The Mini-Villages of Montreal’s Metro

[IluvMTL]

https://medium.com/@transitapp/the-mini-villages-of-montreal-s-metro-6900e158b2a

 

 

The metro is the backbone of Montreal. Besides New York City and Mexico City, Montreal’s annual ridership is higher than every other subway system in North America.

It’s a feel-good story if you’re from Montreal. But there are lots of big cities in North America. Why has the STM — Montreal’s transit authority — been so successful in getting us to ride the metro?

One big reason: Montreal’s metro stations are incredibly well-integrated within the city’s densest neighbourhoods.

 

 

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Would you take the metro if it took you an hour to get there? Probably not.

That’s why when urban planners design transit systems, they try to optimize transit station walksheds: the area around a transit station accessible by foot.

Just because your grandpa walked seven miles to school (uphill both ways) doesn’t mean you should. Having a metro station within walking distance makes it more likely that you’ll actually use public transit, and not have to rely on a car.

 

 

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This visualization shows the population that lives within walking distance of each Montreal rail station:

 

Montreal rail station walksheds’ population within 800m of stations. The sizes of the circles and the numbers inside them correspond to the population in 1,000 people (24 = 24,000). How does your station compare?

In other words, if you were to shout really loudly outside most metro stations, there are lots of people who will hear you.

There are thousands — and often tens of thousands — of people living within 800 metres of Montreal’s rail stations. And this is in a city with almost no skyscrapers!

To create this graphic, we found the number of people in Montreal who live within 800 metres of the nearest rail station, which represents a 10 minute walk for a fully-grown human with average-sized legs.

The Côte-Sainte-Catherine station has the most people living in its walkshed (about 28,000 people), followed by the Mont-Royal and Guy-Concordia stations (about 26,000 each).

 

 

Mont Royal metro on the left (26,000 people), Montmorency on the right (6,000 people). Where would you rather live?

 

Funnily enough, the metro station with the most foot traffic (Berri-UQAM) actually has less people living around it than the areas around the adjacent Beaudry, St. Laurent, and Sherbrooke stations. This is because many people going through Berri-UQAM don’t actually live there — they’re just stopping to transfer between the Orange, Green, and Yellow lines.

 

Tweet at us!On the whole though, areas around metro stations are much more densethan the rest of Montreal: the population density within metro walksheds is more than 10,000 people/km², while population density outside of them is a mere 3,700 people/km².

By giving Montrealers cheap, rapid, and reliable access to the rest of the city, metro stations encourage people to live nearby. But when people can’t live near stations (due to zoning or other reasons) you don’t see as much development, and neighbourhoods become much more car-reliant and “suburbified”.

Consider Montreal’s AMT stations, which generally don’t have as many people living nearby as metro stations. AMT stations are often next to highways and surrounded by a sea of parking, while others are smack-dab in the middle of nowhere.

 

The lack of dense housing nearby is one reason that the ridership numbers for the AMT (80,000 daily trips) pale in comparison to the mammoth numbers of the STM Metro (1,250,000 daily trips). When people live further away from stations, they have to rely on feeder buses or park-and-ride’s. To avoid that inconvenience, many people simply choose to use cars instead of taking public transit.

 

 

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Altogether, we’re proud that Montreal’s car cravings are comparatively light. When stacked up against similarly-sized North American cities, our public transit mode share is very high. Take a look:

 

Originally posted by transit planner extraordinaire Jarret Walker on humantransit.orgLargely because of our city’s metro, over 20% of Montrealers take public transit to work, which is more than double the share in the metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Washington DC, and Seattle.

Still, we can do better.

In the STM’s Strategic Plan for 2020, one of the primary goals is to reduce the share of car trips from 48% of total trips down to 41%.

To make up the difference, they hope to encourage more Montrealers to take public transit.

There are many ways to acccomplish this goal: congestion pricing or better parking policies to discourage driving, increased service to boost transit’s convenience, and real-time customer information (iBUS anyone?). In particular, our walkshed graph shows that denser development should be an important part of the STM’s toolkit — notwithstanding the usual political hurdles.

 

 

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Our team at Transit App is also doing its part to make public transit more convenient in Montreal, and in many other cities around the world.

From our Mile End office, our team is giving millions of people the flexibility and reliability of a car — without the burdens of actually owning one.

Find out how we can help make your transit experience better:

You can download Transit App for free on

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Modifié 20 mars 2015 par IluvMTL

[steve_36]

The metro is the backbone of Montreal. Besides New York City and Mexico City, Montreal’s annual ridership is higher than every other subway system in North America.

 

It’s a feel-good story if you’re from Montreal. But there are lots of big cities in North America. Why has the STM — Montreal’s transit authority — been so successful in getting us to ride the metro?

 

One big reason: Montreal’s metro stations are incredibly well-integrated within the city’s densest neighbourhoods.

 

I love reading that. I like the fact that Montréal is just behind New York and Mexico for the highest annual ridership. And I think it is a very good reason to keep work on improving and expanding the metro system. It gives Montréal an amazing good image on the world stage.

[andre md]

Quand je vois la densité des stations a l'est sur la ligne bleu 21000 ,22000, 25000, ca justifie amplement de prolonger la ligne bleue vers l'est. Poeti devrait consulter ce site.

[ToxiK]

Quand je vois la densité des stations a l'est sur la ligne bleu 21000 ,22000, 25000, ca justifie amplement de prolonger la ligne bleue vers l'est. Poeti devrait consulter ce site.

 

J'ai noté la même chose. J'ai été surpris de voir la densité autour des stations de la ligne Bleue à l'est de Jean-Talon. Ça descend probablement un peu rendu à St-Léonard, mais quand même.

[andre md]

Ca descend peut etre pas tant que cela beaucoup de nouveau arrivant s'installe dans ce coin. Un peu comme ce qui est arrivé avec Cote des neiges. C'est un nouveau pole d'attraction pour eux.

J'ai noté la même chose. J'ai été surpris de voir la densité autour des stations de la ligne Bleue à l'est de Jean-Talon. Ça descend probablement un peu rendu à St-Léonard, mais quand même.

[Né entre les rapides]

A mon "humble" avis, la densité de population est une considération importante, mais non absolue, pour déterminer la pertinence du prolongement d'une ligne de métro pour desservir un secteur géographique. L'ampleur de la demande de déplacement des personnes, ainsi que l'impact de la présence d'une future station de métro à proximité par rapport à la situationex ante, devraient être plus déterminantes.

 

Pour mieux apprécier la réalité, je suggère de consulter deux sources d'informations: 1) Les études d'origines-destinations; et 2) les statistiques afférentes à la fréquentation des stations de métro. Concernant ces dernières, vous "découvrirez" sans doute que certaines stations pourtant situées en milieux densément peuplés sont relativement peu fréquentées. Cela ne devrait pas être un mystère, quand on tient compte justement des besoins de déplacements. Ainsi, pour parler de façon générale, je soumettrai les cas oû la majorité des déplacements se font sur une courte distance (résidence-travail ou résidence-lieu d'enseignement), et ceux concernant les segments de la population se déplaçant peu, par exemple les retraités.

 

Puisqu'il est ici spécifiquement question du prolongement de la ligne bleue est, il importe de s'attarder aux actuels modes de déplacements des résidents de la zone concernée.

 

Par ailleurs, pour faire écho aux arguments selon lesquels l'extension de ladite ligne favoriserait la création d'emplois dans la zone (en la rendant plus accessible, donc plus "attrayante" aux personnes venant des diverses autres zones déjà desservies par le métro), je suggère de jeter un coup d'oeil à l'état des lieux déjà desservis, hors du centre-ville. Vous observerez des disparités majeures parmi ceux-ci, ce qui laisse à penser (et bien davantage) que d'autres facteurs (de croissance ou de stagnation) sont présents.