Montreal City Weblog

Kate 10:03 on 2024-12-12 Permalink Reply  

• walkerp 10:34 on 2024-12-12 Permalink

  Very cool. I applaud them.

• David 23:55 on 2024-12-12 Permalink

  I spent 1 hour in a taxi trying to get out of downtown tonight because everything including the ville Marie tunnel is closed. I took the train into the city and had to take a cab back to the “dreaded” West Island because there are no public transit options after 9:30. This city is a joke. Fuck Val plate. Fuck transports Quebec. Language is a foolish way to decide who matters in a society – clearly.

• CE 00:11 on 2024-12-13 Permalink

  I always find it funny when West Islanders complain about the city. They had the option to have a say in its governance and gave it all up to keep their little fiefdoms.

• DeWolf 10:21 on 2024-12-13 Permalink

  “There are no public transit options after 9:30”

  The 470 Pierrefonds Express runs from Côte-Vertu metro until 1:30am. The 211 Lakeshore runs from Lionel-Groulx until 1:20am.

  Even in the middle of the night, there are three night bus lines running from downtown to the West Island.

• dhomas 11:30 on 2024-12-13 Permalink

  Also, Val Plante (or any other mayor) doesn’t dictate what transit options are available to the West Island. All transit is managed at the Provincial level. There were a number of non Val Plante mayors before, and none of them addressed transit to the West Island. When the REM’s Western expansion is completed next year (if it maintains that schedule), will you give credit to Val Plante, David?

• Nicholas 12:11 on 2024-12-13 Permalink

  I will give credit that Exo trains are run laughably badly, but that’s not the city’s fault. Exo is a regional body, but the key is the trains run on freight tracks, and those are federal responsibilities. So there is no leverage, and the feds don’t care. I’ve been told that basically no one who matters, even the train operators, cares about the trains.

  But as others have exemplified, the West Island actually has some of the best suburban public transport anywhere in North America. Open up your favourite transit app (Google Maps, Transit, Chrono, Citymapper) and you’ll get options all evening or night long, including express service to Dorval 24/7. I guarantee they’re much better than most places 20-30 km from downtown in Montreal, but also most places on this continent. You just have to be willing to ride a bus.

• Orr 14:51 on 2024-12-13 Permalink

  REM opens next year and all your problems will be solved.
  We’ll be expecting a note from you about how good life is again with the combination of ville de Montreal downtown attractions while being able to go home at the end of the day back to the good life in one of the west-island’s suburban low-tax-fiscal paradise fiefdoms.

• Uatu 15:45 on 2024-12-13 Permalink

  Getting back to the West Island will be easier. Getting home from the REM station outside of rush hour is another story. You can direct your displeasure to your local transport at that point.

• Ian 19:38 on 2024-12-13 Permalink

  LOL no. I can tell how few of you visit the West Island. Rant incoming.

  Considering the Ste Anne stop for the REM is north of the 40 and not even as far west as the Ecomuseum, it won’t be helping anyone out that way. After Sources most people still live south of the 20 (where the EXO train goes), like Pointe Claire, or so far north of the 40 the REM won’t help them, like Pierrefonds. The STM says there’s going to be a 20 minute shuttle bus to get into Ste Anne proper even during school hours – but realistically probably longer, becasue it;’s always longer. For all of you lauding the 211 I’d like to point out that as it’s considered a student route the buses are very poorly maintained – often windows don’t fully open or close and the doors don’t properly seal, so cold and wet or stiflingly hot depending on the time of year – and I suspect it’s considered a punishment route as the drivers are invariably unsympathetic and miserable. It’s also worth noting that unless you get on at Lionel Groux there’s a good chance you won’t get a seat, and even then you might have to stand the full hour ride if you’re unlucky.

  I have taught night classes in Ste Anne, and left John Abbott College at 10:30. I would get back home in the Plateau no earlier than 12:30. When the VM construction was going on, it once took me 3.5 hours to get home after a class that ended at 2:30. All this to say, even at the best of times unless you are travelling at rush hour toward downtown in the morning and toward the west island in the evening, the schedule is not serving you, nor is it meant to.

  Unlike David I certainly don’t blame Plante for the vomit comet (the local nickname for the 211) but pretending that whether or not all of the West Island stayed amalgamated would have any affect on the REM or the STM is silly. Besides, I thought we were supposed to be encouraging on-island exurb types to leave their cars at home to reduce congestion in the city proper. I never owned a car until I started working in the West island, in part becaseu only getting home at midnight when you have to get up at 5:30 to take public transit back outo the West Island to teach an 8:30 class is, frankly, utter bullshit. Not to mention that even on the very best day I would spend 3 hours on the metro and various buses for what takes me on average half that tiem to drive, even during rush hour.

  I would happily ditch my car forever if we had reliable, comfortable, regular public transit. It’s expensive, it’s annoying, and at its core insulting that I should need one in a grown-ass city. Ridiculing people that aren’t healthy, childless, or lucky enough to live close enough to everything to be able to bike or walk is, frankly, stupid – and totally unhelpful whether you want to improve accessibility, save the environment, reduce pollution, increase community, or whatever progressive urbanist flavours you like.

  /rant

• DeWolf 22:42 on 2024-12-13 Permalink

  It’s a tall order to provide high-quality, frequent transit to low-density suburbia that is 30km away from the city centre.

  Even if and when Pointe-Claire and Dorval densify, Ste-Anne will be another story entirely. It’s a village of 5,000 people 31km away from downtown. That’s the same distance as St-Jean-sur-Richelieu which has only recently been considered part of Greater Montreal.

• Ian 01:21 on 2024-12-14 Permalink

  5000 residents in the actual town of Ste Anne alone, and almost that number of people going to McGill, John Abbott, and McDonald College as well as the hospital and all the other businesses in the area. We don’t measure transport by how many people live there, but by how many it serves. That’s about another 10k cars on the road that won’t be replaced by public transit since by your reckoning they don’t matter – just in Ste Anne alone. I guess they can go screw themselves for having the audacity to be half an hour away from downtown (via the 20, depending on time of day). Don’t forget to apply the same math to the east end, too – but without the schools I suppose. Throw in the south shore and north shore too, just for kicks. But of course they don’t matter either. Anything more than, let’s say 10 km in any direction from Lionel-Groulx is nowhereseville, so they can go suck eggs.

  This points to the kind of elitism I often mention. Do you or the others posting here imagine people west of Dorval or east of HoMa should all just stay where they are? Not everyone gets to live, work, and go to school downtown. In fact some of us even live downtown and go off to these distant fiefdoms, and let’s be real, we all know the REM is unreliable and meant to create development opportunities, not provide transit solutions to existing populations – and actually makes other existing transit options worse as lines are cancelled.

  THAT is a fiefdom mentality.

• DeWolf 15:31 on 2024-12-16 Permalink

  “We all know the REM is unreliable” except it’s actually more reliable than the metro and a hell of a lot more reliable than the bus or commuter trains. And you’ll have a station that is 10 minutes by bus or bike from the heart of Ste-Anne. It’s not as good as having a station fully within the town centre, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the status quo. But if you want to write off the REM as useless when most of it isn’t even open yet, go ahead.

  “I guess they can go screw themselves for having the audacity to be half an hour away from downtown”

  Why are your replies always so histrionic?

• Ian 22:00 on 2024-12-16 Permalink

  Nice ad hominem. 10 minutes by bus or bike, sure, but the proposed shuttle is already supposed to be 20 … just because something is a 10 minute drive sdoesn’t make it a ten minute bus ride, much like the 1 hour ride from LG. The REM really is unreliable – as you may recall certain posters here from the south shore have considered going back to driving, and as we know, the bus routes that used to exist straight into town were cancelled.

  Why are YOU always such an apologist? You’re the one who said these people that live out in the sticks don’t merit high-quality, frequent transit transit service, not me.

  FWIW I did the math and nearly a quarter of the population of the Island of Montreal’s population lives more than 10k from Lionel-Groulx – in fact, even parts of Ahuntsic.

  3764 Baie d’urfe
  19277 Beaconsfield
  48403 DDO
  19413 Kirkland
  4394 Montreal-est
  33488 Pointe Claire
  5027 Ste Anne de Bellevue
  951 Senneville
  73194 Pierrefonds
  85857 Montreal-nord
  45288 Anjou
  80983 St Leonard
  19857 Île Bizard
  14626 Mercier

  =451432 total
  Of 2004265 (Island of Montreal)
  =22.5%