Waiting for a bus that just won’t come
It seems that the STM’s service improvements might not be much of an improvement after all. By all accounts, metro trains really are coming more often: midday and evening headways have been reduced from 8 minutes to just under six minutes.
The bus system, however, is still a mess thanks to the bus shortage that plagued the STM since earlier this year. Bus drivers claim that, technical problems kept 202 buses off the roads on Monday morning, so riders who had been promised more frequent service were left waiting even longer than usual for their bus.
According to blogger and journalist Steve Faguy, though, the bus shortage isn’t the only problem. After taking a close look at the new bus schedules introduced on Monday, he found that service has actually been reduced on some routes.
Service has supposedly been increased on three busy bus lines: the 24 Sherbrooke, 121 Sauvé and 18 Beaubien. By comparing their new Winter 2008 schedules with the old Fall 2007 ones, Faguy found that new weekday trips have been added to each of these lines, mostly after the morning and evening rush hours. But, in every case, those additional weekday trips have been accompanied by fewer trips on the weekend. On the 24, for instance, six new trips have been added on weekday mornings and evenings — but thirteen trips have been eliminated on Saturday and Sunday.
This isn’t news we like to hear. While it’s great that the metro is coming more often, hundreds of thousands of people rely on buses to get around. One of their long-standing complaints has been the poor level of service at off-peak hours and on weekends.
While the STM has re-arranged its schedules to extend the morning and evening rush hours, it has apparently done so by further reducing service on the weekends. How can Montrealers be expected to have faith in their public transit network if they can’t rely on it seven days of the week?