Blue line extension could replace 5000 cars
Extending the blue line five stations east to Anjou could get 5000 cars off the road every day.
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Kate
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ant6n 13:21 on 2019-07-03 Permalink
So that’s what, like 1/4% of the cars in the metropolitan area?
Faiz Imam 13:38 on 2019-07-03 Permalink
Yeah, talking in terms of cars replaced is a problematic lens to look at transit expansion. For example its expected that wayyy more trips will come from current bus users. That’s still huge, and will have 2nd order effects as those empty buses find new users elsewhere.
Also it’s huge for local users and of course adds to the TOD discussion of earlier. A lot of the land around these new stations is of low density and has little value.
I’m not surprised a car lens is how people like TVA would look, but while getting some cars off the road is good, but that can’t be the key measure of success. It’s the sort of thinking that ends with giant parking lots of cars that get filled by 7am.
Blork 13:46 on 2019-07-03 Permalink
That would be nice but it sounds like the data is very iffy and raw and doesn’t account for the very real problem of saturation on the Orange line. So it will be great for people who live in RPP, St-Leonard, Anjou, etc. and who work in Park Ex, Outremont, Côte-des-neiges, etc., but it probably won’t help them if they work downtown or in Old Montreal.
It’s not so useful to compare that 5000 cars with total car presence in the metropolitan area. What’s useful is to see what effect it will have on the roads between Anjou and Villeray. So that’s the 40, Jean-Talon, Bélanger, and Beaubien primarily, and to a lesser extent the south-bound streets like Pie-IX, St-Michel, Papineau, etc. Will removing 5000 cars a day from those roads have a noticeable effect? Probably a bit, but not huge. (Better than adding 5000 cars though…)
ant6n 14:27 on 2019-07-03 Permalink
Everything that the province, city, or developers are doing is huuge and awesome and OMG!
Chris 08:41 on 2019-07-04 Permalink
The 5000 cars removed will be replaced by 5000 other cars from farther afield. Network utilization doesn’t tend to go down. As roads empty, people from even farther suburbs will have a reasonable travel time and start driving. Road lanes should be simultaneously removed/repurposed as the blue line is extended.
Faiz Imam 18:13 on 2019-07-04 Permalink
Blork, good point.
More specifically, what I would hope for is that this line would make more reserved bus lanes politically palatable in that area. We know there is huge resistance to removing parking or driving lanes, but having metro stations acting as anchors for high performance bus lines tends to make disrupting driving less politically painful.
And as I said above, there will be a LOT of empty bus seats that are currently used to get to St-Michel. Redistributing those to the new stations(or elsewhere) could be a really big deal.
Chris, true to a point, but that is something that can be controlled by reducing driving lanes and parking. Also by the time the blue line actually happens, we might have a congestion pricing system.
Induced demand is a strong argument, but I woudn’t want to use it to say we shouldn’t build more transit. It just means we need to make sure we are doing something about those secondary effects.