So you want to see Montreal?

So you want to see Montreal eh? Do you have your Opus card? Yes? Not so fast! Montreal has over 800 fare types! Yes that's right 800! What do you mean why? Because it does silly! Why doesn't it vastly simplify the system to use fewer fare types? Why don't you shut your ignorant mouth foreigner!

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Ok! Let's get started, we've arrived at Montreal central, you have your ten pass opus? Excellent. Well where do you want to go first? Montreal West? Strange choice but ok. Hold on we need to reload that card of yours, that's a different fare. Montreal West is about 6 km away, so I'll need to buy you the $10 ticket. Why's a ticket to go six kilometre $10? Dunno!!

Oh hang on, we missed the last train, it'll be a six hour wait. The trains only run in the morning and evening, oh and most of them don't run on weekends. Oh I guess we can take the subway. Right we just have to go to Vendome, then take the 105, then walk 10 minutes, it'll be about an hour. Why does it take an hour to get 6km? Haha ask the city council that's why.

📷1965 Chicago Union Station. I mean 2019 Montreal commuter train

Right so we're finally here. There's nothing to see, but we're just in time for the train back into the city! Off we go! What's that? Why is it taking so long? Well it takes 40 minutes. I mean what did you expect, high speed electrified suburban rail? What does this look like to you. I'm getting right sick of your questions, if you hate Montreal why don't you leave!

No? Good, well let's get out and take the bus. Whoops that bus is completely full. Sorry you came in winter, but we can go wait in one of our convenient covered bus stops! Oh no! There are five people in it. Guess we wait in the cold. Oh look here comes the bus... and nope. It's en transit. One quarter of Montreals bus fleet is under repair at any given time, I mean what do you expect in the second richest city in the 15th richest country in the world? Modern transport that isn't constantly breaking down like you live in some post apocalyptic soviet hellscape?

📷Broken bus, or on strike, or understaffed, or something. You're not getting on

Don't worry another bus will be along soon. Our roads are bad so the buses break, it's natural. Why are the roads bad? Oh that's because of the winter! You're a foreigner you wouldn't understand. What's that? Winnipeg and Calgary spend significantly less on their roads than Montreal, and have more extreme weather? Montreal has some of the most expensive and extensive road work in the world? Other countries have extreme weather but aren't in the process of forever fixing their roads?

📷A good Montreal street. No seriously. If you cycle or drive, that is a good street. Bad ones feel like your going to die and have foot deep potholes randomly strewn everywhere

Hm weird, oh well! What next shall we go to Laval? You can get the subway straight there! Not much to see? Well let's go back. Oh right you need another fare, the STL fare, it's the same price and can be loaded onto your opus, but it can only be used in Laval, your STM fares can't be used in Laval. Why can't they use the electronic receipts to track where the fare is used and allocate the funds accordingly? Like is done in most major cities in the world already? Such as Tokyo where there are half a dozen different private transit companies but who all use a single subway system card that does the work for you? I don't know! Stop asking! Or else!

Ok well let's take the bus! Oh no! Your Opus card isn't working! Well you can pay in cash. No not a 20, no not a 10, no not a 5 either. It has to be in coins. Yes coins. But the fare is a $10 fare and this isn't the middle ages, people barely carry cash, little own coins, anymore? Well that's to fucking bad, maybe the bus driver will be nice to you.

📷Bixis! Good luck finding them downtown in the evening

Well we've been on this transit system so long that the snow has melted and it's spring why don't we cycle! It's faster than the bus! Literally. It is faster to cycle 10km than it is to take the bus. In fact if you have the energy it's faster to cycle nearly any distance on the island of Montreal than take the bus. And thanks to our green mayor, we have excellent paved segregated bike paths. Downtown, and in parts of the plateau, none of it is connected together, most of it is just a picture of bike on a normal road. Cars are pretty good with bikes, though that may be more to do with the fact that cyclists here are terrifying and never pay any attention to the road. Oh and because it's so much nicer to cycle, the cycle paths are actually overloaded, so you wind up in bike traffic jams. Oh you cycle with headphones in? Sorry that's a $130 fine, also you ran a red, also $130, it's also the same for each reflector your missing! How were you supposed to know that? To bad! That seems excessive? Well if it helps, drivers are also hit with equally high fines, for going 30km over the speed limit. Wait, you think that going 80km/h in a school zone is more dangerous than not having reflectors? Well shows what an ignorant idiot you are!

📷STM metro with the proposed pink line.

But don't worry if all of this has stressed you out massively. Because the city will soon fix all those problems! With the Pink Line! Or the tram! The pink line is going to stretch across the island and connect all those hard to reach places into the city. I mean every other subway plan the city has implemented has wound up falling short of what gets built. which may result in just more people on an already incredibly over taxed subway system. But probably not! After all the Pink line and tram are going along almost the exact same route as two existing suburban rail routes!

📷Existing EXO train lines. Wikipedia

Hang on, you have an idea? To electrify the suburban trains and run high speed rail like is done in Melbourne or Perth or most major cities with extensive suburbs? Or to buy high speed gas trains like in the UK which are smaller faster and cheaper to run than diesel locomotives? Well that's madness! Subways! that's the way to go! What? Virtually no other city in the world builds subways into suburbs because it costs a fortune, and it would be significantly cheaper to upgrade existing suburban rail, and reorganise the bus system to go with it, so that you could run trains more often than mornings and evenings every half hour? And it's been done before? In fact most industrialised nations have done it to some degree? Because it's cheaper than building subways? And the suburban rail system already converges on central Montreal so you could just build extra stops for these trains rather than building an entirely new subway line?

No no! that wouldn't work! Because the thousand person intercity trains we use for the suburbs take to long to speed up and slow down to deal with extra stops! And we're going to build a $5 billion tram line to connect the airport to the city! Think of the possibilities!

Wait, the train already runs straight past the airport? You could upgrade exhisting transport links and connect that line to the airport for significantly less?

📷Water, surrounding Montreal. If only some sort of amphibous vehicle existed capable of transporting large numbers of people

And what about ferries? Yes most of Montreal is spitting distance from the water, and yes there is an old industrial canal that runs straight past suburbs, downtown, and the old town, and yes a significant number of Montrealers live off island, and have to drive across the multi billion dollar bridge system that is constantly under repair, adding even more cars to the daily traffic jam. I suppose a ferry linking Point Clare, Lachine, Kahnawake, Brossard, Longueil, and Montreal, combined with buses to get people to the ferry stations would make sense in a city built on an island, and would take considerable pressure off the roads, and would be immune to traffic jams, and would cost virtually nothing in infrastructure to set up.

But wait! We have a ferry! I mean it only runs in summer. And only to Longueil, which we already spent tens of billions of dollars building a subway and bridge to. Maybe what your saying makes sense.

No no. How could politicians, whose jobs revolve around publicity, miss such obvious solutions! You're the idiot in this situation, you're just a nay saying ourtsider! It makes way more sense to spend $20 billion upgrading the Turcot interchange, and $5 billion on a new subway line to Lachine, a suburb with precisley zero high rises, and one exhisting rail way line, and another $5 billion on a tram line, though areas that also already have train lines, than it does to "upgrade" "exhisting" "infrastructure"! I mean what are you some sort of commie? Thinking you can come to Montreal, and tell us that there are "easier" and "cheaper" and "faster" ways to fix our infrastructure like your some kind of expert.

Shut up! I'm done listening to your anti Montreal rant! How dare you criticise my beloved city! Here I will just pop into Berri Uqam and take the metro home!

📷Berri Uqam at Rush Hour. Montreal Gazette

Oh damn, it's rush hour, and Berri Uqam is the busiest station in the city, and the platforms are only five metres wide, damnit! A thousand people are trying to get off this train, another thousand are trying to get on! Ok almost on. Ah! Finally! Now to take the 40km/h ride home on our state of the art subway system that has remained virtually unchanged in fifty years. The nerve of some people! Daring to criticise my city! Oh! Some one killed themselves on the line again. So virtually the entire metro system is now basically shut down for the next hour.

Well I'll take the bus. Need to recharge my card. I'll just pop over and use one of the three machines we have to recharge. That's right we have a whole three. Well two, and a guy in a booth. Oh damn. There are 20 people ahead of me. No machines at the bus stops though, and I don't have coins. I heard a legend that some cities have more than one or two card recharge machines, some even have buses that accept credit cards and notes! But that's sci fi crap. No, nothing says the future like Montreal!

Ah well.