Construction and Montreal

This is the second in a multi-part series where I reflect on my time that I spent in Montreal recently.

There are few better symbols for the city of Montreal than an orange traffic cone. It does not matter where in the city you are, there are cones signifying construction right nearby. Some cones have even been around for sixteen years! While the city's chamber of commerce hopes to see cone usage and construction delays reduced, summer being a season of construction is something that will stick around forever. 

While every Canadian city has a construction season opposite their winter, Montreal's season is extremely disruptive. In this blog post, I will talk about some of the good about how the city mitigates construction-related issues, and some of the bad.

The Good

One thing that Montreal does really well is ensuring that any closures leave space for all road users. If a road has a bike lane, orange cones will mark out a rerouted bike path. If the sidewalk is blocked, then there will be cones for a separate bike path. If the sidewalk must be closed, then a temporary sidewalk is constructed. In the off chance that this is not feasible with the amount of space available, then a shared space is clearly marked. If a road is closed entirely, pedestrians and cyclists can usually get around anyways, so the impact for active mobility is limited.

In addition, in some busy areas, orange cones aren't used to protect more vulnerable road users, but large metal gates. This ensures a higher degree of safety, and makes using these temporary spaces more comfortable.

The Bad

Construction is everywhere. Like, it cannot be avoided. This is partly the fault of a former mayor who deferred so much for the sake of placating drivers, and so the current municipal government has had to catch-up on deferred maintenance, atop what is scheduled to be done now anyways. I think it's fair to say that the degree to which construction has occurred in the past three years is likely not going to happen again, but it doesn't change the fact that the city is constantly being repaired.

Now, this is a transit blog, and so I have to talk about how construction impacts transit. Buses in Montreal are always detouring, but finding information about specifics pertaining to detours is exceptionally hard to find. I thought the TTC was bad for presenting construction information, but at least TTC provides maps, and updates scheduling information for temporary stops. STM does not do this in a way that is digestible.

In my example, I will use the example of the 51 Édouard-Montpetit not operating westbound via Laurier, due to construction on St-Laurent. First, when I visit STM's website, and click the schedule page for the 51 bus, I get this small pop-up (note that this example deals with the first four stops):

"Some stops are cancelled, moved, or relocated." Well, which is it? Those suggest a few different things, and it doesn't provide customers with information about where they can catch the bus.

When I select one of the stops in question, I get a slightly more helpful pop-up:

Okay, so my stop is moved somewhere. But where has it moved to? This information is still missing. After this, I realize that, if I go to the 51 page directly from STM's homepage, I can get a map showing me the detour in question. It shows me which stops are out of service, and the temporary stops!

I still don't get why I can only see this map from the home page, but whatever. I now know I have three temporary stop choices: St-Joseph/St-Urbain, St Joseph/du Parc, and Côte-Ste-Catherine/Laurier. Perfect.

Turns out, this mapping feature is relatively new. It's only for users of the Transit app, and it does not transfer to other software. On Google Maps, it suggests that the regular route is operating, just without stops. It gives no hint that you should board the 51 on St-Joseph.

All of this combined makes it difficult to understand detours in Montreal. I would argue this detour is extremely simple too, so imagine something more difficult! Well, I have the detour for you...

For whatever reason, STM detours try to serve as many stops as possible, whether or not that makes sense for operations. A short stretch of road is closed in the east-end of the city, forcing route 39 des Grandes Prairies on detour in the eastbound direction. However, because STM wishes to leave stops unchanged, the detour ends up being four kilometers long!

Normally, eastbound buses serve stops on the west side of Renaud-Lapointe, and the four kilometer detour maintains this. However, if STM was willing to just reverse this, temporarily, and have eastbound buses serve stops on the east side of Renaud-Lapointe, the detour would be only around two kilometers. This detour has increased travel times by bus by up to twenty minutes in the area, and buses are regularly running more than half and hour late. How they do not know how to mitigate construction, I know not.

My last complaint about construction detours for STM is they love creating special services instead of just improving what's there. Due to heavy construction on the Louis-Hippolyte-La Fontaine Tunnel, the province, cities, and their transit agencies, are providing new services to encourage people to leave their cars at home. This includes a new ferry, and a specialized bus service that reaches the numerous hospitals in Montreal's east end. However, STM's attempts at running the specialized 811 Navette services santé have failed, as the route carries very few people. Instead of just improving service on the already existing 131 de l'Assomption, which would be of huge benefit, STM instead wastes money running empty buses for the sake of putting in extra resources in times of need, even if incorrectly.

Conclusion

Construction sucks, we all know this. However, despite being a city that deals with constant construction, Montreal has learned little beyond separate bike and pedestrian paths during closures. Making information much easier to visualize, and willingness to adjust routings in sensible ways, as needed, would make Montreal's construction issues much easier to manage.