After years of waiting, the rapid service by bus (SRB) Pie-IX will largely come into service next Monday, with the exception of two stations which will not be accessible until next year. The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) hopes that this initiative, which will make it possible to connect Montreal more quickly and more frequently from north to south, will attract tens of thousands of new users to its network.
Thus, 15 stations of the bus project will come into service on Monday, while those of Jean-Talon and Bélanger will be next year, due to ongoing infrastructure work.
The SRB Pie-IX, which will connect four boroughs of Montreal as well as the east of Laval, will offer trips in a reserved lane with priority traffic lights. Thus, the travel time between the last station in Montréal-Nord and the Pierre-De Coubertin station will be 30% faster compared to the current bus offer.
However, diesel-powered articulated buses will be circulating on Pie-IX Boulevard during the first years of its commissioning. When these have reached their end of life, they will be replaced by electric buses, assured the STM in a technical briefing Thursday.
The official budget for the project is $523 million, excluding a possible extension of the BRT on rue Notre-Dame to downtown. This extension has not been ruled out, but remains under study due to significant cost overruns observed in the analysis of this extension.
First announced in 2009, the SRB Pie-IX project was initially scheduled to come into service in 2013. However, the project has experienced many delays over the years, during which various electrification scenarios have been analyzed, including the use of trolley-bus. The start of work on the final version of the project finally took place in 2019.
Further details will follow.
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