Transit use has become irregular
Use of public transit has become irregular since the pandemic, purchase of monthly passes having fallen by 69%. It isn’t only the effect of working from home (what Henri Ouellette‑Vézina calls “le spectre du télétravail” here) but also that the ARTM’s deals for subscriptions is much less favourable now than it was under the old fare structure. But the upshot is that transit has a less predictable revenue stream.
In related news, it should be possible soon to recharge your Opus with your phone. But you won’t be able to use your phone directly at the turnstile quite yet.
Le Devoir got hold of a study saying that a tramway would be a better bet for the east end than light rail.
Joey 10:50 on 2024-03-16 Permalink
I started taking the metro fairly regularly (2-3 times a week) this January. I assumed it would be sardine cans all the way during morning rush hour – while the metro is pretty full until Berri, it’s hardly the overcrowded anxiety nightmare that was common pre-COVID. That said, I haven’t hit a service interruption day yet…
dhomas 10:52 on 2024-03-16 Permalink
I’m part of the beta testing for the Opus “Chrono Recharge” program. It works quite well! The only weird thing is that I added a pack of 10 tickets while I still had 1 ticket from a previous purchase and it started using the new tickets before the old one. Not a big deal, but I found it odd.
CE 12:28 on 2024-03-16 Permalink
I ride transit quite often but at irregular hours so at all different times of day and night. The metro isn’t as jam packed at rush hour as it used to be but I do find it more full at off peak hours than I remember it being pre-pandemic. It could just be that the metro is like the buses which are more crowded than they used to be due to there being fewer departures.
I rode transit often during the depths of Covid and those nearly empty trains and buses at 8am on a weekday were truly unsettling.
Blork 13:07 on 2024-03-16 Permalink
Maybe the shift towards irregular service will shift the fees away from favouring daily commuters so much. If the fees for casual use were lower, AND TICKETS EASIER TO ACCESS, then maybe more people will use it on an occasional basis instead of driving or using Uber.
“Whaddaya mean, ‘easier to access’” you ask? Simply this: people who rarely use public transit often don’t even know how, or what’s needed for payment, and because they are human they can’t be f*cked to find out. So they avoid it. So imagine if it became known that a bus or Metro trip was only a few bucks and all you had to do was load a few tickets into an app — or even better, just pay directly with your phone. More people would use it, including casual/occasional users, visitors, etc.
As it stands now, I’m trying to imagine a visitor from Toronto or California or anywhere else trying to navigate the Byzantine STM web site or fee structure posters if they just want to use the Metro (or worse; a bus) for a few trips or a few days. I’ve lived here for years and I can’t barely figure it out.
Ephraim 13:21 on 2024-03-16 Permalink
Maybe I’m stupid, but WHY do they still insist that a monthly pass has to be bought from the 1st of the month and that a weekly pass needs to start on a Monday. It’s a damn monthly pass, if you buy it on the 12th, it should be good until the 12th of the next month. And if I buy a weekly pass on a Wednesday, it should be good until the next Wednesday. I understand in the past when they actually had to look at the MONTH printed on it, but we are in an electronic age when the pass is checked by a computer. And let me pay by Apple/Google/Samsung pay. That’s how you pay in Europe. I’m not running out to get a special card to use in Bergen in Norway or in Bilbao in Spain.
steph 14:15 on 2024-03-16 Permalink
It’d be nice to not need two opus cards. One for zone A tickets, and another for zone AB.
Blork 14:42 on 2024-03-16 Permalink
@steph, that’s my situation too. Although it’s been improved somewhat by the recent discovery that the Chrono app can tell you how many tickets you have. Before that it was always a mystery. (Checking at a ticket machine is not always possible, and sometimes the info it gives was undecipherable.)
The ultimate goal is just direct pay from your phone (ideally without even needing a special app) and it only costs like $3 a ride. Making that transferable from vehicle to vehicle might be difficult though, without an app behind it.
Nicholas 18:19 on 2024-03-16 Permalink
Kate, are deals for subscriptions worse now than they were before? In 2015 a monthly was $82 and a ten pack of single use were $26.50, meaning you had to take 30.9 trips to make a monthly worth it. Now at $97 and $32.50, it’s 28.8 trips. So it’s actually a better deal now to get a subscription than before. I’m sure using different trips and different years we’d find some differences, but all in all it seems about the same. But I agree that people are commuting less, so it’s less worth it.
Ephraim, you’re absolutely right, there’s no reason they can’t make monthly passes 28 or 30 days like in many places. (This would also mean avoiding the lines that come up on the first of the month, instead spreading out purchases.) The issue is when they converted to a smart card they were thinking of adopting the old system and making it digital, rather than thinking about changing the fare structure. So we got tickets on a card, rather than money on a card.
And, and to steph and Blork’s points as well, this complicates everything. With an electronic purse (load money on a card), there is no need to think about the fares: you just ensure you have enough money on, and tap and go, and the system calculates it for you. Easy for passing through multiple zones, easy for infrequent users, easy to allow credit and debit cards as payments, etc. There are some issues with this, with the big ones being 1. you need to have a way to determine what zone(s) people need, which either requires tapping out or having the tap machine allow you to select the zone, and 2. credit card transaction fees are high, so if every purchase is just $3, that’s over 10% in fees, so you want to encourage larger purse refills. But you can do neat things like fare capping, so that it charges you every time until you hit the day/evening/weekend/weekly/monthly cap, and people don’t have to think about which pass they should buy as it automatically applies, though they still can.
I don’t imagine we’ll move anywhere in this direction anytime soon, as the opportunity to push that was during the fare reform, and it didn’t happen. But it could.
Kate 19:48 on 2024-03-16 Permalink
Nicholas, the journalist says – translating – “The advantage of annual subscriptions have decreased considerably in recent years. Previously, an annual commitment represented a savings of around 20% on the monthly rate, allowing you to benefit from the equivalent of one month free and a lower monthly rate. However, since the price overhaul, the ARTM has only offered a discount of $5 per month after 12 months of subscription for an annual subscription on the island of Montreal.”
Ian 13:59 on 2024-03-17 Permalink
It’s pretty comical how hard it is to teh use the STM unless you already know.
Check out Berlin for comparison …
Step 1: Buy a ticket
Step 2: Validate your ticket
Step 3: Use public transport
And yes you can buy tickets nearly anywhere compared to here, with a whole pile of different methods from apps to cash, at a kiosk, on a tram, whatever. It’s almost like they are trying to make it easy and enjoyable or something.
https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/public-transit
Tee Owe 15:12 on 2024-03-18 Permalink
I’ve posted this here before, but to add to Berlin, there’s London and Toronto – tap in with your debit card (from wherever you live), tap out when leaving, the system calculates your fare and caps you at the daily cap – I know where I prefer to be a tourist