Police blotter of the weekend
Police blotter of the weekend: a building in St‑Léonard caught fire Sunday and was still burning Monday morning; a woman was hit by a car on René‑Lévesque at Crescent, early Monday, and an arrest made for suspected impaired driving; a Tesla was torched in Longueuil; a man was stabbed in St‑Léonard on Monday morning.
Nicholas 11:29 on 2025-03-31 Permalink
Impaired driving on Crescent? Who could believe it! (We have a decent late night transit system, people, let’s use it.)
dhomas 13:49 on 2025-03-31 Permalink
Sadly, the woman hit by the impaired driver has died.
About the late night transit system, it’s not so great after the metro closes, unfortunately. For me to get home from downtown, it’s a little over 20 minutes by metro. After the metro closes, it’s somewhere between 45 minutes and 1h15m.
I really wish we could keep our metro running 24/7. Or maybe only keep it running 24 hours on Friday and Saturday? They do it for Nuit Blanche, so it IS possible.
jeather 15:07 on 2025-03-31 Permalink
When I was in high school the night bus system was much more robust, and I think we could consider that as an improvement too.
Mark 15:08 on 2025-03-31 Permalink
They can do it occasionally for special events in the metro, but essentially, it’s a maintenance issue (clean the tracks, inspect the switches, etc.). They can allow a few nights of the year, but more than that, and we would probably start seeing daytime performance affected.
24/7 underground transit is quite rare. New York has it because they have the 4 tracks on many lines, so service trains can run parallel to passenger trains simultaneously. London only was able to offer the NightTube as of 2016, because they had invested billions in network improvements that provided those adjacent tunnels to allow service and passenger trains to co-exist. I think Copenhagen has it as well but that system was built in the early 2000s, and some lines are above ground. Some lines of the Chicago L operate 24/7.
Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin, etc. don’t have 24/7 underground services. They have buses, and overground trains and trams running all night, but closed tunnels require a special level of service that above ground lines don’t need. I guess the STM figures the trade-off isn’t worth it, and if we compare ourselves to the world, it seems that we’re not alone. I think the investment needed to enable the metro to run all night would probably be better spent on more frequent buses. Will they do that, that’s another story, but dollar for dollar, that’s where I would invest our precious transit funds that are increasingly hard to find.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_service_(public_transport)