and whichever costs less is the route I take, most of the time, if there’s not a huge difference in travel time. I might be weird though. Also, I’m fully aware that a lot of the true cost of a car has been externalized, (road maintenance, paying for pollution in the future), but as much as I probably should consider those, I don’t. They’re too many steps removed from me to make a quantifiable decision.
Your last point, about there being lots of reasons to choose transit or not, is so true. When I lived in Toronto I had a policy of using exclusively transit that runs on rails, unless there was a some extreme need to get somewhere on a bus, (I had no car). That’s because busses are, to me, uncomfortable, slow, crowded, and all that. Subways, at least when I was there, weren’t so bad. I could sleep on them. Same with the GO train.
It’s interesting you mention New York. We could learn something from their express trains. They’d be expensive to put in, but if there was a train that only stopped at the major stations, plus some of the downtown core, it would make things a lot faster to get in from the extremities of the existing lines.
Stefan 02:26 on 2012/10/24 Permalink
@john b: i agree that perceived cost of a trip done per already owned car is minus fixed costs. but taking ideal gas usage as given by the manufacturer, e.g. 7l/100km is not what you’ll get in stop-and-go city traffic. test it for yourself on average conditions but you’ll find that you use up to 3x the gas. and then cost may not be much less than public transit tickets. aside from cost of parking and the also variable cost of usage per km (tires, oil change, depreciation)?
however, decision of taking one’s car vs public transport rests also on other factors, such as convenience: gridlock, personal space, amount of walking, locating a parking spot, perceived travel time (where gridlock and searching for a parking spot are often neglected to consider for driving) etc.
@carrie, dwgs: montreal transit cost may be relatively cheap compared to other cities in north america, but here in vienna recently the price was reduced by about 30% to 1 euro/day (or 30 euro=can$40 per month) when you obtain a yearly pass (abonnement). this was entirely due to political will (coalition with green party in city governement). in that year following the reduction, the number of abonnements has risen steadily by a total of 100.000, about the amount to break even (more users=less cost) and it will probably even yield more income in the future than before for the transit company! rising gas prices and several car sharing companies/organizations entering the market may have influenced that development, so that people can get rid of their cars in favor of occasionally shared ones, thus getting rid of high fixed costs.
Dhomas 03:35 on 2012/10/24 Permalink
Public transit is not too expensive in Montreal; cars are too inexpensive! While travelling in Denmark, I was amazed to see how many people traveled by bike. It was so prevalent that even roads and traffic were shaped and adapted to cyclists, more than to cars. I asked some of the locals why this was the case. I was told that it’s part culture and sensitivity to the environment, but mainly because cars are immensely taxed in Denmark. For example, a Volkswagen Golf costs literally more than twice as much in Denmark as it does in Canada. Though something like this would never happen in Canada, it would certainly get people to rethink buying a car.
Stefan 04:50 on 2012/10/24 Permalink
@Dhomas: the same is true for Austria. car models made in europe are generally smaller (no matter where the manufacturer is located, cars are made quite locally). so, a car of same size is almost twice as expensive as in north america. also, gas is at least 50% more, all due to taxes (some of it even progressive), and all that money is obviously put to work somewhere.
jeather 06:47 on 2012/10/24 Permalink
I think public transit should be less dependent on fares and more heavily subsidized by, eg, gas taxes and parking fees. This would make both the fixed and marginal costs of car ownership increase and the marginal subway cost decrease.
But if you have a car already, you don’t consider your insurance cost for the next trip because it’s irrelevant. Sure, what I pay per trip is some part of the fixed costs in one sense, but it’s also just the marginal cost in another sense, and people are much more sensitive to marginal costs. Taking the bus vs the car will only affect my marginal costs. (And there are other concerns, of course: convenience, time, how fixed are the plans, etc.) The ways to convince people to change some of their car trips to public transit ones — surely something we want to do — is not to keep increasing the public transit costs while not even improving the public transit benefits.
The metro system in Montreal in no way compares to the subway system in NYC, where most places are a half dozen blocks from a subway entrance and the subway runs 24 hours a day. The train system that gets to the outer areas also runs regularly, in both directions, and not just at rush hour.
William 13:52 on 2012/10/24 Permalink
If you’re on a bike, in the bus lane, and blocking a bus stuffed full of people, get off your goddamn bike for 15 seconds and let the bus go past. It’s basic logic and manners!