Tranzit

No need to spend a fortune. If your goal is simply collecting for its own sake, there's no reason why you would need to actually ride every bus, tram, or train yourself. Why not use this forum to arrange swaps, ask your non-collecting friends and relatives to save whatever they have for you, or keep your eyes on station platforms, etc., for whatever has been tossed away. Do you have contacts within the STM itself? Ask if they can help. In fact, years ago I had once mentioned my collecting interest to someone and to my surprise he later gave me a large stack of transfers which a friendly bus driver had handed over to him--including those of routes I had never bothered to ride on my own. These were the old MTC hand-punched types which were later phased out in the late '60s early '70s. Indeed, I'd even found a couple on the floor of one of the trams stored in the sheds at Delson's CRHA Museum, back in the days when visitors were permitted to climb aboard these relics! I see no reason why a bus driver today wouldn't give a collector his plastic bag full, or at least let you sort through it for whatever you need--unless he or she has strict orders not to. Is there a rule regarding this? Ha...this reminds me of the time when we kids would go around asking restaurants for their bottle caps! Jeezuz...we ended up with tons of different kinds, most of which are probably quite rare today! If I still had 'em, I could probably ask a pretty penny!

Latest OPUS Smart Card news: Today an STM assistant at Viau Metro told me that OPUS card holders can already load their cards for up to three months worth of fares--in other words, you can load your usual monthly CAM pass into it, for one, two, or three months! As expected, however, there will be no discount offered as an incentive.

CAM = Reliable. Magnetic card = SCAM I choose CAM over SCAM! Heh, heh...so who's the luddite in this forum, eh?

Not sure how "problematic" these alleged "soil problems" truly are, but I take them with a grain of salt, since there are subways elsewhere with variable sub-surfaces: volcanic, sandy, clay, etc. Don't worry: there is always a possible work-around if the engineers put their minds to it. I can't imagine cut-and-cover being utilized, really, because tunnelling has definitely improved in recent years. A quick check of Swiss mountain rail and highway projects, for example, boggle the mind. That being said, I can already hear the howls of protest by west-enders in NDG, VSP, and Lachine should such excuses persist and the powers-that-be decide willy-nilly to run a new tunnel into Nuns' Island or some other "more deserving" place beforehand! If west-enders really want their Metro, they'll damn well get it--someday!

A "thief" indeed! Surely you jest? As if: 1) I (or any other passenger for that matter) am to blame for malfunctioning equipment? As if: 2) The drivers are upset? In fact, they seem to be taking it all in stride very well. After all: it's not their fault. As if: 3) I (or any other passenger) could possibly know in advance which validators on which busses are problematic. As if: 4) The STM wasn't fully prepared for some equipment breakdowns in this learning period--hence the step-by-step implementation. As if: 5) Everyone in this forum hasn't been made aware of these potential glitches months ago? And what about all of the passengers who have already been double-ticketed--many of whom never realized it? So who is the thief?

Perfect drizzly day to kill scouting out the system. Few people about, so busses were mostly empty. The new bus farebox-validators were malfunctioning left and right today. The first one refused to pull my ticket all the way into the slot. Tried it three times, leaving a nasty smudge on the ticket so the driver waved me aboard. Later got on an eastbound 15 at Bleury at 14:15, taking it to Berri Metro; went through the turnstile and boarded the Yellow Line to J-Drapeau Metro. From there, I got on the Casino-bound 167 by mistake, but remained on board and returned to the 167 La Ronde-bound bus. Saw some 167X busses parked there, too. Still relatively few people, except for the casino-bound suckers. Okay, so the validator of this La Ronde-bound 167 didn't light up either green or red--just yellow! What the hell? Driver waves me aboard. Arrive La Ronde and walk straight through the drizzle to the 169. Got on board and farebox lights up green, accepting my ticket!--all still well within the 2-hour grace period, of course, and back across the JCB, putting to rest the erroneous notion that you can't rebound back across the river on a single ticket/transfer from here. Try it, you'll like it! Wait--I'm not through yet! Arrived Papineau Metro and with the same ticket/transfer, boarded the 15 again, rebounding back to Cabot Square where I then boarded HEV 28-703 on route 90 with its malfunctioning validator (waved aboard again!) and continued on to Vendome Metro, etc. Hmmm...I wonder how many tourists have been enjoying their free rides these days, what with all the screwy validators! Spread the word: tourists welcome aboard!

Boarded 28-703 at Cabot Square Terminus on route 90. Farebox slot for ticket/transfer cards wasn't working. Driver waved me through and anyone else with one. Saw 28-702 at Vendome Metro on route 105 westbound.

Thanks for giving me the idea whereby I could overlay a photo ID on the back of my OPUS card and flash it before the driver. Needless to say, if I get caught, I'll simply mention you as the source.

They showed it to the driver. That's what I would have done if I was in your place. Yes, of course, I did think of just showing the ticket/transfer to the driver, but I obviously erroneously assumed that the validator would have taken into consideration the fact that I was on the same route going in the same direction within the 2-hour grace-period. Clearly I was wrong to assume that, but does this mean this particular "same-route transfering" will be standard procedure or will this "glitch" be dealt with in future by programming the validators to recognize it and not double-charge you? More ammunition in my favour regarding only considering the grace-period and nothing else. Remember: we are all still "guinea pigs" here, as clearly are many within the STM staff--drivers included. This would be a good idea, except most people would just throw them on the floor, creating more litter, and it would defeat the one of the purposes of having a smart card which is the saving of paper aspect. Excellent point: except remember that down there, Fare Inspectors ask you for those receipts, so most passenges hold onto them I'd say depending on both. Since the card is to be introduced gradually across the island, I would expect that those boarding in areas not yet adorned with active equipment, will still receive the red arrow cards, and if the bus is equipped and running in a section of town where the implementation is underway, they might receive the giant ID badge transfer. Not to mention the fact that if your bus driver hands you the new ticket/transfer card and then you enter a Metro station where their turnstiles are not yet plugged in to receive them, I assume you then simply show your ticket to the changeur. Tristan, is there some way I can "jump the line" and load my OPUS card with a month's worth of fares and not only with "6-jetons"? I've been told that this will only be possible in November, but if it's only a matter of programming the vending machines to do this, I can only assume that you as an STM employee already have this option somewhere else? Am I right?

Regarding paper transfers, tickets, and passes: I, too, have managed to accumulate quite a number of them--starting all the way back from the tram and trolley-bus era, (the old route 1 Amherst!) and even including some of the different coloured paper ones of routes within the old Montreal Transportation Commission's long-defunct "zone system". Needless to say, my foreign travel is always an opportunity to collect, although it would be redundant and expensive to try to collect everything--even if that were possible. Not surprisingly, in foreign book flea markets, I've stumbled upon binder after binder of tickets and old passes commorating one local event or another! Just as with collecting stamps, there has to be a limit, however, so I can't imagine myself (or anyone else for that matter) losing sleep in order to accumulate night bus transfers. The most reasonable way is to have a general sampling of what's out there. Try to find the excellent article called "75 Years Of Montreal Transfers 1892-1967" by Jacques Pharand, Eng., which is probably available in some Montreal archives. It shows many samples, of course. When In Melbourne, I made it a point to ride every tram line from end to end--many even more than once in the circumstance where different routes partially shared the same trackage. That way, I managed to see the city pretty comprehensively and inexpensively (with a multi-month pass) while avoiding having to rent a car in a strange city, not to mention parking and driving on the left side of the road! Everyone knows you can't really see anything properly when you're doing the driving anyway! I also rode most of their commuter rail lines end to end and several bus routes too, of course, but it would have taken me many more months to do it all--had I been inclined to do so. This is where the real value of monthly passes comes into play. As far as selling your stuff on eBay: don't expect to get rich, as I'm sure many other people have the same idea--just as they did with their stamps, coins, comic books, trading cards, milk bottle tops, telephone cards, and so on.

Are you a "fanatic" ticket and transfer collector? Have you ever entertained the notion of riding every single bus route within the STM--even if just for the sake of knowing you actually did it? And does all of this even matter? Well, maybe not, and call me facetious for suggesting it, but for all those obsessives out there, here's a new twist for transit fandom that came to mind yesterday. Since our old STM tickets and transfers will soon be history, a new and different way that collectors will be able to keep a record of their fanning, gunzelling, marathoning, or whatever you want to call it, will be to simply maintain a collection of all of your trips as printed by the validators on the back all of the new 6-ticket/transfers. There are several different ways this could be done, of course. The neatest, most organized way would be to start off with bus routes 10 through 15, taking care to keep your cards clean, unbent, and away from magnets, liquids, and other nasty stuff until all of the validator-printed data is complete and accurate. Then, if you do plan to ride every route in sequence, the next card would contain routes 16, 17, 18, 22, 24, and 25 (since, for the benefit of those out-of-towners, unfortunately for completists, routes 19, 20, 21, and 23 have either been discontinued years ago, or have yet to be initiated. Same as for routes 1 through 9). Remember, too, that busses you have transferred to are not actually printed on the ticket, so you will be obliged to wait 2 hours before you can validate your ticket on board the next bus route in your plan. Obviously, to collect a complete set could present a daunting task indeed when you consider the potential inconvenient inaccessibility of distant routes, rush-hour-only routes, Metro-Busses, routes like 51X, 165X, (although you may choose to omit those), future route additions, specific-season-only routes like the 169, and other oddball possibilities which could slow you down in your endeavour. Unless your goal is to make the Guiness Book of Records or the like, the easiest and most laid-back way to reach your goal of every route ridden and printed in numerical order would be to keep cards specifically for that purpose, and use them only whenever you happen to be in the neighbourhoods of the routes you need next. Sure, it may take you months or even years this way, but it could definitely be done. Alternatively, real die-hard, "number freaks" might want to ride as many routes in sequence within a single day-- which is certainly possible depending on how geographically convenient the desired routes would be--and even purchase a monthly CAM to use for riding other, non-sequential routes in order to arrive at the next sequential bus route number on your list, or even have a willing (equally "weird" ) pal drive you in his car from route to route. (see, I thought of everything!) Thus, say, if you start off by boarding route 10 outside Papineau Metro then ride it north to as far as you wish, and optionally transfer to route 45 Papineau southbound (which, needless to say, won't actually register on your ticket's printout), and ride back near to route 11 where (making sure your 2 hours have expired!), board it, validate your ticket, and then later move on to routes 12, 13, 14, and 15 at which point you will then have filled your first card--the first of many such cards, depending, naturally, on how determined you are to achieve your ultimate goal. Then again, you might prefer to ride and validate routes in a given area regardless of any specific numbering sequence. This would obviously be a lot less demanding but more difficult to keep track of when you look at your cards and tally up your score. And what if you want to go even deeper than this? You may choose to organize your rides by date or even by time as well, thus the real "Champion Route Collector" could, say, have his printed card showing route 10 on January 1, on the first shift of the day, and then route 11 on January 2, etc., etc.,--use your imagination. I suppose a sense of paranoia could set in whereby the fear of a screwy validator messing up your ticket in some way could spoil your sequence, requiring a re-start. Who knows, maybe the STM will get wind of this and offer an OPUS card loaded with a full year's worth of fares for the first one who manages to pull this off!

So, yup, the fellows in the Metro Blue Box refunded me the ticket I was docked by that double-dipping experience from the day before on the 185. I went through the bother not so much for the refund itself, but more to learn how they would handle such an issue. Without argument, they gave me three single-fare ticket cards in place of my original which they kept for reference purposes. I can only assume that an adjustment will be made to bus validators whereby busses with the same route number will recognize the two-hour transfer grace-period under circumstances where passengers are asked to disembark and re-board another bus of that same route in the event of mechanical breakdowns or drivers taking their bus out-of-service. For those who came late into this thread, I re-iterate: pay attention to what the validator prints on your ticket/transfer, making sure you are not incorrectly docked a fare. Passengers using OPUS Smart Cards will have no alternative but to go to their nearest available Metro vending machine and read how many "tokens" are left, making sure they tally with what you are certain is your correct balance. Otherwise you may find you have payed twice for one trip and be caught thinking you have more remaining fares than you actually do. This is the glaring downside to such "paperless travel". Now I understand why Auckland drivers handed passengers a receipt no matter how they paid: cash, ticket, or Smart Card. Indeed, I suppose a court case could be made (and doubtless has!) that--as has been universally accepted going back centuries--all transactions require a receipt of some kind as proof of payment. Now, regarding the STM's ticket rules and restrictions, to my surprise I learned that attempting to make a so-called "allez-retour" on the same bus route is definitely possible, as yesterday I took route 32 north to Leger, got tired waiting for any westbound bus to transfer to, and instead got back on the 32 southbound, where its validator accepted my ticket! I can only assume such "rebounding" will be possible on all other routes as well. And why not? I've been saying all along that it will be a lot less complicated to allow such freedom of movement. Exactly what other kinds of restrictions will occur--if any--will be interesting to find out going forward, so please post them here when and if they occur. By the way, I also learned what happens when you slide an expired ticket into the bus validator: a loud siren goes off and a built-in taser zaps you into convulsions! No, seriously, the lights flash red and a sort of "blurp" sounds instead of the friendly "bleep". Depending on the bus or perhaps the route, passengers who pay their fares with coins may either be handed the standard transfer we are all used to, or the new red and blue ticket/transfer card instead.

Hasn't some country in the world (perhaps one of those welfare-state ones like Sweden or Denmark) come up with a wheelchair-attachable device which would enable them to lock onto escalators and thus be moved up and down--just as in some European airports like Hanover where passengers can actually push their luggage carriages onto them. The only negative I could see with this method would be the obvious potential problem of taking up too much width on the escalator, thus blocking others from getting by--especially during an emergency. In any event, such a device would eliminate the necessity of retro-fitting elevators in many cases. Hmmm...perhaps I should invent the thing and make a million bucks!

I have no idea what can and cannot be done regarding rolling stock, line switching, etc. Surely there must be total flexibility when it comes to such things. Perhaps it is only more time-consuming to accomplish than the crews wish to handle and nothing more than that--sort of like emptying your entire garage in order to find that spare tire you buried under piles of junk. Bottom line: get the info from someone who works down in the trenches underground.

I can only assume the city's engineers have determined something seriously wrong with the station--something which has been kept quiet until now. Could be potentially dangerous water leakage, cracking, poor quality concrete--whatever--similar to what happened with that underpass north of The Bay downtown.

Not necessary to prove anything, as I'm quite aware that there have been many Metro Line proposals going back decades; most of which were likely deliberate "trial balloons" published only to generate a reaction--positive or negative. Anyway, name me a single major proposed project for Montreal which hasn't run the usual gauntlet of pressure groups and political posturing. It's wonder we ever got anything major completed here in Montreal, but we can thank Drapeau for most of it (the "Big O" excepted, of course). Glad you like maps and charts, though, as I do. Ha...during the crazy years and months leading up to the excavation of the Decarie Depressway (and it's proposed, completely-underground plans of which only the puny "Sherbrooke Tunnel" exists today) there was one wild and crazy "proposed plan" in the newspaper showing an alternate route suggesting the entire demolition of all the buildings down Coolbrooke or McLynn/Earnscliffe instead, after Decarie Blvd. residents complained that they didn't want all the noise and air pollution replacing the existing, and comparatively quiet, double-roadway with the streetcar right-of-way down the centre. Can't say I blame them in the least, considering what a blight to the neighbourhood that damn trench has become! What a huge difference it would have been if it had been built according to its original plan with a tree-lined, green space over the top with bike paths, etc. Boston finally built something like it, but hey, they got more cash to spend!

No, it's true. It was back in April, although I didn't think to mention it here. I suppose this can be confirmed by contacting those responsible for line scheduling, or whatever they call it. Glad I spotted something "unique"--if it qualifies as such.

Ummm...I've seen MR-63s on the Blue Line as well. Does that merit a mention, seeing as I believe no one else has?

Close, but this is a deliberately vague and misleading blueprint, made by a draftsman who mingled facts with imagination--although I don't criticize you in the least for posting it. If you zoom in on that circle and transpose it over a detailed street map, you will clearly see that it rests over where the existing Blue Line fire escape is located on the median adjacent to the corner of Dufferin and Queen Mary Rd. In fact, I have a friend who lives on Finchley Rd. who watched the workmen build the thing and who asked them what it was for. Even given the fact that the tunnel beneath is where extra Metro trains are shunted and wait to be rolled into service, the property directly above is all private, certainly expensive housing whose owners would hardly sell, in which case it would be so easy to move such a proposed station to where I always predicted it might be, namely the Somerled, Clanranald, Cote St. Luc general area, and all within Montreal's city limits. Surely the bigwig snobs of Hampstead could never have seriously believed that Montreal would ever force an expropriation order to demolish buildings within their territory when Montreal could simply move it a short distance south--the exact spot which I will leave entirely for speculation at this point. Continuing further west, the logical and ideal next Blue Line station would be in Benny Park (requiring no building demolition), and, of course, the shabby-looking, Elmhurst Depot block which the city surely owns and is wisely retaining for its future Metro/Train station to be built sometime before the end of this century. Who knows: with luck, your grand-children may yet use those stations some day.

According to Marc Dufour (a sure source), Hampstead blocked the extension by expressing its disapproval of having a metro station. This is nothing more than a red herring. No one can block a Metro line from going underneath "their" territory, thus denying other neighbourhoods from accessing public transit. Can you imagine the uproar should such a precedent ever be permitted by the courts? Not even during the Cold War did the GDR (the authorities ruling East Berlin) attempt to prevent West Berlin's U-Bahn trains from gliding through the "ghost stations" which the GDR had bricked up at street level.

Major Glitch Alert! When using the new bus validators, pay attention to what's printed on your ticket. After boarding the 185 today at its eastern terminus, and using my 6-ticket/transfer card, no sooner did we arrive at Honoré-Beaugrand Metro than the driver told everyone to disembark and board the bus coming up behind us. Okay, fine, so I slid my ticket into this second 185's validator and what happens? You guessed it: it docked another fare from it! Incorrectly, I automatically assumed that my 2-hour transfer time from the first 185 would be calculated into my trip, right? Wrong! Evidently, the moment you re-board another bus on the same route, you will have another fare deducted! The only way to avoid this is not to validate your ticket on that second bus, which would require every passenger to tell the second bus's driver that they had been told to switch to the second by the first bus's driver and not to bother re-validating--something which could potentially be misunderstood and even innocently ignored by many. This is not cool, to say the least! Indeed, I wonder how many passengers have even noticed (or bothered to look!) if they have been unfairly paying twice for their trips under such circumstances? As if this isn't bad enough, I can only assume that the OPUS "Smart" Card (haha!) does exactly the same thing, only in that case you would not even know you have been "double-billed" since obviously you cannot see any readout unless and until you check your OPUS card at a vending/verification terminal and only then realize you have fewer "tokens" left on it than you thought! Needless, to say, I am going to bring this major gaffe to the attention of the ladies and gentlemen in the Blue Box tomorrow, since I had no time to do so today. Otherwise, today was a very enlightening day regarding the new bus validators themselves. Riding on route 33 southbound and nearing the southern terminus on Haig, my bus pulls up and stops suddenly behind an STM inspector/maintenance car. The only other passenger--an elderly gentleman--gets off and climbs aboard another 33 leap-frogging around us, but, not being in any rush, I remain on board and even move right up to the front seat to watch what happens next--which is that the maintenance guy opens up the validator with his key and checks for problems which the English driver tells me have frequently been occuring. The friendly driver complains to me about all the new technology making his job more complicated, while I watch closely as the maintenance guy fumbles around inside the box with all of its wiring and PC boards, etc. The driver tells me that pressing the green and the C buttons doesn't always release a "stuck" ticket (which I already found out the day before!). Anyway, as I gaze inside the validator, the guy removes a little metal box which holds the tickets (over a thousand I was informed), which pop up for passengers to take whenever they pay by cash. Not sure if this happens on every bus yet, but that is what will be the norm soon enough. If you look halfway down the front of the bus validator box, you can even see the edge of the stack of tickets through the little vertical window. On the side of that internal metal ticket box was a label notification: "...007 THK" and "010 THK", referring I presume to the millimeter thickness of the card stock options used for the tickets themselves. The first, "007 THK" had a check mark next to it, signifying what was being used on that bus. I asked several questions, naturally, such as: can you tell by the ticket itself what Metro station turnstile/validator printed the time on it, since the bus validators do print the route number as well as the time. The answer was "no", oddly enough. They also didn't know where the validator was manufactured, but logically it would be in the U.S. Anyway, the maintenance guy wrapped up his work and we were soon on our way again. I'll be keeping my eyes open for any further developments--and revelations.

A Metro station in Hampstead was never on any future project map that I've ever seen. The nearest one west of Snowdon would likely be somewhere near Somerled and Cote St. Luc Road, and the next one on the southwest corner of Benny Park (Cavendish and Monkland), followed by Montreal West on the reserved empty lot next to the Elmhurst bus terminus, conveniently north of the train station. Hampstead can vanish into thin air as far as I'm concerned.

Having seen the heavy traffic volume using route 141 from St. Michel Metro east to Galleries d'Anjou (where there is currently one of those mobile carnivals in progress, by the way), an extension of the Metro Blue Line to this area is definitely needed. Both this part of town and the long-promised western extension into Lachine ought to be on the next priority list. No more excuses.

All of which hasn't changed--and never will, unfortunately. Exactly. Why take a chance with that problematic magnetic strip? I'm sure lots of schoolkids are having their cards swallowed up, since they would tend to play around with them in transit without realizing how fragile they are. Furthermore, I can imagine kids having their cards grabbed by bullies who will run a magnet over it. I guess the STM didn't want to spend more money by making the 6-token cards sturdier like the CAM cards. They may yet be forced to, it seems.

11-003 on the 161 eastbound today around 16:30.