Making a fuss sometimes works

The Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT) announced last month it had a new schedule for train departures on the Deux-Montagnes and Dorion-Rigaud lines in the West Island starting Jan. 12. But the changes, meant as improvements by AMT, were not welcomed by many West Islanders who faced crowded train cars as they pulled into the Roxboro-Pierrefonds station after 8 a.m. Because of the uproar over a removed 8:03 a.m. train, AMT added two new train cars as of Monday morning to compensate.

The public transit service in the West Island, from trains to buses, still needs attention, as the system is lacking in many ways: number of cars, comfort of transport, frequency of passages. It is not unheard of for a West Island commuter to stand in the cold at a bus stop, not knowing if a bus is coming or not. Too often, West Island transit users face waits of 30 to 40 minutes just waiting for buses before they even make it to a metro stop or train station, and when they do, they are greeted by surly bus drivers who won't allow riders to get on and sit in a warm bus while they take a break in the well-heated drivers' lounges for another ten minutes or so.

Why, oh why would anyone in their right mind leave their car at home and put up with crowded train cars, crabby bus drivers, infrequent and impolite service in the middle of winter? With their cars, they'll wait in traffic, but at least they can do it with their tunes and a coffee and nobody squeezing them in a hot, crowded train car.

There are serious problems with global warming and limits to fossil-fuel reserves; one day we're going to look up and say, 'it's too late for us,' when the reality is, we could've done it in the winter of 2009. Memo to the Quebec government: invest some serious money into Montreal public transit before urban sprawl and gridlock consume the island whole.

Studies have shown that transit users will pay more for real, courteous service and more frequent trains, especially for the growing number of off-peak hour users whose jobs keep them out of the 9-to-5 dynamic that the AMT has decreed you must use or forget taking the train home. If the provincial government was to pour half as much money into commuter trains from Montreal to the 'burbs as they did during the vote-buying exercise in futility known as the metro to Laval, they could run 20 trains a day with twice as many cars as they use today. Imagine, a comfortable, air-conditioned ride home pretty much any hour of the day.