Do you mind if I post this map along with my most recent version on the Parlons-en page, before the deadline tomorrow, as a joint proposal?
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Here’s my most recent version.
You and the Parlons-en feedback conviced me on the 211. The only think I change versus your version is to route the 202 downtown as well, both to improve access in Dorval and to mitigate against complaints in Point-Claire village.
I cut the 225, which only runs during the peak today anyways, instead running the 72 further west.
I have an STM bus going to Ile-Bizard while directly connecting the REM to the hospital, with EXO covering the relevant portions of the 212.
I extend the 203 to Point-Claire village.
I also switched the names of the 206 and 210. Given that the opinion on Parlons-en is that the 206 between Fairview and Roxboro must be preserved at all costs, I’d like to prevent a debate as to which line serves that role. I’ve left the rest of Roxboro/Sunnydale as I had it before.
On the 216/217, once the bike path under the REM is installed and provides back door access to industries from Hymus, I see very few locations, except for Merck, that aren’t an easy walk from the 72 or Brunswick buses. For now, a route circulating between Fairview and Marie-Curie should work. In the future, a shuttle just between Saint-Jean and Saint-Charles should suffice, leaving service hours to increase frequency on the 72.
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Go for it! I’m definitely on board with having the map be on the parlons-en site
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This map looks excellent. A few minor things:
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By FAR my biggest concern is there is no sensible reason to me to split 201 and 68. there’s quite a few reasons for that which i may as well bring up here
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In this map, there’s not a single route to cote vertu metro from the west island (a lot of west island residents still need to get to buses at cote vertu, or have their destination around decarie), something not at all addressed by the REM. While this obviously doesnt address the problem for pointe claire, southern DDO, etc, at least for pierrefonds it seems needless to force the extra transfer to go to the metro.
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Furthermore, getting to eastern pierrefonds, cartierville or st laurent now needs 2-3 buses instead of just 1-2 (because of the split 201/68 and i can guarantee there is no chance in hell that transfer will ever be coordinated to eliminate waits, i’ve lived here long enough to know xD), which is a massive service downgrade when 30min waits are involved. This isn’t an uncommon need in my experience; 201/68 pretty much represent one neighbourhood so there are a lot of people use take advantage of the long 68 for in-neighbourhood trips (there are schools in eastern pierrefonds, whose kids tend to flood 68O coming back home, plus just people visiting friends/family, or wanting to transfer to buses to Laval, etc)
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With the above in mind i would NOT have 201 and 68 as separate routes and just run 201 frequently down gouin to cartierville to make up for the now-deceased 470 (and 409, 475, 225, trimmed 215, etc) cuz right now there are no routes to cote vertu metro from anywhere in the west island in this map (except maybe 216? but that barely counts since it’s rush-hour only and very difficult to get to in general).
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There’s virtually no chance Exo will agree to cover the 212. Their “playing field” so far for their bus netwrok seems to be strictly off-island, to the point where exo drivers for routes like the 7 that technically have multiple stops on-island aren’t actually supposed to be shuttling people within the island (for example an eastbound 7 shouldn’t be picking up people from JAC and shuttling them to the 7’s terminus at fairview). On top of that, the 212 being the only line where STM uses their minibuses on, it can be thought to not impact “available resources” for other routes in a sense
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On the off chance that a ped/bike link across a40 where fairview is is never built (anything’s possible here as we all know) i’d probably have 72 detour out to fairview in the interim just in case, for the sake of easy transfers. Once the link is built it can/should be rerouted back to not pass by fairview
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205 should take a minor reroute (in red) to improve coverage; it’s not shown in the map but having lived in the area ik there’s a ped/bike crossing near there (circled in green) that would connect the line to people living east of it
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Id probably keep the old 208 routing for that bit by sunnybrooke instead of going through alexander; idk maybe it’s just me but it feels more intuitive for it to stay on “that side” of the tracks
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I still feel like 214 should be going down spring garden given the sikh temples are actually on hyman, not sunnybrooke, but with 215 “gone” in a sense I guess this can go either way
Re: 206, one thing to keep in mind is that it is hardwired in most of us west island commuters (myself included) that all buses come every 30 mins except 470 and a few oddballs (211 family, 419 come to mind). This means most of us have a severely negative perception of transfers and thus prefer all buses converging at fairview so that you can go from anywhere to anywhere with at most 1 transfer at fairview. That said, the “new” 206 seems to solve that issue and the “new” 210 is basically just an east-west link like 68 so this should be “acceptable” in a way
Overall I think i like the final map (minus some edits and the split 201/68) as a very good “best effort” of a strong redesign. Kudos man, really nice work on it!
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I’ll send both versions in.
For access to Côte-Vertu, the 72 does provide access, and I’d suggest running it directly to Côte-Vertu rather than via du College. I take your point that this doesn’t help those coming from Pierrefonds, but I do feel that we should rely on connecting buses for that (along with increased frequency in Saint-Laurent, in particular between the REM A40 station and du College).
Repeat of the Kudos for you.
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For access to Côte-Vertu, the 72 does provide access, and I’d suggest running it directly to Côte-Vertu rather than via du College.
Hm, I think that the 72 though will remain a rush-hour only service bus as it services primarily industrial areas (much like the 213) so I’m not sure if it can be relied on as the alternative route to cote vertu. For pierrefonds it’s worth mentioning that the 68 doesn’t go to the metro already, so forcing an additional connection means that from pierrefonds, you now need three buses to get to cote vertu which is really pushing it as i’ll explain below:
I take your point that this doesn’t help those coming from Pierrefonds,
For pierrefonds my concern wasn’t just metro access but the fact that the long 68 is used for a lot of in-neighbourhood trips as well: there’s several shops and schools on the part of gouin the 68 serves, as well as the nature park, plus people use it to visit family and friends. Plus, more generally, 68 is great for trips that don’t go downtown: at the terminus, there are connections to buses to laval that several people rely on, the 64 to get to Saint-Laurent, and the 69/180 to get to ahuntsic/cartierville, montreal nord, etc (thus we need to keep in mind that 68 users already have at least one connection to deal with, possibly 2-3 to get to their final destination, so sticking an additional one to them is really starting to test users’ patience)
but I do feel that we should rely on connecting buses for that
Pushing for a split+connection between 68 and 201, to be blunt, is kind of a fancy way of telling people who currently need those routes to consider giving up transit and start driving; it’s that big a service downgrade. It’s really hard to overstate just how bad connections are with 30minute waits, it’s almost unusable (and a major reason why so many people here won’t even consider the bus as a vaiable means of transportation; it’s why there’s so much push for parking at the REM it’s because the experience of taking buses is unusally terrible, and the one-two punch of bad connections+low frequency explain why).
To me, splitting 68 into 201 and 68 and forcing a connection in the middle is strictly a service downgrade, and my goal with my edits was as much as possible to avoid downgrades to existing service wherever possible. Obviously in some cases, connections are unavoidable but I don’t see any reason why a forced 68//201 transfer can’t be avoided, esepcially since RN we have 4 buses/hour with the combo 68/468, so cancelling 468 and running 68 every 15 minutes is technically not a service upgrade
(along with increased frequency in Saint-Laurent, in particular between the REM A40 station and du College).
I probably wouldn’t push for this one if a REM->Bus->Metro has to be the solution; 121 from Montpellier to Cote vertu would almost definitely be way faster than any route from A40 to du college. It already has… ok frequency for much of the day, the problem is “ok” frequency is really heavily dependant on when you’re travelling because past 6ish PM weekends or 8ish PM weekdays, the frequency just goes down the drain. There also 64 from Bois Franc to Cote Vertu but that’s a longer route than 121 and has a harsher frequency curve than 121 as well.
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The 68 on my last version was a bit of a slip. The split I showed above (and corrected on the Parlons-en version) is an artifact of dropping the western Gouin routing. It should be through routed with a route to the west, which has to be every 2nd (or as you prefer every single) 201 on the map above.
On the 72, it is an all-day (albeit weekday only) route. Of the existing routes to Côte-Vertu (72/215/216/225/405/470) I see how it may have the best combination of speed and local access.
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New bus signs with directions on the island now too not just in places it’s getting redesigned. I’m not sure why there’s no 10-Min-Max on the 24 Bus…
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It’s not part of the 10 min Network anymore… (Since COVID it’s more 15 min) And they probably don’t expect a return any time soon.
During the day though it is every 10 minutes, it’s just less frequent after 6pm, so it should still qualify, no?
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La 24 a énormément d’arrêts et de feux de circulation, en plus de devoir naviguer au travers du trafic et des obstacles sur la route, mais elle reste l’une des lignes les plus empruntées.
Moi-même, c’est la ligne que je fréquente le plus, si je ne suis pas pressé, je préfère me déplacer au travers du centre-ville par la 24 que par le métro.
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Me too, it’s about the same travel time taking the bus as is the Metro for me, if you use the Transit app I’m the burrito 
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It’s not even at 10 minutes at peak
Marco is recently on a streak of posting about the 10 minutes network and slow lines in general (with very good proposition as to quick and easy improvements). I hope someone at the STM listens!
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Strange, because when I check at Saint-Laurent it says it’s about every 6 minutes. And between the first stop east and Station Sherbrooke it’s every 4 minutes peak:
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It seems like the west direction gets a good frequency at the morning peak while the east direction gets it at the evening peak. It used to be both directions. It doesn’t even have 10 minutes off peak during the day, so it’s definitely out of the 10 minutes network for the time being.
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I asked the STM, they said the “10-Min-Max” was removed from the sign just in case it DOES get removed from the 10-Min-Max service. So if a bus line is removed or added, they won’t change the signage in the future to show that I guess lol
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I think unless the definition needed to qualify as 10 min max changes (IIRC it’s currently one direction 6am-2pm and the other 2-9pm, or both directions 6am-9pm), a large chunk of the old 10min max network is gonna end up losing its status. 470 eastbound for example barely maintains a 10min frequency till 8am; in the past it used to maintin it till around 2ish pm. Ditto for the westbound peak trips. For me as a student who rarely travels in peak, the reduction in service is super obvious
I’ve noticed the same thing for other historically 10min max buses I used to take every so often, like the the 69, the 121, or the 171. Even the 64 sometimes gets gaps that hops over 10min, but it still generally qualifies for the 10min max thing iirc If youre not travelling in peak, the wait is noticeably longer than it used to be, up to 15-30 min for some buses
Idk if this list is still up to date but the STM had a page up for what lines still qualified for 10min max after the service cuts. I mostly travel in the west and “north” of montreal and this feels somewhat accurate to me with regards to 69, 121, 171, and 470 being off the list. Oddly enough though the 24 remains on it so I think the STM gives themselves some leeway on what buses count as 10min max
Wait, so after the service cuts, the 439 EXPRESS won’t even qualify for a 10min max service ?
the 141 is such an insane bus service tho
look at this
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Je suis surpris de voir ce tableau avec les nouvelles lignes ‘’10min max’’.
Je n’y vois ni la 67 St-Michel, la 69 Henri-Bourras, la 121 Sauvé/ Côte-Vertu ni même la 51 Édouard-Montpetit, pourtant 4 lignes qui longtemps ont été les plus achalandées du réseau, avec la 139 Pie-IX.
La 105 sur Sherbrooke y est absente, mais ça me semble une erreur après validation de l’horaire sur le site STM. Elle passe au 4min en pointe.
Et le bus sur Lacordaire, là où devrait passer le REM de l’Est, n’est plus même dans cette liste non plus.
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