Updates from November, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 19:20 on 2019-11-09 Permalink | Reply  

    Right now there are 8 fare zones for public transit in the urban area, and a claim is made here that we’ve seen before – that 700 possible fares exist depending on your specific needs. A reform is under way in which only three fare zones will apply but there are two major ideas in play, one of which makes Montreal zone 1, Laval and Longueuil 2, and everything else 3. The other is an awful-sounding arrangement which would slice up the island of Montreal into three sections like Neapolitan ice cream. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail.

    Update: The ARTM is supposed to be doing public consultations soon in view of making access to transit fairer throughout the urban area.

     
    • Faiz imam 01:23 on 2019-11-10 Permalink

      Seems like this is a leak of some proposals, not anything final or official, so we can’t take it with too much certainty, but what struck me was the costs being considered here.

      $98 for people in the island, $89 without REM (basically same as the current passes)
      $138 for south and north shore (similar to current passes for most people. with some exceptions)
      and $177 for people further out (same ish for many people, but a huge jump for certain corners.

      Overall its pretty similar, and suggests (assuming this is close to final) that the new infrastructure has not added any enough to the cost to break apart the system.

    • Uatu 13:12 on 2019-11-10 Permalink

      I’m kinda annoyed because I’ll be paying 20$ more for the extra step of going to a train station and waiting in the cold for a connecting bus. I hope it will turn out better than I anticipate

  • Kate 09:39 on 2019-11-09 Permalink | Reply  

    Following its scare story about microbes in the metro, La Presse finds a concern among STM workers about cockroaches and bedbugs on the bus, although this piece contains no actual anecdotes about workers dealing with them and mostly restates the recent information that the STM doesn’t clean its metro cars as often as some other cities do.

     
    • EmilyG 19:45 on 2019-11-09 Permalink

      I think that bedbugs are quite a problem in hotels, homes, and some libraries, and those are the main places to worry about them.
      I’ve heard of bedbugs being found occasionally in public transit, taxis, movie theatres, etc. in several big cities, throughout the years. They’re something to be wary of, of course, but I don’t think there are usually huge infestations (or many or any bedbugs) in any of those places all the time.
      So yes, it’s important to watch out for bedbugs, but you can’t just wrap yourself in a plastic sheet and lock yourself inside your house because you’re afraid of them being everywhere in public.
      Though maybe public places should be tested for bedbugs more often in general.

  • Kate 09:23 on 2019-11-09 Permalink | Reply  

    TVA has a profile of the man who died in the windstorm last week when bricks fell from a Park Ex building. His story is almost a novel right there on the page, so I won’t try to summarize it here.

     
    • Kate 09:13 on 2019-11-09 Permalink | Reply  

      Berri-UQÀM station was evacuated Friday evening around 8, and three metro lines were also down for most of an hour, after some sort of irritating gas – CTV says pepper spray – was detected. Service resumed around 9; there have been no arrests.

       
      • Blork 11:16 on 2019-11-09 Permalink

        What a goddamn mess. I was at McGill when it was announced that the orange, green, and yellow lines were all down because of something at Berri/UQAM. Then they announced that Berri/UQAM was being evacuated. Then they announced that McGill (where I was) was being evacuated! We all had to leave the train and the platform, being shoo-ed up the stairs by Metro cops blowing whistles. All the while the announcement saying that service would resume at 8:55.

        Seriously? If Berri/UQAM is evacuated, and the station where I was was evacuated, then presumably stations all along the lines were evacuated. It felt like there was a terrorist attack going on or something, all the while the very real EVACUATE! messages being interspersed with a canned message that service will resume in 10 minutes. What the actual f*ck?

        I ended up on a quest all over downtown trying to find a bus to take me east (FAIL) and finally had my sweetie come all the way over from Longueuil to pick me up. By then it was probably 9:30 and the system was back up, but I wouldn’t have known that because they booted everyone out of the goddamn station! GRRRRRRR!

      • Spi 12:07 on 2019-11-09 Permalink

        Blork do you have a smart phone? Your bus problem and knowing the system was back up could have been easily solved by using google maps and following the twitter account for the different metro lines.

      • Blork 12:18 on 2019-11-09 Permalink

        @Spi, you’re missing the point. Three lines down and apparent system-wide station evacuation does not seem like something that can be resolved in ten minutes. The problem was conflicting messages and the illusion that something much bigger was going down, so i just left and went to Plan B because it seemed like Plan A was out of the question. I didn’t even bother to check the web site for STM because I was very involved in trying to make Plan B work. My main question is why did they evacuate McGill? Did they evacuate other stations? Why the huge reaction to a bit of pepper spray?

      • walkerp 13:41 on 2019-11-09 Permalink

        Feeling like they need to re-evaluate their risk management analysis at the STM.

      • Uatu 15:59 on 2019-11-09 Permalink

        I think the STM is afraid that pepper spray can be spread throughout the metro because of the way the air is forced into and out of the tunnels whenever a metro arrives and leaves? If that’s the case then it reinforces the case to encase the tracks with a glass barrier

      • Kate 18:37 on 2019-11-09 Permalink

        Uatu, how would a glass barrier, which can’t possibly be taller than about ten feet, contain a gas?

    • Kate 09:08 on 2019-11-09 Permalink | Reply  

      A woman and child died overnight in a fire in Lachine, which is being investigated as arson.

       
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