I think one of the weirder things to come out of the Montreal mayoral campaign is that one of the candidates has taken a stance that is pro-automobile. While Louise O’Sullivan’s chances of winning the mayoral campaign remain slim, the idea of a mayoral candidate who prefers tossing bicycles in favour of cars is an interesting one and makes for a polarizing issue.

While her idea of turning empty lots downtown into multi-tiered garages for parking cars isn’t exactly a controversial issue (it’s been floated around for years), the idea that someone wants to even deter from current mayor Gerald Tremblay’s movement towards more public transit and other forms of green transport is a bit shocking. With the recent addition to the Bixi bicycle network and planned changes to the Metro system, the city has big changes in store for how people move about the island. While O’Sullivan doesn’t suggest we scrap the STM, maybe we need to evaluate the usefulness of public transit services and other non-car methods of transportation.

The biggest nuisance of taking the bus is, well, taking it with other people. Buses can get quite crowded. If you don’t get on near the beginning of a busy line, you won’t get a seat and might have to stand and get tossed around for a while. Even if you are lucky enough to get a seat, crowded buses aren’t exactly fun to ride. Then there’s the issue of the weather. You might be stuck in a bus where someone keeps their windows open during the winter or closed during the summer. That’s if the bus shows up at all and some lines, like the 420, seem to have buses never show up when they’re supposed to; which is incredibly frustrating during some of the more horrible days of winter. Then there’s the problem of riding a crowded bus during the dog days of summer with a bunch of people who think deodorant is the greatest form of evil in the universe.

Cars solve all those problems because the driver controls the climate. Sure, you could be a nice person and take along a couple of passengers so long as they have proof they’re wearing deodorant. Some cities have tried attempted to add some comfort to taking public transit like air conditioning (which isn’t an option in Montreal) but everything is still controlled by someone else. You might think air conditioning is necessary but the driver may not and vice versa. These issues might not matter if it is only a two minute bus trip but if you’re taking a bus for half-an-hour, it could be a pretty long thirty minutes.

But let’s say you’re not a princess and can handle being around other people who are just as grumpy as you are for taking public transit, unless you are traveling within the downtown core, it become irritating to take public transit. Transferring buses are a way of life but there could be times where a trip might involve multiple transfers including the metro. That’s fine and dandy but if some of those buses only come every 30-40 minutes, it can suck away a bunch of your day just waiting for the next bus. Sometimes, it’s just better to take a taxi to drive twenty minutes instead of busing it for an hour and a half.

Take for example something I had to do a couple of times. When I lived in Cote-Saint-Luc, I lived right next door to Cote-Saint-Luc Shopping Centre. However, the shopping centre did not have a Burger King and many other fine retail establishments so the next best thing was to go to the nearby Angrignon Shopping Centre. By car, it’s about 15 mins. but if I wanted to go by public transit, it would have taken an about an hour by public transit but I would have had to transferred between four buses or two buses and a twenty minute metro ride between two lines. So a car trip there and back would save an hour and a half. Taking the bus wouldn’t be a problem if I had time to kill but if I was bringing back lots of things or one really big thing, taking the bus with multiple transfers is less than ideal.

Public transit works well for the downtown core but it doesn’t work much elsewhere where it is just easier and less stressful to move around by car. Areas close to the downtown like Cote-Saint-Luc and N.D.G. do have frequent bus service but there are few lines that provide service. It’s the situation where walking is a better alternative to taking the bus (except in poor weather conditions). In areas like the West Island and the East End, it is worse. Not only is there infrequent bus service but the routes are so spread out, it practically encourages people to ignore taking the bus and travel by car.

One thing talked preached by those who favour increased transit services is that people will use it if they infrastructure is there. The problem with this is that the infrastructure is expensive. A single bus can cost over $100 000 (including cost of purchase and regular maintenance). Metro extension is costs hundreds of millions of dollars. Ridership has to be there. There is little room for growth because if the ridership cannot cover the costs, the expansion becomes a burden on the province. There is little evidence that expanding bus service throughout the West Island would actually be useful. I lived in the West Island for years. Aside from a couple of bus routes (the 201 and the 211), very rarely were all the seats taken. Until I took the 211 for the first time when I was seventeen did I ever see what I thought at the time was a packed bus. If a bus like the 206 which departs from Roxboro-Pierrefonds train station and cuts through Roxboro and D.D.O. to arrive at Fairview Shopping Centre hardly come close to filling all the seats, what evidence is there to show that creating bus routes or increasing pre-existing ones would be beneficial to anyone?

When it comes down to it, the only potential for public transit expansion is for better service between the three major areas of the island: downtown, West Island, and East End. Metro expansion to the West Island is not a viable option (as I wrote in an earlier post on this blog) although areas like Anjou should be connected to the Metro network. Increased bus/train service or new bus/train lines would be a good solution to linking the three major areas to each other as well. Even better links to the South Shore or Laval would be great. Someone needs to explain to me why it costs me $10 to travel back and forth from my house to Carrefour Laval by public transit which would take five minutes by car while I can go back and forth from my house to the East End for less than $6 while by care it would take me 25 minutes.

Taking the bicycle has become a popular option. The Bixi bicycle program has become wildly popular and further expansion is on the way. Which is nice, because even though I live in a borough of Montreal, I don’t have nearby access to the Bixi network. There are no Bixi stations south of Autoroute 40, west of Cote-Des-Neiges Road, and only four east of Pie-IX. It would be nice to be able to grab a bike from the nearby train station and run some errands but that’s impossible where I live. Although it’s nice how the Bixi website is promoting how other cities are taking the idea and using it themselves.

Then again, taking the bicycle isn’t amazing either. Cars and bicycles are frequently at odds with each other. Cyclers have to be paying constant attention for drivers who are not paying attention where they are going. Driving in the rain is not fun and only the brave (or idiotic) would think about biking in the snow which dominates our landscape many months out of the year. Traveling the city by bike is good at times but awful unless conditions are ideal and the streets are devoid of cars.

Louise O’Sullivan is right to say that biking to business meetings is not ideal. It’s a pipe dream. A good one on some levels (i.e., less pollution). It is just not practical. Mayor Tremblay and the other candidates can sit around on Google Maps all they want and make plans for Bixi stations near other Bixi stations and planning bus lines but there are more important things that need our money and attention (like the conditions of the roads). Unless someone is serious about completely overhauling the public transit system to make it better for all of us instead of people in certain pockets of the island, we need to stop wasting money on study after study to see if adding a Metro stop to the blue line is a good idea.

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I know there because this site deals with news, politics, movies, video games, and a bunch of other subjects that some people might find this site by accident through a search engine. I’m just surprised that yesterday, the top search terms that people used to find my site was ‘cabela big game hunter 2010 help’. How a game that has sold only about 10 000 copies is bringing traffic to this site is a question that will probably never be answered. At least I find if amusing.

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Canada News

In what looks to be a repeat of 2007, the Canadian dollar is nearing parity to the U.S. dollar. Normally, I would be happy about this because it makes buying things online cheaper but it doesn’t help the stash of American dollars I have tucked away for my next trip down south.

Sports News

Like most Canadians, I’ve never been comfortable about the prospect of the NFL expanding into Canada due to concerns that it would kill the CFL. However, with yesterday’s announcement that the halftime show during this year’s Grey Cup will feature Blue Rodeo, I welcome the NFL with open arms. Seriously, CFL…Blue Rodeo? Was Corey Hart not returning your calls?

Now that the Chicago Cubs declared bankruptcy, will Jim Balsillie try to buy the team and move the team to Hamilton and turn it into a hockey team. MAKE IT SEVEN AT ALL COSTS!!!