The Montréal Métro and buses are operated by the Société de Transport de la Communauté Urbaine de Montréal (STCUM). The Métro is all underground, has 4 lines, and 65 stations. It opened in 1966 but was redone for the 1976 Olympic Games. The cars are manufactured by Montréal based Bombardier and are in permanantly coupled three car sets. Trains are 6 or 9 cars long depending on the time of day and line. A cars have motors, B cars are trailers. A typical train has this setup: A-B-A-A-B-A-A-B-A. Take out the italicized cars to see a 6 car train setup. Trains have rubber wheels and are relatively quiet except for the fact I could hear the train before I saw it, something I can't do in Washington, DC or even New York City. All the Orange, Blue, and Yellow Line cars have interior signs displaying the next stop, transfers, date and time, and advertisements, current events, and other information (I saw something about the presidential election but my French isn't that good). The statins are well decorated, well lit, and for the most part, clean although I did see some vandalism.
The buses are manufactured by Nova Corporation and MCI. The Novas are low floors. The newest ones are low floor buses. The buses do not have automatic fare collection. The opening of the back doors is a pain and slows the trip down. On the older buses, on which you step up to get on, you merely step down into the stairwell and the door opens. On the newer, low floor buses, you have to wave your hand in front of the door and/or move closer to the door which is a timely procedure. The instructions to do this are in French only but I figure it out by using the cognates.
Base fare is $2.00 Canadian (about $1.29 US) and you can get bus to bus, bus to subway, and subway to bus transfers. Signs are only in French (except for emergency and evacuation instructions) because of a law Quebec passed. Despite this, a US citezen can get to where they are going because the signs in the Métro are color coded and to exit, you just have to keep going up. The bus signs are in French only but unless your bus is taking a detour, it isn't hard. Bus destination signs show only the main avenue of operation (i.e. 55 ST. LAURENT) instead of the destination (55 PLACES-DE-ARTES METRO).
| STCUM Official Web Site: http://www.stcum.qc.ca/ |
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