Our metro has the highest fare in North America
24Hrs compared the cost for a metro/subway ticket in a dozen North American cities and our AB ticket will be the most expensive once the July fare hikes come in.
I’m not saying it shouldn’t be. The STM has to pay for itself somehow.
Nicholas 23:17 on 2024-05-04 Permalink
There are so many things wrong with this comparison. It says Vancouver and Montreal are the only North American cities with zones. That’s just wrong. First, the city of Montreal is entirely in Zone A; it’s the region that includes B and C. It’s common to have rail fare zones (Denver, Boston, etc). It’s also common to have differential pricing based on distance (WMATA rail in DC, BART in the Bay area, etc). New Jersey has zones for buses (and distance based fares for rail.) Comparing a regional fare gets very tricky, and it’s not right to compare fares within the cities of San Francisco or New York to the region of Montreal, when those other regions have higher fares from further out.
What’s a fair comparison for an AB ticket? Longueuil is really close to downtown, but Laval is farther (as are the tips of the island), so maybe crossing a river? Taking PATH from Newark to NYC is US$2.75 (C$3.76), but taking the NJT rail line is US$5.25 (C$7.18), and doesn’t include subway or bus fare in the city, which adds another C$4. Max ticket on the DC Metro is US$6 (C$8.20), and rail is higher than that except from the closest stations. Oakland to San Francisco (minimum one stop) starts at US$3.75 (C$5.13) and goes up, and doesn’t include any bus transfers. A rail trip in Boston from all but a handful of stations incredibly close in starts at US$6.50 (C$8.88). You also
There are ways to do comparisons, usually by distance travelled or time spent. This is a very crude method that doesn’t compare at all, just a quick and dirty story by a journalist doing some googling but not understanding the field at all.
Kate 08:49 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
Thanks for reminding us of the many variables that weren’t taken into account.
steph 15:24 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
I dont want to hate on the West Island, but aside from physically being on the island, it doesnt make sense to still have it as Zone A. Especially compared to Longeueil as zone B, located closer to Downtown.
Ian 15:46 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
The entire West Island, eh? I guess east of the Botanical Gardens isn’t real Montreal you then, either?
EmilyG 16:46 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
I currently live in Pierrefonds in the West Island (Pierrefonds is part of Montreal) and I’d be upset if it were considered a different zone. Then it’d cost more for me to go downtown.
Ian 19:30 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
I suspect most of my students would be really mad too – a good portion of the students at John Abbott come from such distant lands as NDG, I even have one student that comes in from Namur. I know faculty that come in from HoMa. There are also French Cegeps in the West Island, so it’s not just an anglo vs franco thing.
DeWolf 21:19 on 2024-05-05 Permalink
Zone-based ticketing is a crude approximation of the actual costs of transport, because the longer you travel, the more you cost in terms of providing services. The thing is, we now have the technology to do very precise distance-based travel, which is how things work in almost every Asian city like Hong Kong and Tokyo.
This is harder to do on buses but it’s easy to implement on rail if you have a tap-in/tap-out system. So imagine this: you travel from Beaubien to Berri-UQAM, your trip costs $1. You travel from Honoré-Beaugrand to Côte-Vertu, your trip costs $5. With all sorts of variations in between.
Of course we could still have passes on top of this, so daily users wouldn’t see any cost increase. But it would make transit a lot more affordable and accessible for casual users, which is particularly important now that so many people have hybrid work schedules and aren’t commuting at the same times every single day. And if casual users didn’t have to buy tickets or do some complicated math to figure out if a metro trip is better value than using Bixi or Communauto, we’d probably see more people taking transit without even thinking about it.
anton 07:31 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
Meanwhile in Germany, they implemented a single zone for the whole country. Monthly pass is 49 EUR. Berlin this summer is implementing its own Berlin-only ticket, which is 29 EUR. Its great cuz its cheaper, on the other hand its sad that now there’s zones again.
…unlimited travel is much more useful than exact accounting of costs via multiple layers of technology. The marginal costs of trips should ideally be low for transit, ideally lower than the marginal cost of drving.
DeWolf 10:28 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
And yet doesn’t Berlin have a zoned system with ABC tickets like we have here? Based on the city’s website, a single trip on the metro ranges from CAD$3.50 to $6.50 in cost.
Passes are great for people who only get around by public transport, but unless they’re very cheap (and yes, 29 euros is indeed very cheap) they aren’t useful for people who only take the bus or metro a few days a week, which at this point is the large majority of people.
I’d love to see a $42 unlimited Montreal pass. That would be ideal. But in the current context I don’t think that’s likely given the funding situation. It seems like it would be easier to convince Quebec’s political masters to adopt a more flexible fare system that enables irregular use rather than a heavily subsidized monthly pass that would cost hundreds of millions to implement.