Montreal Transit News: Mayor Desires a Streetcar, and Judge Rules that Impact Hearings Are Not Another Bridge to Cross

More on transit: the Montreal executive committee approves calling for tenders on tramway studies at the same time that a judge turns down an injunction aimed at stopping construction of a new bridge out of the city.

While the first item might sound like good news, it seems to me that it is just about as depressing as in the second case. In it Judge Pierre Béliveau decided that the province has the right to proceed with its project to extend an autoroute into the city even though the details were unknown when environmental impact hearings were held three years ago. Several environmental groups argued that approval had been given based on such incomplete information that the impact should be studied again. The judge also refused to waive the fees that the groups are required to pay since they lost their case.

In the first case, Mayor Gérald Tremblay seemed extremely pleased to announce the first steps toward three new tramway lines. One, to open in 2013, would circle part of the downtown, from Griffintown to the Old Port and back up to the theatre district. Two others, scheduled for later, would run up Park Avenue and Côte des Neiges boulevard into heavily settled parts of town.

Tremblay also announced that a bus line following the proposed route of the first trolley would start running June 23. Predicting a ridership of 15,000 a day, he suggested it would show the need for the tram.

Possibly, but it is already clear that the buses on Park Avenue and Côte de Neiges carry far more passengers than that, and also that building a tram could actually make things worse on them.

While in each case the trolley could run for part of its distance along a wide boulevard, just at the point where better service would useful—that is, where people live—the two streets become much narrower. Already they are congested with traffic, and it is hard to see how devoting the road space necessary for the tracks would make matters any better. Widening the streets to accommodate the tracks would destroy vibrant shopping streets, while stopping the tram line before reaching the narrow portion would mean that passengers would have to transfer to buses for the rest of their trips.

Far better to improve bus service, by simply running far more buses on these two lines. If Montreal mayors want to have a tramway to compare with Paris and Toronto, they’d be better to think of building one to the suburbs on the south shore of the St. Lawrence river and supporting better commuter rail service from north and west of the center city.