Valérie Plante’s party wants to reduce road congestion on Boulevard Henri-Bourassa, in the north of the island of Montreal, by installing a “Metrobus” that will serve three boroughs of the metropolis and will facilitate access to many areas. future stations of the Metropolitan Express Network (REM).
The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) has already been planning for a few months to improve the transport offer on the reserved lanes of Boulevard Henri-Bourassa which, with its some 60,000 daily public transport trips, already represents the most important route. used by the organization’s buses. Projet Montréal therefore gave its support to this project on Wednesday, while detailing its vision of it.
Valérie Plante’s party proposes that STM buses run in their own lane over a distance of 10 km on this road axis, which connects from east to west the boroughs of Montreal-North, Ahuntsic-Cartierville and Saint Laurent. This bus line, whose frequency is similar to that of the metro, hence the nickname given to it by the political party, would also connect the future Du Ruisseau station, from the first phase of the REM, and the one that will see the light of day in Montreal-North as part of a second phase of this light rail project that will serve eastern Montreal, while stopping at the Henri-Bourassa metro station. As planned by the STM, buses will run on this reserved lane 24 hours a day, all week.
“It is really a corridor where it will serve a lot of public transport users”, argued at To have to Wednesday the head of mobility at the executive committee, Éric Alan Caldwell, on the sidelines of a press conference held in the morning at the Henri-Bourassa terminus, located in Ahuntsic-Cartierville. “What is fundamental is when you can trust the bus”, whose punctuality on this artery will be ensured by the presence of reserved lanes, where it can bypass traffic at peak hours, explained elected from Projet Montréal.
During this event, Mr. Caldwell also estimated the cost of carrying out this project at $ 6 million per kilometer. We therefore arrive at an estimate of $ 60 million for this entire project. However, the bill for several STM projects has tended to swell considerably in recent years, including that of the rapid bus service on Boulevard Pie-IX, which has been expected for years.
Moreover, even if the STM plans to cut its service offer by bus and metro from next year due to its heavy deficit, Projet Montréal does not believe that it is necessary to delay public transport projects. like the one planned on Boulevard Henri-Bourassa, on the contrary.
“It’s the right time, exactly. If we want to take advantage of our public transit network, we have to know how to connect it better and we have to know how to improve reliability and speed with interventions such as the one we are offering on Boulevard Henri-Bourassa, ”says Mr. Caldwell. The elected representative thus hopes that such a project will help increase the ridership of the STM, which has suffered greatly from the pandemic.