The future of public transit in Canada

It’s a tale of two transit systems, one with a certain method and the other with a mega-project, but both share a vision to move people around in their day-to-day lives.

Canada’s two largest public transit systems, the Societe de Transport de Montreal (STM) and the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) have differing views about how to accomplish this and on moving forward in the near future.

Here in Montreal, STM Board of Directors Vice President Marvin Rotrand gives many reasons why transportation initiatives are an important part of Mayor Gerald Tremblay’s direction for this city.

“We have a business plan based on the vision of the city administration, and that is to increase services and increase ridership,” he said.

Over the next year, Rotrand is hoping to achieve an additional 8 per cent increase in commuters switching to the STM. But even he admits this may be difficult for existing ground-level routes where there’s good service but a possibility the STM couldn’t keep up with high demand.

“We run our most frequent service where there’s the heaviest ridership,” he said. “One of the areas we’ve targeted in the last couple of years is the west island.”

The suburbs of Montreal seem to be one of the main focuses of the STM. By getting people out of their cars and into public transit, it’s attempting to alleviate traffic congestion on city streets.

19-year-old first-year Concordia University student Renee Tousignant is torn between her car and public transit. This is because she’s spent many years commuting into Montreal from the suburbs and sees the service as too infrequent.

“My whole life I’ve been taking it from the west island,” she said.

Now Tousignant, who studies journalism at Loyola and film at Sir George Williams, takes the Concordia shuttle bus to and from each campus because she feels the STM is unreliable.

“It comes so inconsistently and the shuttle is always there,” she said.

So what Rotrand and the STM propose to do is create dedicated bus lanes throughout the city, which would make service flow nicely along surface routes, and to drastically change the amount of buses currently in use.

“We are planning a major increase in services on 30 main lines sometime in 2009,” he said.

Rotrand’s top priority is to replace the aging STM fleet with larger, higher-occupancy articulated buses. These are the long accordion-style ones that bend in the middle and are used in other Canadian cities like Vancouver and Toronto.

“The biggest challenge for us is to renew the bus fleet. We have something in the vicinity of 1500 buses,” he said. “A large percentage of our buses are older.”

But in Toronto the TTC is moving toward the use of light rail with their highly-touted Transit City plan, which is expected to bring in over 100 million new riders with their 7 new above-ground lines.

“In Toronto, the Transit City plan was based on the principle that no one should be disadvantaged by not owning a car,” said TTC Chair Adam Giambrone. “When you give people real options, real alternatives, you get people to consider giving up their cars.”

Giambrone is a firm believer in the special role mass transit plays in urban centres across Canada. He also sees the TTC as trend-setters and hopes other cities will follow its lead.

“What you’re already seeing is the fact that LRT is becoming a respected technology,” he said. “Toronto as it rolls out light rail will set a good example.”

This Transit City plan, which will be underway in September 2009, is also aimed at connecting two major universities with downtown Toronto. The U of T-Scarborough campus and York U-Keele campus are well-known as commuter schools, but the lack of service to these areas cause traffic chaos for students.

“By bringing a web of transit across Toronto it allows students coming from across the city to be able to access York University very quickly and efficiently,” Giambrone said.

Although there are no plans in Montreal to consider the option of reaching out to the only university campus not well served by public transit, Rotrand sees the Loyola campus as benefiting from the STM plan for more buses.

“There will be improvements on the main lines in NDG. The 105 is an extremely heavily traveled bus and there’s going to be more frequency,” he said.

But for Concordia journalism student Laura Dolgy, who takes the 105 bus from Vendome metro station to Loyola campus almost every day, she’s very skeptical and doesn’t see this promise being kept by the STM.

“It doesn’t really come that often even though it says it’s supposed to come every 5-10 minutes,” she said. “There’s always a line-up and I think they need more buses to come on time, especially the 105.”

33-year-old NDG resident Eric Nadeau has been taking public transit in this city most of his life and argues that service has gotten much better recently and reflects back when it was a more frustrating time.

“It’s definitely gotten a lot better,” he said. “I remember I used to wait on cold corners of the street where buses would go flying by 6-7 in a row and you’d be waiting there freezing your ass off.”

Living in NDG for the last 6 years, Nadeau can’t think of a time when the 105 bus wasn’t at its capacity.

“That’s the sad thing because there’s a bus every minute during rush hour and there are still too many people and not enough buses,” he said. “I don’t take the 105 unless I really have to because I refuse to be squished in like a sardine.”

Now all Montrealers must wait and see what will happen in the upcoming year and how the STM will deal with commuting issues in this city, because in Toronto it seems like they’ve already got it all planned out.

“I’m looking forward to seeing what their going to do with the use of the accordion buses. They definitely have to bring them online,” Nadeau said.