Line-by-line guide to bus changes
Fagstein has compiled a line-by-line guide to changes in the STM bus routes that will take effect on Monday.
(Augh! They took away the 15 not long ago, and now they’re abolishing the 30?!)
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Kate
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Nicholas 18:13 on 2026-05-15 Permalink
Steve’s point regarding public consultation is very well taken. The initial consultations were very vague, asking about values. And then they just put the routes online and that was it. I actually went through them making comments, and then tried to find a place to send them and there was nothing. I don’t think they need to deal with every concern, but there are some things they did that they could have done better that I was going to suggest (and which would inconvenience me, personally, but I still support them!), but they didn’t care. (Also, Steve, if you’re reading this, you forgot the 485.)
Kate, while the 30 is going away, there’s more than enough service with other buses. The 31 will run on St Denis. The 56 will run on St Hubert (and Chateaubriand southbound in the Plaza). The 13 will run on Christophe-Colomb. And all this is right on top of the Orange Line. That’s one of the comments I had: the buses are too split across too many streets. The proposed service is each route runs about every 30 minutes (couldn’t make it exactly 30, could they….). Instead if they combined all the buses onto one street, they could run that route every 10 minutes. So people walk a little farther but get 3x the frequency.
I don’t really care which route they pick (though it should probably be Christophe-Colomb, farthest from the metro and least commercial slow traffic), but instead everyone gets infrequent service that sometimes comes at the same time: for example, northbound at Rosemont metro weekdays the 56 comes at 10:35 am, the 31 at 10:42 and the 13 at 10:45. Three buses in 10 minutes, then a 20 minute break until the next bus. The least they could do is time these to perfectly alternate so you always have some bus every 10 minutes, you just have to figure out which main street to walk to.
DeWolf 18:45 on 2026-05-15 Permalink
When I was in Chicago a couple of years ago (twice in a few months), the L was a disaster but the buses were surprisingly good. And it’s because they run their system exactly like Nicholas is suggesting: buses run every 10 minutes on big arterials. Each of the big arteries tends to be a 10 minute walk from each other, so you have more of a distance between bus lines than we have in Montreal, but the service is more frequent and reliable.
Nicholas 20:52 on 2026-05-15 Permalink
Yah, ten minute max was the way to go, and this is something you can see around the city. The distance between D’Iberville and Papineau is about the same as the one between D’Iberville and Saint Michel, but the former pair also has a bus on de Lorimier. NDG has east-west buses on almost every street [omissions]: St Jacques, [de Maisonneuve], Sherbrooke, Cote St Antoine/NDG Rd, Monkland, [Terrebonne], Somerled, Fielding, CSL Rd (yes it’s diagonal). You could also consolidate some east-west routes in the Plateau/Rosemont; especially for longer distances going to the Green or Blue extension is often faster than say the bus on Bélanger or Rachel.
We could also use some stop consolidation especially on the east-west routes, which really slow buses down. I look forward to seeing the results with the 18 Beaubien and 161 Van Horne.
vasi 04:10 on 2026-05-17 Permalink
I’m pretty disappointed about the 30 going away, it was so convenient to jump on near my doorstep and get straight to Mile-End or the Plateau. I guess I’d might trade that for easy access to the REM, but I’m not getting that either, the buses from ViSaMiPex to the REM remain pretty bad. I’m not really sure if this reform makes anything better for me, personally, so I hope it at least helps other people.
Joey 09:43 on 2026-05-17 Permalink
@vasi does the extended 31 help at all? I think the decision to merge the 30 and 31 was motivated more by the work around Berri-Uqam than the REM…
Kate 10:31 on 2026-05-17 Permalink
The 31 will stop at Sherbrooke metro at its south end, whereas the 30 used to go all the way down to Viger Square. So it’s less useful for accessing both the Grande Bibliothèque and the archival library on the square.
The old 30 would also have brought people close to the CHUM, so I wonder whether they thought of people being inconvenienced by losing that part of the route.
Joey 11:17 on 2026-05-17 Permalink
I thought they chose to stop because of the planned construction, but my memory on it is fuzzy.