Waiting for Highway 40 to be paved? Be patient
QWhen approaching the Île-aux-Tourtes Bridge on westbound Highway 40, the middle and left lanes are horrendous: bumpy, patchwork all over the lanes and big dips in the road. The same goes for the eastbound Highway 40 East between Morgan St. and St-Charles Blvd. It’s a mess of patches, bumps and potholes. Seriously, what more can one say about the state of our roads? They are embarrassing.
Karen Slabotsky, Hudson
ABoth those stretches of road are targeted for repaving, Transport Quebec spokesperson Martin Girard said last week. For the Île-aux-Tourtes Bridge and farther west, you’ll have to wait until 2019 for work to begin on westbound Highway 40, from the bridge to Highway 30. In the same year, Transport Quebec also plans to repave the area east of the bridge, up to Anciens-Combattants Blvd. in Ste-Annede-Bellevue. That work will be done in asphalt.
Regular readers of Squeaky Wheels will recall the bridge itself is eventually scheduled to be replaced, but Transport Quebec is still studying the issue.
As for the area near Morgan Blvd., crews started work in the spring to do some maintenance on the roadway.
QAfter exiting Highway 40 eastbound to take Highway 13 North, one encounters a minefield of rough bumps and potholes. It seems this situation has not changed much in five years, with similar conditions all year round. The service road on the other side, transitioning from Highway 13 South to Highway 40 West, also has a lot of rough bumps. Why are these critical areas usually in this condition?
Steve Ashmore, Cornwall
AGirard said both those patches of road will be repaved this year.
QMy 14-year-old daughter takes the bus to and from school in Lachine on a daily basis and uses her student OPUS card. On a recent trip, her card ran out of individual trip tickets and she went to pay cash — $2.25 upon presenting the OPUS card as a form of student ID. The bus driver told her she had to add another dollar and pay the full $3.25 fare. She informed the driver as a student with a valid OPUS card, she is entitled to pay $2.25. She was given the ultimatum of paying the additional dollar, which she did, or to get off the bus. The bus driver told her the rules have changed.
Upon reviewing the Société de transport de Montréal’s website, the student fare is $2.25 with valid student OPUS card. We called the STM to lodge the complaint and were told the bus driver was correct, there is no longer a student fare of $2.25. When we mentioned it was on their website, we were told the website wasn’t updated. Has the STM stooped this low? It’s bad enough she has to deal with the poor bus service on the West Island. Now she is learning the STM makes its own rules. The bus was the 411 Écolier (school special) that picks the students up at her school, Collège SteAnne.
Ronald Burt, Dollard-des-Ormeaux
AAfter checking, there has been no change in the policy for students. In fact, they must load their trips on their student OPUS cards in order to benefit from the reduced fare, said IsabelleAlice Tremblay, a spokesperson for the Société de transport de Montréal.
The STM does make an exception for students between 6 and 11 years old who don’t need to show their OPUS cards to get on the bus at a reduced fare.