Local bus network to get overhaul: STM

BY MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca

The West Island public-transit network is set to get a huge boost with a three-year program designed to up the number of people who use public transit regularly, The Chronicle has learned.

Montreal city councillor and Société de Transport de Montréal (STM) customer-

service committee chief Marvin Rotrand said the public-transit commission is seeking to increase ridership and is targeting the West Island in order to make that quota and get a chunk of provincial cash set aside to encourage public-transit use.

The overhaul will do away with a single West Island terminal at Fairview Pointe Claire shopping centre and will move from a hub-and-spokes wheel network with Fairview in the middle to a grid that will allow users to get around the West Island faster. “By 2008, we will have an express bus from Pierrefonds to the Cote-Vertu metro station, by 2009 we will examine the bus routes and expand services and frequency, and by 2010, we will downgrade Fairview from a terminus to a destination, with three or four routes going there, but probably not more,” Rotrand said.

Because West Island service is infrequent at best and users changing buses must often give themselves more than an hour to get to their destinations, Rotrand said ridership has dwindled and the potential for increases is great.

Montreal can put their hands on $104 million of provincial money for public transit if they can increase ridership by 2012, he added. “There’s a lot of room for improvement in terms of the network,” he said.

Kirkland Mayor John Meaney agreed, saying no one could ever figure out why all the buses had to go through Fairview anyway. “We never could figure out this business with all the buses going through Fairview, but frankly, that sounds like a positive move, because anything that will help public transit out here is a positive thing.”

Dollard des Ormeaux Mayor Ed Janiszewski was somewhat less charitable, saying an express bus from Pierrefonds to the metro is coming about 15 years too late. “The north side of (Highway 40) has 135,000 of the West Island’s 220,000 people. We have a Roxboro train, but there is nothing that gets us downtown quickly, so (Highway 40) is jammed. There’s just not enough emphasis on serving the people,” he said, adding opening de Salaberry Boulevard through Highway 13 and possibly making it a bus-only thoroughfare might be exactly the shot in the arm West Island public transit needs.

Dorval Mayor Edgar Rouleau said the project is what his city has been requesting of the STM for the last 12 months. “That follows with what we’ve been asking of them. Not everybody has cars, but there has to be buses to get workers who live in Dorval where they have to go. On weekends, there is very limited service and I’m happy that’s what they’re going to be doing,” he said. “The north side of (Highway 40) has 135,000 of the West Island’s 220,000 people. We have a Roxboro train, but there is nothing that gets us downtown quickly, so (Highway 40) is jammed. There’s just not enough emphasis on serving the people,” Janiszewski said, adding opening de Salaberry through Highway 13 and possibly making it a bus-only thoroughfare might be exactly the shot in the arm West Island public transit needs.

Dorval Mayor Edgar Rouleau said the project is what his city has been requesting of the STM for the last 12 months. “That follows with what we’ve been asking of them. Not everybody has cars, but there has to be buses to get workers who live in Dorval where they have to go. On weekends, there is very limited service and I’m happy that’s what they’re going to be doing,”

he said.