I was surprised right now, around 1 pm, to check when the next 55 bus southbound was due, and the app said 30 minutes.
Have the schedules been thinned out again? A bus route like that has no business taking half an hour in the middle of the day on a weekday.
Bixi bikes have made Time magazine’s Best Inventions Hall of Fame. It’s one of the entries for 2008.
Adding another Montreal bit in major media: The Economist item about cycling revolutionizing transport ledes with the REV.
I just wish they hadn’t headlined it “Forget…”
I love going to other cities (Mexico City, London, NYC, etc) and seeing Bixis.
Strangely they don’t have the same electric bikes, but the original ones are the classic Michel Dallaire design manufactured by Devinci in Chicoutimi.
There should be a rule that all bike share memberships apply to all bike share services in all cities.
@Joey with you on this – works already for electric scooters
Long weekend notes from CultMTL, Le Devoir, La Presse, CityCrunch, Silo57.
Halloween is beginning to exhibit Christmas‑like signs of observance creep. La Presse lists Halloween events already taking place.
Craig Sauvé is promising that, if elected mayor, he would stop the eviction of homeless camps, while Soraya MF is wittering on about building mini refuges “un peu plus loin” from regular people – maybe in old industrial locations.
Meantime Resilience Montreal, near Cabot Square, is running out of funds. It serves 1200 meals a day to a population that centres on the square, half of whom are Indigenous.
(I’m having trouble feeling interest in this campaign, all while knowing the outcome is important.)
The media coverage has been lacklustre and the polling has been so atrocious that we don’t actually have any idea of how people are responding to the campaign. Those two Leger polls that keep being cited in the media were both online polls with small sample sizes (and thus large margins of error), and they were done in late September — completely out of date since they were done before most major campaign announcements and the Giasson affair.
My guess is that turnout is going to be even lower than last time.
I’m sad to hear about Resilience running out of money. I donate some money and items to them, but I don’t have a whole lot.
Joey 13:35 on 2025-10-10 Permalink
Is there some construction-related blockage happening north of Mile-End? I was by Fairmount Bagel this morning (8ish) and St-Urbain was totally dead.
DeWolf 15:04 on 2025-10-10 Permalink
Yes, Clark north of the tracks is fully closed for underground works, so there’s no traffic coming into Mile End on that route. It’s probably messing up the 55 too.
Kate 15:18 on 2025-10-10 Permalink
I needed to get to St-Zotique and St‑Urbain quickly this afternoon, forgetting about the detour. What a pain that construction site is.
CE 16:34 on 2025-10-10 Permalink
Based on the importance of the bus, the 55 should never have more than 10 minutes between buses no matter the direction or time of day but I find I often look at the schedule and see a 15-20 minute wait for the next bus. It should be a bus you can jump on and off of to get around the neighbourhoods it passes through but unless you’re going a long distance, it’s usually faster to walk than rely on that bus.
Ian 18:18 on 2025-10-10 Permalink
Same with the Parc bus TBH. That blockage just north of Mont Royal is still there, and combined with the extra traffic that would normally be on St Urbain it’s a crawl. It is literally faster to walk from downtown to Mile End than to wait for and take the 80.
Nicholas 22:17 on 2025-10-10 Permalink
Bus service in this city ain’t what it used to be. Part of it is STM cuts, from all level of governments. Part is the detours slow buses down, which also mean you need more buses to run the same level of service, or you run worse, and less reliable, service with the same number of buses. Other factors slow buses down too: stops spaced much more closely than in much of the world, traffic, bus lanes that aren’t very effective. Buses like the 80 and 55 should be show up and go most of the day. I remember taking the 105 a lot at rush hour years ago, and the schedule had >>, meaning the bus was every six minutes or less. You don’t see that much anymore.
bob 00:12 on 2025-10-11 Permalink
Well, in theory, the 55 and the 80 are frequent service lines (noted by being purple), where there are supposed to be so many busses that you don’t even need a schedule. Of course, when the city works so hard to make vehicular travel impossible, it affects the buses.
Also the commitment to public transit does not seem to extend to where there are no opportunities for graft (cf. the commitment to privatizing maintenance at the STM).
Orr 14:45 on 2025-10-11 Permalink
That blockage on avenue du Parc just north of Mont Royal serves absolutely zero purpose, as there is no construction requiring lane closures on du Parc going south through the du Parc/avenue Mont Royal intersection.
The two lanes to one lane blockage serves no purpose at all, except to create mega traffic jam southbound on avenue du parc, Ok, it gives jobs to spvm to manually run the traffic lights there, that’s a purpose, I suppose).
The smart people use bicycles to travel downtown from Mile-End. It’s only a kilometre.
Nicholas 15:16 on 2025-10-11 Permalink
bob, the 80 and 55 are only frequent at rush hour, and only in the peak direction. The buses where the background is purple, and the number is white, are frequent all day; the ones with a white background and a purple outline and number are frequent peak-only.
Ian 19:04 on 2025-10-11 Permalink
@Orr how nice that you are healthy enough to bike downtown over the hill in all weather. My wife has arthritis, and literally can’t even walk a kilometre. I guess she’s stupid?
CE 20:48 on 2025-10-11 Permalink
The 80 is even more important because there really aren’t any alternatives for going north/south. At least if you live around the 55, you could maybe walk to a Metro station. Around the 80, it just doesn’t make sense. When I lived in Parc Ex, it was one of those buses that didn’t need a schedule, you’d just go to the stop and wait for it to come (same for transfers). Sadly, there aren’t many bus lines like that anymore.
Orr 14:38 on 2025-10-12 Permalink
>>>@Orr how nice that you are healthy enough to bike downtown over the hill in all weather. My wife has arthritis, and literally can’t even walk a kilometre. I guess she’s stupid?
I never said anything of the sort. But since a long time you’ve been bullying me, and it’s a feature of this blog I find tiresome.
Ian 11:13 on 2025-10-13 Permalink
@Orr
As I recall you were calling me names long before I started pointing out your inconsistencies, but hey.
“The smart people use bicycles to travel downtown from Mile-End. It’s only a kilometre.”
If this is not meant to imply that people who take transit are not as smart as people that bicylce, and to minimize the effort required, clearly I misuderstood your statement.
FWIW. it’s actually about 3.5 kilometre from Bernard and Parc to PdeA metro. it’s 2 km even from Parc & Mont-Royal.