The reason why the bus had to deviate is because of the blue line extension! They're building a new metro station that will be integrated with the BRT.
Indeed, it will be the second median BRT station in Canada with a direct underground connection to a subway station, after Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.
@@OntarioTrafficMan True hope they do like the REM i.e Open Pie-IX station on the Blue line before Anjou Termini is build under Highways 40/25 interchange. schedule for 2031.
Nine is "neuf" in French, so Pie IX is meant to be pronounced "Pea-neuf", and refers to Pope Pius IX, who was Pope from 1846 to 1878. His reign of 32 years is the second longest of any pope in history, behind that of Saint Peter. Pius donated money to Ireland during the Great Famine. In 1847, he addressed the suffering Irish people in the encyclical Praedecessores nostros. He was also responsible for forcibly taking a six-year-old from their family in Bologna in what was known as the Mortara case. He was also notable for convoking the First Vatican Council in 1868 and for permanently losing control of the Papal States in 1870 to the Kingdom of Italy. Thereafter, he refused to leave Vatican City, declaring himself a "prisoner in the Vatican". There are reasons why the directions in Montreal are that way. The St. Lawrence River is taken as flowing west to east (even though it flows north or northeast past the island), and Old Montreal, the original city, was developed with a grid parallel to the St. Lawrence River in that area, so the streets that were parallel to the shore were called east-west, and the perpendicular streets were called north-south. This deeply ingrained a sense that the river is east-west everywhere, so that even in Verdun, where streets like Rue Bannantyne and Rue de Verdun are dead north-south on the map, they're felt to be east-west because they run roughly parallel to the waterfront. Another example of BRT: The Rede Integrada de Transporte system in Curitiba, the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná! First implemented in 1974, it was one of the first BRT systems in the world and contributed to one of the first successful examples of TOD! In the 1980s, they introduced elevated glass tube stations, which allow for fare prepayment and level boarding! A small ramp folds down from the bus onto the platform so there is no gap to cross to enter or leave the vehicle. All door loading and fare prepayment allows for short dwell times in stations. Inside some tube stations there are Tubotecas, or small libraries, introduced in 2013 for Curitiba's 320th anniversary. Citizens can borrow books with no need to register and return them to any other Tuboteca, any time. 20% of the stations also have passing lanes to allow for express services. Their fleet uses bi-articulated buses (split into three sections and operates only with soy-based biofuel, which reduces pollutant emissions by 50%). Based on 1991 traveler survey results, it was estimated that the introduction of the BRT had caused a reduction of about 27 million auto trips per year, annually saving about 27 million liters of fuel. In particular, 28 percent of BRT riders previously traveled by car. Compared to eight other Brazilian cities of its size, Curitiba uses about 30 percent less fuel per capita, resulting in one of the country's lowest rates of ambient air pollution. As of 2024, the system had a length of 81.4 km!
I take offense to this: "the cardinal directions of Montreal are a crime!" NO! They make sense! North is "away from the river"! You'll never convince me that it's wrong! 😛
@@penelopeboivin3191 Yes but it's away from the river but also away from where the city historically developed. "South" is where the river lay from the point of view of Old Montreal; North is in the opposite direction. It's easy once you get used to it! Like, there's one street that, using cardinal directions, runs almost exactly North-South (Wellington Street), but in my head, it's an East-West street because it follows the flow of the river at that part of the island.
Fittingly, Pius IX was the one who introduced trains to the Papal States! After riding them during a visit to the Kingdom of Two Sicilies in 1849, he got so enthusiastic about them, that he wanted them too, starting in 1856 with the Rome-Frascati railway! By the time the Papal States collapsed in 1870, they had 317 km total length of railway lines! That Exo station you saw was Saint-Michel-Montréal-Nord station on the Mascouche line. The line opened in 2014 and between then and 2020, it used the Mount Royal tunnel to reach Gare Centrale downtown, however, the tunnel has been converted exclusively for REM use. So instead of the Mascouche line terminating at Gare Centrale, Côte-de-Liesse has been built as its southern terminus, and for those wanting to go to Gare Centrale, they can transfer to the new REM branch at Côte-de-Liesse. The new REM line was originally Exo's Deux-Montagnes line, and both Deux-Montagnes line and Mascouche line trains stopped at Canora and Mont-Royal/Ville-de-Mont-Royal, but after the tunnel was shut for Exo, only REM trains stop at Canora and Ville-de-Mont-Royal. The Deux-Montagnes line originally opened in 1918 as a Canadian Northern Railway service. Canadian National ran the line starting in 1923 following the merger of Canadian Northern Railway into CN. CN transferred the Deux-Montagnes Line to the Société de transport de la communauté urbaine de Montréal in July 1982. The line was refurbished from 1992 to 1995. It was transferred to the RTM's predecessor agency, the Agence Métropolitaine de transport in January 1996. The RTM assumed current operation of the line upon its establishment in June 2017. The line closed in favor of REM in 2020. The Mount Royal tunnel that Exo trains once used was originally proposed by the Canadian Northern Railway to provide access to Downtown Montreal without having to cross the already-congested area south of Mount Royal or the route around it to the east. The only easy routes along the south side of Mount Royal had long been taken by rivals Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk Railway (GTR). Canadian Northern wanted to avoid crossing the Canadian Pacific and GTR lines. To finance the costly tunnel option, Canadian Northern planned to develop the low-valued farmland north of Mount Royal into a model community which was named the Town of Mount Royal. Several farms which grew the Montreal melon were bought by the builders to make way for the tracks. The cost of the tunnel, along with an expansion to the west coast of Canada, caused Canadian Northern to struggle financially before it was nationalized in 1918. Canadian National, formed from Canadian Northern Railway and several other lines, took over the just-completed tunnel. When CN also took over the Grand Trunk Railway in 1923, access to Ottawa and Toronto along the GTR lines made the tunnel largely redundant, and it was limited mostly to branch lines.
Montréal’s compass makes sense when you consider that the St-Laurent river flows east-west. So, logically, it sits south of the island. Locals tilt the map 45° clockwise. Based on the Jean-Talon detour, I’m assuming you shot this video last year? They were finalizing the Jean-Talon stop which will connect with a future station of the metro’s blue line extension. Thankfully, that detour is no more and l’ARTM’s currently working on the BRT’s extension to Notre-Dame boulevard. Regarding all-door boarding, it should be allowed at all stations but bus drivers don’t always allow for it. I don’t know if compliance has improved, but I certainly hope so. TPS is compromised to not affect car traffic too much, which causes delays and bus bunching. Control is still struggling to maintain headway as expected. You’ll see that busses often hit random reds when they’re running counter-peak or if they’re not running late. The BRT exclusively runs articulated buses which were unfortunately all acquired between 2009 and 2011, so before we started requiring AC (2016 and later). The only garage that can store them is at capacity and we’re only allowed to replace them after 16 years of service. We should therefore have our first air-conditioned all-electric busses by 2025 if we’re lucky. Finally, for the Laval thing, because it’s in a B zone, you can’t travel there with a zone A fare. Passengers need either a bus-only fare or an all modes AB, ABC or ABCD fare.
Last I heard the STM only approved all-door boarding at metro stations. It's a "pilot project" or some shit. They like to take proven ideas and give them some extra testing for a decade or so just to make sure we're a little bit behind the curve.
@@RobsRedHotSpot the all-doors boarding only at metro stations restriction is only valid for regular bus lines. However the STM explicitly allows it at all stations of the 439 line. You may google “STM embarquement par toutes les portes” to find the web page when they say it. I’ll try to post a link below, but I believe it’ll just get cut by TH-cam 🤷♂️
Montreal facts: Rubber tires were chosen for the Montreal Metro because the Quebecois being the Quebecois, they looked to Paris for inspiration, also because rubber-tired trains could use steeper grades and accelerate faster. 80% of the tunnels were built through rock, as opposed to the traditional cut-and-cover method used for the construction of the Yonge Subway in Toronto which opened in 1954, twelve years before the Montreal Metro opened. Montreal became the first North American city to have been designated UNESCO City of Design by the Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity in 2006. John Lennon’s song Give Peace a Chance was written in Montreal during his ‘bed-in’ at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in June 1969! This hotel has welcomed many famous guests including Elizabeth II, Fidel Castro, Charles de Gaulle, Princess Grace of Monaco, Indira Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama and John Travolta. However, the hotel gained its international recognition when John Lennon, who had been refused entry in the USA, conducted his bed-in in Room 1742 and wrote Give Peace a Chance there. This song would later become an anthem of the American anti-war movement. Montreal bagels are different from NYC bagels in that they're smaller, thinner, sweeter and denser, with a larger hole, and is always baked in a wood-fired oven. They contain malt, egg, and no salt, and are boiled in honey-sweetened water before being baked! Like NYC bagels, they originated with Ashkenazi immigrants from Poland and Eastern Europe. The differences in texture and taste reflect the style of the particular area in Poland in which the immigrant bakers learned their trade. Montreal has its own melon, the Montreal melon! It was popularized by the seed merchant Washington Atlee Burpee starting in 1881. Burpee was born in New Brunswick, Canada in 1858, but moved to Philly in 1861, where his father practiced medicine. He enrolled in UPenn but dropped out after two years and started a mail-order chicken business out of the family home. He soon opened a store in Philadelphia, selling poultry and also corn seed for poultry feed. It wasn't long before his customers started requesting seeds like cabbage, carrot, and cucumber. After founding W. Atlee Burpee & Company in 1878, the company soon switched to a focus on garden seeds. Burpee was known for his philanthropy for the poor in Philly. He generously supported and sat on the board of Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission which was one of the first homeless shelter and soup kitchens in the US. The Montreal melon is netted like a North American cantaloupe and deeply ribbed like a European cantaloupe. The Montreal melon was originally widely grown between the St. Lawrence River and Mount Royal, on the Montreal Plain. In its prime, from the late 19th century until World War II, it was one of the most popular varieties of melon on the east coast of North America. The melon disappeared as Montreal grew. Its delicate rind, suitable for family farms, was ill-suited to the agribusiness of the changing environment. But after about 40 years, it was rediscovered in a seed bank maintained by the US Department of Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, in 1996
These buses are just for short trips and some of the newer buses do have AC. I’d rather have them spend money on newer buses and extending the life of existing buses as much as possible than retrofitting existing buses.
@@MrEeeaddict in an unlimited money scenario I'd agree with you, but the city is always short on money. I take a packed like sardines bus filled with people only going to offices and it doesn't have AC. I'd bet more people would take the bus if there was more service rather than having more comfortable service! There's never a single inch of floor space available when the bus departs. This is probably a perfect example of a bus that should be extended and transformed into a Tram but it will take a much larger investment from the city to get there (I won't say which bus number to stay private but I'm sure there's a bunch in the city like this)
Yeah 4 pedestrian were killed by the old 505 Pie-IX over the years because they were looking on the wrong side. THe Straw that broke the Camel back was one of them was the wife of a STM bus driver.
I thought so. Same thing happened with Chicago's contra-flow curb lane in the loop over 40 years ago (it only took one death to cancel the operation). Assumptions can be deadly.
Montreal seems like a city trying to show how creative, sophisticated and different it can be at any cost, even if it's not really required: just look at the "benches" in the video, the rubber-tyred metro, the offset north or the buses running on the wrong way. It reminds me of the French way of doing things: from cars, to cinema, to grahpic design, to public transport, they've always seemed to be proud of doing things their own way. Sometimes it works great, some others the result is questionable, but you have to admire the effort!
Even more examples of this in Montreal/Quebec: the unique, public junior college and vocational CEGEP system; the REM is being built by a pension fund, CDPQ, as a weird public-public partnership to act as a stable investment for pensioners in addition to being transit; and Quebec's power is provided by an entirely public utility, Hydro-Quebec, which is 96% hydroelectric.
Alright, I was JUST about to submit an outraged comment about the lack of a "Canadian Dollars" clip. Then I watched right to end. Well played, sir! Well played!
10:50 Being familiar with this bus line growing up in the area, the reason the 439 formerly ended at Henri-Bourassa / Lacordaire was that back in the days when the contra-flow lanes existed, PM northbound buses turn south here to get back to Pie-IX Métro station to keep schedule reliability instead of ending near CÉGEP Marie-Victorin (the new “north” terminus except for trips to Laval or short-turns to Carrefour Pie-IX/Henri-Bourassa) even though AM southbound trips once started on nearby Albert-Hudon Blvd. On-street traffic in the north-east and east-end parts of Montreal Island can be intense, though reserved lanes for buses, taxis and sometimes with high-occupancy vehicles could help reduce delays if drivers respect the signage.
6:56 That's my stop everyday for job! 7:57 *cries in EXO* Glad you rode it last year before the REM opening, I didn't know you did! For the part I am riding everyday (From Pie-IX to Jarry), I can confirm that there's no more work on the roads and that now they *normally* open all doors to board. The headways are generally respected as well, but sometimes you'll get something weird with a bus being very late and therfore basically two following each other directly. Other than that, very good service indeed. Anyway, wishing to see you in Montréal soon! - Oli
Thanks so much for the extra context, Oli! Feel free to DM me on Twitter or something - I'm sure we'll see each other for REM Phase 2, but I'll also briefly be in Montreal later this month.
I was getting so upset that I watched a whole video of you in Canada with no mention of the Canadian currency. But... then I saw the ending and was happy again.
Since Montreal is slanted in terms of cardinal directions, the use of “North” instead of “North-West” makes it easier for passengers. Transit maps also take this into consideration, ‘correcting’ for the slant by tilting the island to the east (i.e. the north east end of the island is tilted to the east so it is simply the east end). Even disregarding this blatant omission, it is disappointing that this ‘Public Transit TH-camr’ would criticize the fact that a North-South bus line also travels East-West. Yes, in more populated cities a transit authority can have strictly NS and EW bus lines, that is not the case in Montreal. Although, I would say that transit in Montreal has been ignored for far too long; we used to have a comprehensive system for the time, which has since been neglected. People that live within 25km of the city centre take nearly 2 hours to get to work in the downtown core. For comparison, it used to take ~40 minutes (20 years ago, using the same public transit authority).
It's not a blatant omission; Montreal has the exact same slant as Manhattan, which uses a much more intuitive north-south. I don't know what you mean by the second paragraph. What did I complain about and when?
@@MilesinTransit You can compare Montreal and Manhattan, but I don’t think it is fair to do so in terms of transit. As for your second point, I may have been wrong, but I don’t want to watch the video again to determine that. I appreciate you making videos in general. Especially about public transit and especially about Montreal. I wasn’t trying to be a hater, but I must admit that is how I came off.
I lived in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve a couple of streets near the Rte 125 / Boul Pie Xi for a brief moment in 2018 and station Pie XI was my station. I just had to take to bus from the station “southbound” via the Rue Ontario (2:00) towards the harbour (around one minute). This is also the region where Montreal is Montreal. The typical stair cases outside the 3 storey high buildings are so common there. It was a strange and exciting time. Montreal has so much to offer. Rail links to New York, Halifax and the Quebec / Windsor corridor.
I grew up in the Montreal area as an anglophone and called Pie IX station "Pee Icks". I think I only ever went up Pie IX Boulevard once by bus since I almost never ventured that far east other than to watch Expos games at the Olympic Stadium, which I could get to by Metro anyway so I didn't need to take the bus in that area of the city.
Pie in Pie IX is the French way to say Pius. Meanwhile, pie in Spanish means foot (pronounced as pee-eh). The sign at 1:08 says "Stop Your Engine. Thank you for the residents!" And ah yes, the Montreal Olympic Stadium/Big O peeking behind at 0:39....with its tower, it looks like an evil lair, fitting with how much Montreal destroyed its economy to build it! Which is why people also call it the Big Owe! As early as 1963, Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau sought to build a covered stadium in Montreal. A covered stadium was thought to be all but essential for Drapeau's other goal of bringing an MLB team to Montreal. In 1967, soon after Montreal was granted an expansion franchise for 1969, Drapeau wrote a letter promising that any prospective Montreal team would be playing in a covered stadium by 1971. Around the same time, Montreal was bidding for the 1976 Summer Olympics which they were awarded in 1970, thus another reason for Drapeau to get the big stadium he wanted. The stadium was designed by Roger Taillibert to be an elaborate facility featuring a retractable roof, which was to be opened and closed by cables suspended from a huge inclined 165-meter tower. The stadium was originally slated to be finished in 1972, but the grand opening was cancelled due to a strike by construction workers. Taillibert was also unwilling to change his original design, and so the Quebec government lost patience with the delays and cost overruns in 1974 and threw Taillibert off the project. And Montreal's brutal winters didn't help either. So when the Olympics took place, the stadium opened incomplete. After the games, the Montreal Expos moved to it in 1977, the tower wouldn't open until 1987, and there was low attendance at games due to the bad conditions (which the 1994 MLB strike also didn't help with). The Expos eventually moved to DC in 2004 and re-branded as the Washington Nationals. Two of my favorite Olympic venues are Beijing National Stadium/Bird's Nest and the Water Cube next door! The stadium was a joint venture among architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Herzog & de Meuron, project architect Stefan Marbach and CADG, which was led by chief architect Li Xinggang. Arup Group was the structural engineer. Despite the nickname, the Bird's Nest wasn't meant to be a nest but based off Chinese ceramics! They implemented steel beams in order to hide supports for the retractable roof, but after a collapse of a roof at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, they decided to eliminate the retractable roof! But Li Xinggang said one can perceive it as how a bird's nest is special in China, and only eaten on special occasions. The Water Cube was designed by a consortium of Chinese partners, UK-based Arup Group (who worked on the Sydney Opera House, Beijing's CCTV Headquarters, NYC's Second Ave Subway, Singapore Flyer, Guangzhou's Canton Tower, etc), and Sydney-based PTW Architects. It was designed to capture and recycle 80% of water that falls on the roof or lost from pools! Its cool exterior bubble cladding is made of 4,000 ETFE bubbles! Its steel frame is the largest ETFE-clad structure in the world with over 100,000 m² of ETFE pillows! The Chinese partners felt a square was more symbolic to Chinese culture and its relationship to the Bird's Nest stadium while PTW Architects came up with the idea of covering the 'cube' with bubbles. Contextually, the Cube symbolizes Earth, while the circle (represented by the elliptic stadium) represents heaven, a common motif in ancient Chinese art. The ETFE cladding, supplied and installed by the firm Vector Foiltec, allows more light and heat penetration than traditional glass, resulting in a 30% decrease in energy costs
The "really bad" commuter Rail system you encountered is the Train de L'est to Repentigny which started in 2016 and didn't have time to build ridership because CDPQ came in and closed the tunnel to downtown. The detour all the way tho Lachine thorugh the CN freight sorting yards adds 40 minutes to trip, so most people get off at Sauvé station and walk the 1.5 blocks to Sauvé métro station outside in wintere.
As a resident, the cardinal directions in Montreal are a personal irritant. Basically people think of the river as an East-West waterway, but Montreal is at a bend in the river where it turns to the North-East. The street labelling is East-West for parallel to the river, and North-South for perpendicular to the river. So that labelling only matches reality in the West Island part of the city since the island is bent like an elbow.
Great video :) I was in Montreal recently, tried the REM, and my thoughts were pretty good. Although at Gare Centrale i did find it a bit funny, that at the top of the board it said ''Platform 2 4h 19m'' :D i think i also saw the bus whilst in the city (:
Always nice when you come visit my city. You should check out the BRT in Gatineau sometime. It has potential, but it's so slow. You can also check out the O train in Ottawa at the same time.
Hey miles! I rode the BRY this week and it looks like the deviations are all gone and they are now doing all door boarding! I think the reason they didnt do it when you were there is fare evasion when i rode the bus, at least 10 people boarded in the back door and didnt pay! Sad to see.
The suburbs 'right' of Montreal is called the South Shore. Laval and above are North Shore. Knowing this info helps with remembering how the cardinal directions run in Montreal.
I love how you included the infamous Montreal Olympic Stadium with the removable roof that was not only butt ugly but also infamously broke down constantly. The contra-flow blinky arrow pedestrian hostile setup is genuinely interesting. RIP to those who never made the bus =(.
Pie IX = "Pee noef"... more or less. Or in English: Pope Pius the Ninth. But nobody says that in Montreal. Next lesson: Pronounce "Lionel Groulx" for intermediate credit. Pronounce "Longueuil" for advanced credit!
Lionel-Groulx -> Lee-O-Nail Grew! the lx at the end is silent because they are not part of the original name Grou. It's a reminder that the ancestor did not know how to write his name so they ask to sign their name with a cross. after the | x. -> |x -> lx
@@Andrew-jv7tc or Longueuil -> Long-Oeil -> Long-Eye would be easy if we kept the Founder name instead Charles Lemoyne which sounds like Desmoines, Iowa. Lemoyne was an old city which is part of the agglomeration of Longueuil
Great video. some of the dedicated BRT infrastructure looks great overall but I have to agree the execution wasn't there. Was it me or was the service pattern quite confusing. The mix in the built environment in Montreal is so interesting from cool European style pedestrianized streets to much more North American looking stroads where buses drop you off on some tiny curb tight sidewalk by a strip-mall behind a moat of parking or even in the grass. I'm actually surprised how bad the commuter rail is. Eight trains a day is pretty bad!!
The magnetic declination is 13 to 14 degrees west in Montreal, so if you replace North Pole by magnetic North Pole, their transit system map is not that far off. Also, E is not e in math.
I wish you made a joke about the Douche-Tard signs everywhere (Couche-Tard actually and I still don't remember what they are bank, store, lottery?). Also the word contra-flow might have been applicable to my vintage footage.
without any French at all, just from the logo, I figured out that Couche-Tard mean Night Owl and it's a convenience store, same company as Circle K in the U.S.
lmao, so much of my orientation is based on highway travel directions. I want to go further West in Canada? That's the "Montreal west" direction, I want to go further east in Canada, same story.
On the north south bit.... the Island of Montréal is V shaped. There is no pleasing anyone. But the river system is considered to have the south shore and a north shore, and Montréal's orientation is relative to the rivers. So the Jacques Cartier bridge starts in Longueuil on the south shore and goes north to Montréeal, even though its orientation is precicely 270° (due west). one the first part before the curve. Downtown main streets are considered east-west (like Ste Catherine or Notre Dame ) and there are the north-south streets like St-Laurent, Berri, Robert Bourassa, Mansfield , Peel, Atwater. And because of the huge changes of where sun rises/sets between summer and winter, there is no orietation basd on the sun. To make matters worse, the highway that goes to northern Québec (the 15 and then 117) are actually north-west but considered north-south arteries, especially as the 15 goes south of Montréal to the USA border.
hi miles ! regarding ''northbound'', Montreal has an unusual cardinal points, the St-Laurent being south and the Rivière des Prairies being north. it has some historical reason i can't recall right now. St-Laurent Blvd is the delimitation between East and West. Also, regarding all doors boarding, it's only on select lines, station and metro stations, On your average stop, only front door boarding is permitted. Hope you enjoyed your trip in Montréal, and if you come visit again, there are some funny ways to push transit here, like for instance going From the Promenades St-Bruno to St-Eustache for 4,50$, using 3 bus lines, 2 metro lines and a shared taxi line !
Yeah Montreal-Nord Montreal-North is North-West, Montréal-Est (East Montreal is up North), Montreal-West is West and Montreal-South which is now part of Longueuil is East of Montréal on the south shore which is east of Montreal. it's weird because the St-Lawrence River Orientation and the weird shape like a foot of Montreal Island. Montreal (Central Business District ) is the borough of Ville-Marie mainly between Berri-UQAM and Lionel-Groulx. The Center is often associated with Place Ville-Marie North-West of Gare Centrale in Downtown Montréal.
Obviously with all the constructions, the system will be even better and modern. Later, the company will buy new hybrid articulated buses with air conditioning. For the moment, they only have articulated buses from 2009-2013.
First 2 digits of bus numbers denote year the bus was added to fleet. And each seriues is assigned to specific garages who are tooled for that model. 20-xxx means 2000 (very rare now to see 20 series buses). 21-xxx means 2001 30--xxx means 2010 40-xxx means 2020 I think AC came with the 39 or 38 models and those have the plastic seats with no fabric. The SRB was formally opened November 7th 2022, but construction is still on-going, hence the various detours around unfinished sectiosn you expreienced. South pf the Pie IX métro station, all construction had been suspended when CDPQ forced itself into debate with its unplanned desire to build its REM de l'Est. All other transit projects were put on hold in easterrn Montréal because of that ill fated project. In the case of SRB because they didnt know where the southern terminus would be depending on where the REM station would be so only built from Pierre de Coubertin to the north.
Caan you please ride Toronto's various BRT systems and do a comparison/contrast between them with regards to payment systems, grade separation, stations, vehicles? Viva, Zum, Miway Transitway, Pulse
Today's soundbites: Aleena Thumbs Down 0:02 Now that is a (not so) Fun Fact 3:56 Now that is a fun fact 8:26 I'm trying credits now (tm) 10:56 Canadian Dollar 11:36
@@andrewweitzman4006 I know that roof never worked right, and leaked, so they replaced it with a non-moving fabric roof, but still attached to the tower.
@@joermnyc That second roof is now shot, too. It's unusable for half the year because it's unsafe to be beneath that roof if there are more than 3cm of snow on it.
@@joermnyc They say it would cost 2 billion loonies to demolish because of the prestressed concrete and metro tunnel beneath it. I say that charge five bucks an hour to have Montrealers go at it with pickaxes, and we can fix the public transit shortfall in a month.
Miles in QC is always entertaining. But in all seriousness, Mtl seems to observe what the rest of the English speaking world does, like it, but refuses to admit an Englishman is right about something, so they change it slightly, and it makes their version usually a hair worse.
@@MilesinTransit I forgot about that, but you did make it confusing by taking the Waterbury bus instead of getting one of the cool flex buses. I think that is why I forgot.
There a two very small one in Laval. Le Corbusier closed to Montmorency Metro stations 3 stations Du Souvenir, Centre Laval and Albert-Duquesne. And the end of the 439 Pie-IX North 2 stations St-Martin East and De La Concorde East. both station are outside the central line more like a regular bus terminus.
@@MilesinTransit only on rush hour from important pole like from the university to the main hospital and all along the king and portland street '' During rush hour'' for a cities of less of 250K people, I think we have a great transtit system
Rapid transit, whether via light rail, heavy rail, trams or buses, is sorely lacking in so many cities across Canada and the contiguous US. Having trams and buses getting stuck behind other traffic is never good; hence the need for more right-of-ways and dedicated lanes.
If you think the 439's directions are confusing, you should see the 61 and 108 which are "East/West" routes but run almost directly north/south. Meanwhile the 107 parallels them but is a "North/South" route.
Québec is the officially French only province in Canada ! The only official bilingual province in Canada is New Brunswick, However try getting services in French in southern New Brunswick.
Aleena's judgement on all your French pronunciations is amazing and I'm here for it.
by saying pie nouf instead of pie neuf, they got closer to calling every one pignouf ahhaha
obsessed with how you and jeremy interpret the complexities of the french language. i laughed out loud at "39 to the power of E" rue
The reason why the bus had to deviate is because of the blue line extension! They're building a new metro station that will be integrated with the BRT.
Indeed, it will be the second median BRT station in Canada with a direct underground connection to a subway station, after Vaughan Metropolitan Centre.
That's very exciting to hear!!
@@OntarioTrafficMan True hope they do like the REM i.e Open Pie-IX station on the Blue line before Anjou Termini is build under Highways 40/25 interchange. schedule for 2031.
Nine is "neuf" in French, so Pie IX is meant to be pronounced "Pea-neuf", and refers to Pope Pius IX, who was Pope from 1846 to 1878. His reign of 32 years is the second longest of any pope in history, behind that of Saint Peter. Pius donated money to Ireland during the Great Famine. In 1847, he addressed the suffering Irish people in the encyclical Praedecessores nostros. He was also responsible for forcibly taking a six-year-old from their family in Bologna in what was known as the Mortara case. He was also notable for convoking the First Vatican Council in 1868 and for permanently losing control of the Papal States in 1870 to the Kingdom of Italy. Thereafter, he refused to leave Vatican City, declaring himself a "prisoner in the Vatican". There are reasons why the directions in Montreal are that way. The St. Lawrence River is taken as flowing west to east (even though it flows north or northeast past the island), and Old Montreal, the original city, was developed with a grid parallel to the St. Lawrence River in that area, so the streets that were parallel to the shore were called east-west, and the perpendicular streets were called north-south. This deeply ingrained a sense that the river is east-west everywhere, so that even in Verdun, where streets like Rue Bannantyne and Rue de Verdun are dead north-south on the map, they're felt to be east-west because they run roughly parallel to the waterfront.
Another example of BRT: The Rede Integrada de Transporte system in Curitiba, the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná! First implemented in 1974, it was one of the first BRT systems in the world and contributed to one of the first successful examples of TOD! In the 1980s, they introduced elevated glass tube stations, which allow for fare prepayment and level boarding! A small ramp folds down from the bus onto the platform so there is no gap to cross to enter or leave the vehicle. All door loading and fare prepayment allows for short dwell times in stations. Inside some tube stations there are Tubotecas, or small libraries, introduced in 2013 for Curitiba's 320th anniversary. Citizens can borrow books with no need to register and return them to any other Tuboteca, any time. 20% of the stations also have passing lanes to allow for express services. Their fleet uses bi-articulated buses (split into three sections and operates only with soy-based biofuel, which reduces pollutant emissions by 50%). Based on 1991 traveler survey results, it was estimated that the introduction of the BRT had caused a reduction of about 27 million auto trips per year, annually saving about 27 million liters of fuel. In particular, 28 percent of BRT riders previously traveled by car. Compared to eight other Brazilian cities of its size, Curitiba uses about 30 percent less fuel per capita, resulting in one of the country's lowest rates of ambient air pollution. As of 2024, the system had a length of 81.4 km!
Pio Nono was also famously anti-Semitic, even for a pope - a very problematic figure to be sure
I take offense to this: "the cardinal directions of Montreal are a crime!" NO! They make sense! North is "away from the river"! You'll never convince me that it's wrong! 😛
@@richard-mtl but it's an island, going anywhere in Montreal is going away from the river and getting closer to the other river 😭
@@penelopeboivin3191 Yes but it's away from the river but also away from where the city historically developed. "South" is where the river lay from the point of view of Old Montreal; North is in the opposite direction. It's easy once you get used to it! Like, there's one street that, using cardinal directions, runs almost exactly North-South (Wellington Street), but in my head, it's an East-West street because it follows the flow of the river at that part of the island.
@@richard-mtl I concured it's base on the river
@@richard-mtl wow i never realized wellington is actually north-south 🤯 as a montrealer i’ve always just known it’s east-west 😂
it’s an emergency alert, cause could you imagine accidentally ending up in **laval**
*shudders in montréalaise*
*puke in panic attack*
for those wondering why, it's because an STM ticket (technically zone A ticket now) is not valid to take the bus to laval
Fittingly, Pius IX was the one who introduced trains to the Papal States! After riding them during a visit to the Kingdom of Two Sicilies in 1849, he got so enthusiastic about them, that he wanted them too, starting in 1856 with the Rome-Frascati railway! By the time the Papal States collapsed in 1870, they had 317 km total length of railway lines! That Exo station you saw was Saint-Michel-Montréal-Nord station on the Mascouche line. The line opened in 2014 and between then and 2020, it used the Mount Royal tunnel to reach Gare Centrale downtown, however, the tunnel has been converted exclusively for REM use. So instead of the Mascouche line terminating at Gare Centrale, Côte-de-Liesse has been built as its southern terminus, and for those wanting to go to Gare Centrale, they can transfer to the new REM branch at Côte-de-Liesse. The new REM line was originally Exo's Deux-Montagnes line, and both Deux-Montagnes line and Mascouche line trains stopped at Canora and Mont-Royal/Ville-de-Mont-Royal, but after the tunnel was shut for Exo, only REM trains stop at Canora and Ville-de-Mont-Royal. The Deux-Montagnes line originally opened in 1918 as a Canadian Northern Railway service. Canadian National ran the line starting in 1923 following the merger of Canadian Northern Railway into CN. CN transferred the Deux-Montagnes Line to the Société de transport de la communauté urbaine de Montréal in July 1982. The line was refurbished from 1992 to 1995. It was transferred to the RTM's predecessor agency, the Agence Métropolitaine de transport in January 1996. The RTM assumed current operation of the line upon its establishment in June 2017. The line closed in favor of REM in 2020.
The Mount Royal tunnel that Exo trains once used was originally proposed by the Canadian Northern Railway to provide access to Downtown Montreal without having to cross the already-congested area south of Mount Royal or the route around it to the east. The only easy routes along the south side of Mount Royal had long been taken by rivals Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk Railway (GTR). Canadian Northern wanted to avoid crossing the Canadian Pacific and GTR lines. To finance the costly tunnel option, Canadian Northern planned to develop the low-valued farmland north of Mount Royal into a model community which was named the Town of Mount Royal. Several farms which grew the Montreal melon were bought by the builders to make way for the tracks. The cost of the tunnel, along with an expansion to the west coast of Canada, caused Canadian Northern to struggle financially before it was nationalized in 1918. Canadian National, formed from Canadian Northern Railway and several other lines, took over the just-completed tunnel. When CN also took over the Grand Trunk Railway in 1923, access to Ottawa and Toronto along the GTR lines made the tunnel largely redundant, and it was limited mostly to branch lines.
Montréal’s compass makes sense when you consider that the St-Laurent river flows east-west. So, logically, it sits south of the island. Locals tilt the map 45° clockwise.
Based on the Jean-Talon detour, I’m assuming you shot this video last year? They were finalizing the Jean-Talon stop which will connect with a future station of the metro’s blue line extension. Thankfully, that detour is no more and l’ARTM’s currently working on the BRT’s extension to Notre-Dame boulevard.
Regarding all-door boarding, it should be allowed at all stations but bus drivers don’t always allow for it. I don’t know if compliance has improved, but I certainly hope so.
TPS is compromised to not affect car traffic too much, which causes delays and bus bunching. Control is still struggling to maintain headway as expected. You’ll see that busses often hit random reds when they’re running counter-peak or if they’re not running late.
The BRT exclusively runs articulated buses which were unfortunately all acquired between 2009 and 2011, so before we started requiring AC (2016 and later). The only garage that can store them is at capacity and we’re only allowed to replace them after 16 years of service. We should therefore have our first air-conditioned all-electric busses by 2025 if we’re lucky.
Finally, for the Laval thing, because it’s in a B zone, you can’t travel there with a zone A fare. Passengers need either a bus-only fare or an all modes AB, ABC or ABCD fare.
Thanks for the extra, kind of insane context!
Last I heard the STM only approved all-door boarding at metro stations. It's a "pilot project" or some shit. They like to take proven ideas and give them some extra testing for a decade or so just to make sure we're a little bit behind the curve.
@@RobsRedHotSpot the all-doors boarding only at metro stations restriction is only valid for regular bus lines. However the STM explicitly allows it at all stations of the 439 line.
You may google “STM embarquement par toutes les portes” to find the web page when they say it. I’ll try to post a link below, but I believe it’ll just get cut by TH-cam 🤷♂️
As a Montrealer, I agree with you that things are weird. No replacement-arcliculated buses are on the horizon for Montreal.
That line should just have been built as a Trolleybus or a tram but they found reasons after deciding not to do it as usual.
Montreal facts: Rubber tires were chosen for the Montreal Metro because the Quebecois being the Quebecois, they looked to Paris for inspiration, also because rubber-tired trains could use steeper grades and accelerate faster. 80% of the tunnels were built through rock, as opposed to the traditional cut-and-cover method used for the construction of the Yonge Subway in Toronto which opened in 1954, twelve years before the Montreal Metro opened. Montreal became the first North American city to have been designated UNESCO City of Design by the Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity in 2006. John Lennon’s song Give Peace a Chance was written in Montreal during his ‘bed-in’ at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in June 1969! This hotel has welcomed many famous guests including Elizabeth II, Fidel Castro, Charles de Gaulle, Princess Grace of Monaco, Indira Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama and John Travolta. However, the hotel gained its international recognition when John Lennon, who had been refused entry in the USA, conducted his bed-in in Room 1742 and wrote Give Peace a Chance there. This song would later become an anthem of the American anti-war movement. Montreal bagels are different from NYC bagels in that they're smaller, thinner, sweeter and denser, with a larger hole, and is always baked in a wood-fired oven. They contain malt, egg, and no salt, and are boiled in honey-sweetened water before being baked! Like NYC bagels, they originated with Ashkenazi immigrants from Poland and Eastern Europe. The differences in texture and taste reflect the style of the particular area in Poland in which the immigrant bakers learned their trade.
Montreal has its own melon, the Montreal melon! It was popularized by the seed merchant Washington Atlee Burpee starting in 1881. Burpee was born in New Brunswick, Canada in 1858, but moved to Philly in 1861, where his father practiced medicine. He enrolled in UPenn but dropped out after two years and started a mail-order chicken business out of the family home. He soon opened a store in Philadelphia, selling poultry and also corn seed for poultry feed. It wasn't long before his customers started requesting seeds like cabbage, carrot, and cucumber. After founding W. Atlee Burpee & Company in 1878, the company soon switched to a focus on garden seeds. Burpee was known for his philanthropy for the poor in Philly. He generously supported and sat on the board of Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission which was one of the first homeless shelter and soup kitchens in the US. The Montreal melon is netted like a North American cantaloupe and deeply ribbed like a European cantaloupe. The Montreal melon was originally widely grown between the St. Lawrence River and Mount Royal, on the Montreal Plain. In its prime, from the late 19th century until World War II, it was one of the most popular varieties of melon on the east coast of North America. The melon disappeared as Montreal grew. Its delicate rind, suitable for family farms, was ill-suited to the agribusiness of the changing environment. But after about 40 years, it was rediscovered in a seed bank maintained by the US Department of Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, in 1996
No AC on the bus??? I was already surprised they weren’t putting AC on the new rem stations, but that surprises me
These buses are just for short trips and some of the newer buses do have AC. I’d rather have them spend money on newer buses and extending the life of existing buses as much as possible than retrofitting existing buses.
@@predarek fuck that, no ac just makes the bus look more "just for the poors"
@@MrEeeaddict in an unlimited money scenario I'd agree with you, but the city is always short on money. I take a packed like sardines bus filled with people only going to offices and it doesn't have AC. I'd bet more people would take the bus if there was more service rather than having more comfortable service! There's never a single inch of floor space available when the bus departs.
This is probably a perfect example of a bus that should be extended and transformed into a Tram but it will take a much larger investment from the city to get there (I won't say which bus number to stay private but I'm sure there's a bunch in the city like this)
Montreal using AC challenge (impossible)
@@MrEeeaddict transit is not class segregated in montreal, you must be american
Yeah 4 pedestrian were killed by the old 505 Pie-IX over the years because they were looking on the wrong side. THe Straw that broke the Camel back was one of them was the wife of a STM bus driver.
I thought so. Same thing happened with Chicago's contra-flow curb lane in the loop over 40 years ago (it only took one death to cancel the operation). Assumptions can be deadly.
It was such a pleasant surprise to meet you and Jeremy on this bus! And my shoes are thrilled about their Miles in Transit cameo!
Heck yeah, it was great to meet you as well!!
Montreal seems like a city trying to show how creative, sophisticated and different it can be at any cost, even if it's not really required: just look at the "benches" in the video, the rubber-tyred metro, the offset north or the buses running on the wrong way.
It reminds me of the French way of doing things: from cars, to cinema, to grahpic design, to public transport, they've always seemed to be proud of doing things their own way. Sometimes it works great, some others the result is questionable, but you have to admire the effort!
Even more examples of this in Montreal/Quebec: the unique, public junior college and vocational CEGEP system; the REM is being built by a pension fund, CDPQ, as a weird public-public partnership to act as a stable investment for pensioners in addition to being transit; and Quebec's power is provided by an entirely public utility, Hydro-Quebec, which is 96% hydroelectric.
It's like Toronto. The water is south.
It makes sense to Canadians.
Yeah except in Toronto the water IS south!
@@MilesinTransitSouth-ish. We're not nearly as askew as Montreal, but the city's grid is still about 18 degrees off-kilter.
Alright, I was JUST about to submit an outraged comment about the lack of a "Canadian Dollars" clip.
Then I watched right to end. Well played, sir! Well played!
Haha, I couldn't let it go without it! ;)
Same energy as THE MILWAUKEE ROAD
10:50 Being familiar with this bus line growing up in the area, the reason the 439 formerly ended at Henri-Bourassa / Lacordaire was that back in the days when the contra-flow lanes existed, PM northbound buses turn south here to get back to Pie-IX Métro station to keep schedule reliability instead of ending near CÉGEP Marie-Victorin (the new “north” terminus except for trips to Laval or short-turns to Carrefour Pie-IX/Henri-Bourassa) even though AM southbound trips once started on nearby Albert-Hudon Blvd. On-street traffic in the north-east and east-end parts of Montreal Island can be intense, though reserved lanes for buses, taxis and sometimes with high-occupancy vehicles could help reduce delays if drivers respect the signage.
The realization dawning over Jeremy, "Oh! NOW I get why you're mad!" 😂
Awesome video. As a boston resident who was born on montreal this is exactly what I needed to watch
Thanks!
6:56 That's my stop everyday for job!
7:57 *cries in EXO*
Glad you rode it last year before the REM opening, I didn't know you did! For the part I am riding everyday (From Pie-IX to Jarry), I can confirm that there's no more work on the roads and that now they *normally* open all doors to board. The headways are generally respected as well, but sometimes you'll get something weird with a bus being very late and therfore basically two following each other directly. Other than that, very good service indeed.
Anyway, wishing to see you in Montréal soon!
- Oli
Thanks so much for the extra context, Oli! Feel free to DM me on Twitter or something - I'm sure we'll see each other for REM Phase 2, but I'll also briefly be in Montreal later this month.
i believe the shelters are heated in our frezzing winters.
"Pie Nine From Outer Space" - a superior movie!
Hahahaha, good one!!
I was getting so upset that I watched a whole video of you in Canada with no mention of the Canadian currency. But... then I saw the ending and was happy again.
Hehe!
Since Montreal is slanted in terms of cardinal directions, the use of “North” instead of “North-West” makes it easier for passengers. Transit maps also take this into consideration, ‘correcting’ for the slant by tilting the island to the east (i.e. the north east end of the island is tilted to the east so it is simply the east end).
Even disregarding this blatant omission, it is disappointing that this ‘Public Transit TH-camr’ would criticize the fact that a North-South bus line also travels East-West. Yes, in more populated cities a transit authority can have strictly NS and EW bus lines, that is not the case in Montreal.
Although, I would say that transit in Montreal has been ignored for far too long; we used to have a comprehensive system for the time, which has since been neglected. People that live within 25km of the city centre take nearly 2 hours to get to work in the downtown core. For comparison, it used to take ~40 minutes (20 years ago, using the same public transit authority).
It's not a blatant omission; Montreal has the exact same slant as Manhattan, which uses a much more intuitive north-south.
I don't know what you mean by the second paragraph. What did I complain about and when?
@@MilesinTransit You can compare Montreal and Manhattan, but I don’t think it is fair to do so in terms of transit. As for your second point, I may have been wrong, but I don’t want to watch the video again to determine that.
I appreciate you making videos in general. Especially about public transit and especially about Montreal. I wasn’t trying to be a hater, but I must admit that is how I came off.
@@trevorlafave I didn't compare them in terms of transit, it was just with regards to their cardinal directions!
I lived in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve a couple of streets near the Rte 125 / Boul Pie Xi for a brief moment in 2018 and station Pie XI was my station. I just had to take to bus from the station “southbound” via the Rue Ontario (2:00) towards the harbour (around one minute). This is also the region where Montreal is Montreal. The typical stair cases outside the 3 storey high buildings are so common there. It was a strange and exciting time. Montreal has so much to offer. Rail links to New York, Halifax and the Quebec / Windsor corridor.
I grew up in the Montreal area as an anglophone and called Pie IX station "Pee Icks". I think I only ever went up Pie IX Boulevard once by bus since I almost never ventured that far east other than to watch Expos games at the Olympic Stadium, which I could get to by Metro anyway so I didn't need to take the bus in that area of the city.
I love the sound of the buses 🚌 ❤
Pie in Pie IX is the French way to say Pius. Meanwhile, pie in Spanish means foot (pronounced as pee-eh). The sign at 1:08 says "Stop Your Engine. Thank you for the residents!" And ah yes, the Montreal Olympic Stadium/Big O peeking behind at 0:39....with its tower, it looks like an evil lair, fitting with how much Montreal destroyed its economy to build it! Which is why people also call it the Big Owe! As early as 1963, Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau sought to build a covered stadium in Montreal. A covered stadium was thought to be all but essential for Drapeau's other goal of bringing an MLB team to Montreal. In 1967, soon after Montreal was granted an expansion franchise for 1969, Drapeau wrote a letter promising that any prospective Montreal team would be playing in a covered stadium by 1971. Around the same time, Montreal was bidding for the 1976 Summer Olympics which they were awarded in 1970, thus another reason for Drapeau to get the big stadium he wanted. The stadium was designed by Roger Taillibert to be an elaborate facility featuring a retractable roof, which was to be opened and closed by cables suspended from a huge inclined 165-meter tower. The stadium was originally slated to be finished in 1972, but the grand opening was cancelled due to a strike by construction workers. Taillibert was also unwilling to change his original design, and so the Quebec government lost patience with the delays and cost overruns in 1974 and threw Taillibert off the project. And Montreal's brutal winters didn't help either. So when the Olympics took place, the stadium opened incomplete. After the games, the Montreal Expos moved to it in 1977, the tower wouldn't open until 1987, and there was low attendance at games due to the bad conditions (which the 1994 MLB strike also didn't help with). The Expos eventually moved to DC in 2004 and re-branded as the Washington Nationals.
Two of my favorite Olympic venues are Beijing National Stadium/Bird's Nest and the Water Cube next door! The stadium was a joint venture among architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron of Herzog & de Meuron, project architect Stefan Marbach and CADG, which was led by chief architect Li Xinggang. Arup Group was the structural engineer. Despite the nickname, the Bird's Nest wasn't meant to be a nest but based off Chinese ceramics! They implemented steel beams in order to hide supports for the retractable roof, but after a collapse of a roof at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, they decided to eliminate the retractable roof! But Li Xinggang said one can perceive it as how a bird's nest is special in China, and only eaten on special occasions. The Water Cube was designed by a consortium of Chinese partners, UK-based Arup Group (who worked on the Sydney Opera House, Beijing's CCTV Headquarters, NYC's Second Ave Subway, Singapore Flyer, Guangzhou's Canton Tower, etc), and Sydney-based PTW Architects. It was designed to capture and recycle 80% of water that falls on the roof or lost from pools! Its cool exterior bubble cladding is made of 4,000 ETFE bubbles! Its steel frame is the largest ETFE-clad structure in the world with over 100,000 m² of ETFE pillows! The Chinese partners felt a square was more symbolic to Chinese culture and its relationship to the Bird's Nest stadium while PTW Architects came up with the idea of covering the 'cube' with bubbles. Contextually, the Cube symbolizes Earth, while the circle (represented by the elliptic stadium) represents heaven, a common motif in ancient Chinese art. The ETFE cladding, supplied and installed by the firm Vector Foiltec, allows more light and heat penetration than traditional glass, resulting in a 30% decrease in energy costs
Canadians call the Big O “Big Owe” the tower was paid off just in 2008! Built in the 70s…
The "really bad" commuter Rail system you encountered is the Train de L'est to Repentigny which started in 2016 and didn't have time to build ridership because CDPQ came in and closed the tunnel to downtown. The detour all the way tho Lachine thorugh the CN freight sorting yards adds 40 minutes to trip, so most people get off at Sauvé station and walk the 1.5 blocks to Sauvé métro station outside in wintere.
Pie IX can be said like "enough" but with a P
great video miles
Thanks!
As a resident, the cardinal directions in Montreal are a personal irritant. Basically people think of the river as an East-West waterway, but Montreal is at a bend in the river where it turns to the North-East. The street labelling is East-West for parallel to the river, and North-South for perpendicular to the river. So that labelling only matches reality in the West Island part of the city since the island is bent like an elbow.
Montreal's the only city in North America where the sun sets in the "north".
love seeing you guys ride through my neighbourhood, stop and say bonjour-hi next time
Great video :) I was in Montreal recently, tried the REM, and my thoughts were pretty good. Although at Gare Centrale i did find it a bit funny, that at the top of the board it said ''Platform 2 4h 19m'' :D i think i also saw the bus whilst in the city (:
Always nice when you come visit my city. You should check out the BRT in Gatineau sometime. It has potential, but it's so slow. You can also check out the O train in Ottawa at the same time.
Would love to see more BRT content!!
Hey miles! I rode the BRY this week and it looks like the deviations are all gone and they are now doing all door boarding! I think the reason they didnt do it when you were there is fare evasion when i rode the bus, at least 10 people boarded in the back door and didnt pay! Sad to see.
Montréal's street grid orientation is almost exactly Manhattan's but rotated by 90º so Manhattan North is pretty much exactly Montréal East!
And Manhattan North is more north than east!
The suburbs 'right' of Montreal is called the South Shore. Laval and above are North Shore. Knowing this info helps with remembering how the cardinal directions run in Montreal.
It's infuriating to see how the project was mishandled, for the price we paid it should have been a tram at that price.
the fact that 3 routes has the same name 439 made me so angry that i drove to school even tho i did exactly the path of the bus
agree with you on the livery dots on the back windows, it's evil
When life is too crazy to bare, i watch this channel.
I thought York's VIVA BRT was bad, but this makes it look luxury. 😂
I love how you included the infamous Montreal Olympic Stadium with the removable roof that was not only butt ugly but also infamously broke down constantly. The contra-flow blinky arrow pedestrian hostile setup is genuinely interesting. RIP to those who never made the bus =(.
@10:55 absolutely nailed the ending 10/10!
i could not imagine living in a city where the streets aren't lined up north-south, my internal compass would always be on the wonk
Please come to Ottawa next! We’ve got a barely functioning light rail
Great video!! Seems like a nice route! Sounds like they should extend the busway and work on not bunching!
Note to self, when riding the Montreal mass transit, learn to yell "Backdoor" in French.
Pie IX = "Pee noef"... more or less.
Or in English: Pope Pius the Ninth. But nobody says that in Montreal.
Next lesson: Pronounce "Lionel Groulx" for intermediate credit. Pronounce "Longueuil" for advanced credit!
Lionel-Groulx -> Lee-O-Nail Grew! the lx at the end is silent because they are not part of the original name Grou. It's a reminder that the ancestor did not know how to write his name so they ask to sign their name with a cross. after the | x. -> |x -> lx
Lawn-gay
@@Andrew-jv7tc or Longueuil -> Long-Oeil -> Long-Eye would be easy if we kept the Founder name instead Charles Lemoyne which sounds like Desmoines, Iowa. Lemoyne was an old city which is part of the agglomeration of Longueuil
Great video. some of the dedicated BRT infrastructure looks great overall but I have to agree the execution wasn't there. Was it me or was the service pattern quite confusing. The mix in the built environment in Montreal is so interesting from cool European style pedestrianized streets to much more North American looking stroads where buses drop you off on some tiny curb tight sidewalk by a strip-mall behind a moat of parking or even in the grass. I'm actually surprised how bad the commuter rail is. Eight trains a day is pretty bad!!
NotJustBikes had a Montreal review that went in depth on how Montreal is a mix of really good and really bad urbanism.
In Country’s outside of the US it is way more common to not have AC on transit.
sad that they use exclusively novas so i can't make a "neuf flyer" joke
Heh!
3:31 in relation with the river.
The magnetic declination is 13 to 14 degrees west in Montreal, so if you replace North Pole by magnetic North Pole, their transit system map is not that far off. Also, E is not e in math.
REALLY COOL CAN YOU BELEIVE IT ONLY TOOK 6 YEARS TO BUILD ALL that!!!??
@abdoulm.sorofino2642 mate i was saying it in a sarcastic matter
jpeux pas être plus crampé que ça 😂😂😂 nice funny video guys!!!
Merci!
I wish you made a joke about the Douche-Tard signs everywhere (Couche-Tard actually and I still don't remember what they are bank, store, lottery?). Also the word contra-flow might have been applicable to my vintage footage.
Basically a 7/11
without any French at all, just from the logo, I figured out that Couche-Tard mean Night Owl and it's a convenience store, same company as Circle K in the U.S.
Love these vids greetings from Norway
Thank you!
lmao, so much of my orientation is based on highway travel directions. I want to go further West in Canada? That's the "Montreal west" direction, I want to go further east in Canada, same story.
Miles en Transite
Miles dans les transports en commun ! i.e. French Version of Miles in Transit !
On the great north-south debate It drives me nuts that the Amtrak, SEPTA, NJ Transit trains on the NEC from Philly to NYC are east-west.
Merci! Voilà un fait joli \m/
Very cool!
It’s hard to pronounce the word Pie IXI but this is how you pronounce it “Pi neuf “
On the north south bit....
the Island of Montréal is V shaped. There is no pleasing anyone. But the river system is considered to have the south shore and a north shore, and Montréal's orientation is relative to the rivers. So the Jacques Cartier bridge starts in Longueuil on the south shore and goes north to Montréeal, even though its orientation is precicely 270° (due west). one the first part before the curve.
Downtown main streets are considered east-west (like Ste Catherine or Notre Dame ) and there are the north-south streets like St-Laurent, Berri, Robert Bourassa, Mansfield , Peel, Atwater. And because of the huge changes of where sun rises/sets between summer and winter, there is no orietation basd on the sun.
To make matters worse, the highway that goes to northern Québec (the 15 and then 117) are actually north-west but considered north-south arteries, especially as the 15 goes south of Montréal to the USA border.
Reminds me of a Bus route in Mississauga, which is going South, but goes north first. It is absurd.
The directions follow the river. East is towards Quebec City, West is towards Ontario. It's not hard!
But if I'm wayfinding within Montreal I don't really care where Quebec City or Ontario are...
I really like the fun fact in this vid. I giggled pretty hard, don't judge.
hi miles ! regarding ''northbound'', Montreal has an unusual cardinal points, the St-Laurent being south and the Rivière des Prairies being north. it has some historical reason i can't recall right now. St-Laurent Blvd is the delimitation between East and West. Also, regarding all doors boarding, it's only on select lines, station and metro stations, On your average stop, only front door boarding is permitted. Hope you enjoyed your trip in Montréal, and if you come visit again, there are some funny ways to push transit here, like for instance going From the Promenades St-Bruno to St-Eustache for 4,50$, using 3 bus lines, 2 metro lines and a shared taxi line !
There are a whole bunch of translation apps. This is one of those episodes where you pretend not to know something for the sake of humor.
I suppose...
This just reminds me why I never go to Montreal 😂
You should do Blacksburg Transit in VA
Yeah Montreal-Nord Montreal-North is North-West, Montréal-Est (East Montreal is up North), Montreal-West is West and Montreal-South which is now part of Longueuil is East of Montréal on the south shore which is east of Montreal. it's weird because the St-Lawrence River Orientation and the weird shape like a foot of Montreal Island. Montreal (Central Business District ) is the borough of Ville-Marie mainly between Berri-UQAM and Lionel-Groulx.
The Center is often associated with Place Ville-Marie North-West of Gare Centrale in Downtown Montréal.
if for whatever reason you find yourself in nashville, i think you should do a video on the wego star trains!
He did, he rode WeGo Star in his Amtrak Least Used Station in Tennessee video!
Yes, and in my "I Took Three Greyhounds and an Ourbus to Nashville" video!
Obviously with all the constructions, the system will be even better and modern. Later, the company will buy new hybrid articulated buses with air conditioning. For the moment, they only have articulated buses from 2009-2013.
First 2 digits of bus numbers denote year the bus was added to fleet. And each seriues is assigned to specific garages who are tooled for that model.
20-xxx means 2000 (very rare now to see 20 series buses).
21-xxx means 2001
30--xxx means 2010
40-xxx means 2020
I think AC came with the 39 or 38 models and those have the plastic seats with no fabric.
The SRB was formally opened November 7th 2022, but construction is still on-going, hence the various detours around unfinished sectiosn you expreienced.
South pf the Pie IX métro station, all construction had been suspended when CDPQ forced itself into debate with its unplanned desire to build its REM de l'Est. All other transit projects were put on hold in easterrn Montréal because of that ill fated project. In the case of SRB because they didnt know where the southern terminus would be depending on where the REM station would be so only built from Pierre de Coubertin to the north.
ne i live in montreal maybe next time you come up here we could meet.
But we all Miles in Transit fans in Montréal maybe we will need to charter a bus instead !
Watching this on a train
I will fight you over the Montreal North it makes complete sense in context
Caan you please ride Toronto's various BRT systems and do a comparison/contrast between them with regards to payment systems, grade separation, stations, vehicles? Viva, Zum, Miway Transitway, Pulse
Today's soundbites:
Aleena Thumbs Down 0:02
Now that is a (not so) Fun Fact 3:56
Now that is a fun fact 8:26
I'm trying credits now (tm) 10:56
Canadian Dollar 11:36
10:55 that face and smile at the end ❤ Jeremy was GLOWING 🌟🌟
69 Gouin, named after Boulevard Gouin who is name after 19th Century Former Québec Premier Lomer Gouin.
Also Gouine is a french slang for lesbian. ;)
@@glaframbwait, if gouine is slang for lesbian, then is gouin a slang for gay? 😉
They're extending it to the south!
The Olympic stadium looks like a UFO landing site. 😂
It's a toilet bowl that we've been flushing money down for several decades. There's a reason why it is called the "Big Owe".
@@andrewweitzman4006 I know that roof never worked right, and leaked, so they replaced it with a non-moving fabric roof, but still attached to the tower.
@@joermnyc That second roof is now shot, too. It's unusable for half the year because it's unsafe to be beneath that roof if there are more than 3cm of snow on it.
@@andrewweitzman4006 yeah, these sorts of fabric roofs aren’t snow friendly, Minneapolis’s old football/baseball stadium found that out the hard way.
@@joermnyc They say it would cost 2 billion loonies to demolish because of the prestressed concrete and metro tunnel beneath it. I say that charge five bucks an hour to have Montrealers go at it with pickaxes, and we can fix the public transit shortfall in a month.
You're in Montréal!!! :D
Miles in QC is always entertaining.
But in all seriousness, Mtl seems to observe what the rest of the English speaking world does, like it, but refuses to admit an Englishman is right about something, so they change it slightly, and it makes their version usually a hair worse.
I'm crackling at the upset about the conception of north people who just arrived here 😈😈
When are you going to come to The Land of Ned and ride the Hartford Buswsy? I would even be willing to join you for that.
I rode it in my first "free buses in Connecticut" video!
@@MilesinTransit I forgot about that, but you did make it confusing by taking the Waterbury bus instead of getting one of the cool flex buses. I think that is why I forgot.
I mean it is north.... sorry
Except it literally isn't! It's more west than north (WNW).
So this was counterflow with big flashing lights
Do Ottawa at some point plez
Please come use the city of Sherbrooke one. It's a 1h30 from montreal. Plus it's fully accessible from buses from Mtl bus terminus.
There's a BRT in Sherbrooke??
There a two very small one in Laval. Le Corbusier closed to Montmorency Metro stations 3 stations Du Souvenir, Centre Laval and Albert-Duquesne.
And the end of the 439 Pie-IX North 2 stations St-Martin East and De La Concorde East. both station are outside the central line more like a regular bus terminus.
@@MilesinTransit only on rush hour from important pole like from the university to the main hospital and all along the king and portland street '' During rush hour'' for a cities of less of 250K people, I think we have a great transtit system
Rapid transit, whether via light rail, heavy rail, trams or buses, is sorely lacking in so many cities across Canada and the contiguous US. Having trams and buses getting stuck behind other traffic is never good; hence the need for more right-of-ways and dedicated lanes.
The "I'm trying credits now" TM looks a lot like comic sans. Has that always been the case?
It's a different font every time! I've yet to use Comic Sans.
Ya know I really though Miles forgot a postcredits scene for once.
Never!
"Pea Nuff" (rhymes with "enough")
If you think the 439's directions are confusing, you should see the 61 and 108 which are "East/West" routes but run almost directly north/south. Meanwhile the 107 parallels them but is a "North/South" route.
Jeeeez!!
Wait until you meet YRT Viva
Ok, but I'm waiting for a video about puking, so I can tell my bus driver-puking passenger story...delightfully gross...
Watch my Bridgeport ferry video!
Quebec is bilingual, French and nothing else. They tried to fine Wal-Mart and Best Buy because they wouldn't put French on their main sign.
Québec is the officially French only province in Canada ! The only official bilingual province in Canada is New Brunswick, However try getting services in French in southern New Brunswick.
Jeremy in confusion transit is great