The northern crown of Montreal is five to seven years behind the South Shore in the development of public transit, according to a retiree from the STM who has become an ardent activist for the improvement of services.
“It’s much more developed on the South Shore because there are notably smaller circuits (15 minutes) so that people can go shopping, we don’t have that here, it’s east-west and north-south,” explained Richard Chrétien, who expressed his grievances last year, in a brief, to the Regional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ARTM) and, in a letter, to the Ministry of Transport.
“If you leave Saint-Gérard-Majella (L’Assomption sector) and go to the incentive parking lot at the train station in Repentigny, it takes about an hour and five minutes, lamented the Repentignois. 68 years old. In the L’Assomption sector, all that’s missing is a tourist guide on the buses!”
In addition to the length of the routes and their routes, Mr. Chrétien also deplores the fact that free public transit is practically absent on the North Shore, while on the South Shore, it is already established in several sectors.
After verification, we were able to confirm that the local services of La Prairie, Candiac, Saint-Philippe, Delson, Sainte-Catherine, Saint-Constant, Saint-Mathieu, Chambly, Richelieu, Carignan, Marieville, Saint-Mathias-sur-Richelieu and Sainte-Julie are free.
On the North Shore, only local service in Saint-Jérôme is currently free, as part of a one-year pilot project that began last October.
“Why were they able to do it on the South Shore and not on the North Shore?” asks Mr. Chrétien, who is the recipient of the Mobile Citizen of the Year 2021 award from Trajectoire Québec, an organization that represents the interests of citizens in matters of public transit.
“Traffic has greatly increased on the South Shore thanks to free admission,” he adds.
Upcoming initiatives?
The issue of public transit in the eastern part of the North Shore will be the subject of a forum attended by municipal and provincial decision-makers as well as representatives from exo, in Repentigny, at the end of May.
Solutions should be discussed there, but in the meantime some elected officials share Mr. Chrétien’s observation.
“Honestly, we don’t have a very pleasant service offer”, admits without hesitation one of them Sébastien Nadeau, mayor of L’Assomption and prefect of the MRC of the same name which includes, in addition to L’Assomption, the cities of Repentigny, Charlemagne, L’Épiphanie and Saint-Sulpice. “The day there will be good service, I guarantee that I will embark on free service,” he added.
Supporting numbers?
According to the most recent annual report from exo, the entity that provides public transit by train and bus in the Montreal Metropolitan Community, there were, as of December 31, 2020, 155 bus routes on the South Shore, but only 87 on the north crown.
exo maintains, however, that these data must be interpreted with caution given the differences in the number of cities and inhabitants served, in particular.
The two regions do not have the same urban fabrics either, according to Jean-Maxime St-Hilaire, media relations advisor for exo.
“The lines are often longer on the northern rim, which may explain why there are fewer of them,” explained Mr. St-Hilaire. A single line covers a larger territory.”
In the exo report, the northern crown includes the L’Assomption, Laurentides and Terrebonne-Mascouche sectors. The southern crown includes the Chambly-Richelieu-Carignan, Haut-Saint-Laurent, Le Richelain, La Presqu’Île, Roussillon, Sainte-Julie, Sorel-Varennes, Sud-Ouest and Vallée du Richelieu sectors.