Montreal municipal leaders are out of touch with transit issues
In the past year both Montreal mayor Grald Tremblay and Projet Montral chief Richard Bergeron have flaunted their failure to grasp Montreal transit issues by proposing an immediate tramway on Avenue du Parc. Of course, if financial resources were unlimited and if there were no need to establish priorities or to carefully manage public finances an immediate tramway here, there and everywhere would be a no-brainer but there is currently no short-to-medium term justification for installing one on Parc.
The first reason is that, in economic theory, we look at the concept of opportunity cost' which predicates that when you invest in one item you forgo the opportunity to spend on another. Consequently it is always important in both private and public life to ensure that necessarily limited funds are first used to purchase the highest priority, highest return items.
Currently, the Montreal public transit system is a rather marginal affair outside of rush hours and long waits coupled with crowded and overheated buses and Mtro cars are the norm. Much could easily be done to quickly upgrade the system and to make it more attractive to potential customers and the first priority is for more buses to be run on the current routes and for them to be able to get about more quickly during the daytime.
If our politicians were really interested in improving public transit on streets such as Avenue du Parc they would first undertake the obvious, lower cost and easily reversible, experiment of having the reserved bus lanes function all day, instead of just rush hours, and offering a rush-hour bus service throughout the day on major routes. With an increased and dependable daytime service on the major routes, visitors, workers, shoppers and others would have the option of switching to public transit and leaving their private cars at home. Unless and until people are convinced to switch from private cars to public transit there is going to be no significant increase in public transit use and one new tramway on one street would do little or nothing to change this state of affairs.
Meanwhile, rather than providing a frequent service, the Montreal transit authority (STM) chooses instead to boast that it has an automated service that you can phone to find out how long you will have to wait for the next bus. Elsewhere, it is common to have daytime buses running every few minutes but in Montreal, during the daytime, it is common to suffer thirty-minute-plus waits, even on the major routes. Why build a tramline when you do not even have a significant bus service to replace.
When the Montreal bus does arrive it is badly designed, with uncomfortable seating and is, for the most part, detested by the riders. The buses are built in Quebec and are purchased mostly because the provincial government provides a large preferential subsidy. Bigger, better and more comfortable buses (notably Mercedes-Benz) are available and in general use elsewhere but Montrealers are expected to suffer for Quebec's protectionist trade policies. In future, top quality buses should be purchased, regardless of provincial subsidies.
Studies that I have undertaken show that, during the daytime, more than eighty-percent of all vehicles in downtown Montreal are single occupancy private cars which suggests that there is plenty of opportunity for switchover from private cars to public transit if only a quality and frequent service is offered in exchange. However, thirty minute waits for buses are quite simply not going to convince motorists to leave their cars at home.
If we really want to experiment in reintroducing trams, the best place to start would seem to be somewhere where we could be guaranteed to generate a large and instant new clientele without having to install an entire new city-wide system all at once. A tramline in Old Montreal, taking people back-and-forth from the Mtro stations, has also been suggested by the politicians but it is, for now, unnecessary because a shuttle bus service could more easily serve this function.
If we really want to install a tramline, I would nominate St-Paul Street in Old Montreal which is narrow, filled with stores and packed with tourists in the summer. If private cars were kept off the street in summertime a tram running back and forth between March Bonsecours and Boulevard St-Laurent would be guaranteed ridership, would help boost tourism by improving the feel' of the street and would bring tangible benefits to the merchants. In any event, it might be a good place to start the debate.
What do you think.
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