Seven STM bus routes to be cut
As part of the reorganization of STM bus routes, seven routes are to be eliminated, including the 15 on Ste‑Catherine, which dates back more than a century and was originally served by horse‑drawn trams.
Am I silly to feel that something central to downtown Montreal is being abolished? And what will the STM do if the green line goes down?
Chris 09:35 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
>Am I silly to feel that something central to downtown Montreal is being abolished?
You mean the in-office jobs? Well, without those workers, buses are more empty, and probably not viable to keep, especially with two metro lines so close and parallel.
Nicholas 09:40 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
The 150 on René Lévesque will get more service, and the 24 is also right there. We don’t plan regular buses based on if a metro line might shut down 1% of the time, as if we did we’d be running the 15 every minute or two. But most of the time it’ll be nearly empty. St Catherine and de Maisonneuve have pedestrianized segments, construction and narrow lanes, making the trip slow and circuitous. It just doesn’t make sense to keep it going, especially given the budget crunch; better to run a faster, more frequent service nearby.
Kate 09:45 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Ah OK. I used to take the 15 with my folks when I was a kid. Bit of nostalgia here.
Blork 10:27 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
I imagine that with all the reworking of Ste-Catherine over the past few years to make it more pedestrian-friendly (and indeed the full pedestrianization of parts of it), having a bus lumbering along there just seems incompatible. Especially a bus that only arrives every week or so (or so it seemed).
Before my shift to WFH four years ago I would occasionally want to go from the office (on Ste-Catherine near Bishop) over to the Eaton Centre or thereabouts, and I’d always try to time it so I could hop on the 15. (The Metro was a less interesting option for such a short ride, as just getting down to the platform and back up on the other side was almost as much of a walk as just walking to the Eaton Centre.)
I only succeeded once. Partly because the 15 was so infrequent and seemingly NEVER running on schedule, but also because I had to walk two blocks east or west to find a stop. The block between McKay and Bishop had no stop. That one ride was fun and interesting because it just seemed so weird to be going down Ste-C on a bus. A near-empty bus, BTW.
Result: I don’t think anyone will even notice it’s gone.
CE 11:07 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
I’ve had the exact same experience as Blork and if you want to go any further than Bleury, you’re going to be shuttled down to R-L so it would have been smarter to take one of the many and more frequent bus routes there. Also, Ste-Catherine is much narrower now and also going to be under construction in at least one area or another for the next many years. I always thought a high frequency tramway for shoppers going from Atwater to Bleury would have been interesting but that ship has sailed with the new design of the street.
Blork 12:19 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
In Quebec City they have these little half-size electric buses shuffling people around. I always thought that would be a good thing for Ste-C; but they should be free and you can hop on and off anywhere, not just designated stops. They would run from Atwater to Aylmer, then up to Maisonneuve and back to Atwater. Running approximately every five minutes, so you’d need about ten of them on the move at any given time. Stick a big ad on the side to pay for it.
There you go. Blork for mayor.
Nicholas 15:33 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Blork, by far the largest cost of running service is labour (driver, mechanic, dispatcher, etc), and that mostly doesn’t change with smaller vehicles. The small vehicle will mostly be stuck in the same traffic as a large one. And if you pick up people everywhere that increases how often the bus stops, which slows it further. And if you make all this free, that will shift people from the metro and 24/150 to this slower bus. Then you go from a driver moving 75 or 900 people to one moving 30.
These kinds of short routes work in some constrained situations, like a lack of a street grid in old cities, tight turns, no other options. And it’ll work better once we get automated buses. They tried automated minibuses on Plaza St Hubert, but it seems like the best use case is Old Montreal, or weird uses like Habitat.
Kate, I totally get the nostalgia. Maybe they should change the 150 to the 15 for nostalgia. I figured this bus would survive until every green line station had elevators, but it seems that won’t be for another half century, so I guess they thought do it now. I think the overlap with the metro is why the 15 is so rarely used, while the 24 (also a former streetcar) is always busy, as it goes further west, and is also above the escarpment. That would be a great option for a tram in reserved lanes.
Blork 15:37 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Nicholas, I wasn’t really serious about the mini bus thing. It was just something I pondered a few years ago. And bear in mind that AFAIK the 15 was never full unless the Green line was down, so the idea of mini-buses would be less about moving commuters around and more about giving people on that one street a free ride as a way of encouraging people to shop downtown.
But yeah, not practical for plenty of reasons.
Kate 15:55 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Blork, they tried something like you describe on Plaza St-Hubert, with a small self-driving electric bus that shuttled up the plaza, step on step off, and back down via St‑André. Either the experiment was not ruled a success, or the funding ran out, because it no longer exists.
Ian 18:25 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
That sounds pretty cool, Kate, when was that?
Kate 19:50 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Ian, it wasn’t so long ago. Maybe summer 2022? It’s briefly mentioned in this blog thread, which wasn’t primarily about it.
I sometimes grab a beer with friends at Mellön on St‑André. The little bus was garaged in a tempo-type structure in an adjoining city parking lot. But by last summer it had disappeared.
I once tried to step aboard, but was turned away. If I remember correctly, the bus didn’t have a driver, but did have a human conductor aboard, and he wasn’t letting anyone on to ride back southward – which seemed kind of silly.
Explanations of things like this are the sort of story that used to turn up in Metro, but not any more.
There’s a page on the plaza website from 2022 with a picture of the vehicle, which looks like a kid’s drawing of a bus.
[Later edit: that Plaza link is dead but there are some photos on this site).
DeWolf 20:22 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
I hadn’t thought about that little bus for awhile but it was indeed quite funny. Especially since it drove at the speed limit (which is 20 km/h on St-Hubert) and it was often tailgated by impatient drivers, which would cause the automated bus to stop and flash a message indicating that it was a robot bus. That would keep happening over and over again because the kind of driver who tailgates isn’t very smart.
Ian 20:52 on 2024-06-05 Permalink
Oh my gosh, that is hilarious. I’m sorry I missed it.
Kate 00:14 on 2024-06-06 Permalink
They also experimented with one of those driverless buses around the Olympic park.