STM, AMT need to speed up access, group says
The métro’s 50-year anniversary has been a point of pride for many Montrealers, but Linda Gauthier said the system’s heritage is that it has discriminated against people with reduced mobility since Day 1.
The city’s subway is one of the world’s worst for accessibility, she says.
“In Stockholm, for example, the network is about as old as ours, but all of its stations have elevators,” said Gauthier, co-founder of Regroupement des activistes pour l’inclusion au Québec (RAPLIQ). “Boston, Chicago and London are also very good. When they built the métro in Montreal, elevators existed at that point. It should have been done back then.”
The Société de transport de Montréal has a fleet of 86 adapted minibuses and 1,500 adapted minivans, run by taxi companies that subcontract the service to the STM.
They make about 9,000 trips per day at a cost of $69.8 million of the agency’s $1.4-billion budget. The adapted trips are financed at 56 per cent by the province, 37 per cent by the STM and seven per cent from fares, usually charged at $2.70 per passenger, according to figures provided by the STM. (Trips off the island cost extra.)
All the STM’s regular buses are accessible to wheelchairs and 88 per cent of the stops allow wheelchairs to board. However, the system is overburdened, and inconvenient for most passengers, Gauthier said.
“When I came back to Montreal (after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the 1990s), I didn’t have a car, so I had to take adapted transit,” Gauthier recalled. “I realized we were second-class citizens. We were paying the same amount, but not being treated the same way.”
It took until 2007 for the first elevators to be installed in métro stations, when the three newest ones opened in Laval. A decade later, there are a paltry 11 stations out of 68 that are universally accessible. By contrast, Toronto has about half of its 69 subway stations equipped with elevators, and has a goal to make its entire network accessible by 2025.
The STM announced this week that it is planning to install 23 new elevators across the métro system by 2025, in addition to nine that are already either planned or under construction. That would bring the total of stations equipped with elevators to 41 by 2025, plus additional elevators at Jean-Talon and Berri-UQAM stations.
“It’s good news, but only if (the STM) follows through with it,” Gauthier said on Tuesday in response to the STM’s announcement. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
The AMT’s newest train line, to Mascouche, has all but three of its stations fully accessible. (The Sauvé station is in the process of being made accessible.) That represents some progress, Gauthier said. But the AMT has a lot of catching up to do. Aside from Central Station and Roxboro-Pierrefonds, no stations on its other lines are accessible — including the downtown LucienL’Allier station, the end point for three lines.
In fact, Gauthier said, the AMT seems to be going backward with its most recent station, a so-called temporary stop in Lachine on the Candiac line. The du Canal station, built to alleviate congestion on the road network caused by the Turcot Interchange reconstruction, will be used for at least a decade. There are about 100 stairs to access the platform, and no plan to build an elevator.
The AMT has also stalled plans to complete the accessibility of the Bonaventure métro station, where an elevator takes passengers from the platform to the turnstiles but no elevators link to street level. Since it would pass through the bus terminal the agency runs, the AMT has been in charge of building an elevator to street level. The first elevator was built in 2010, and the AMT has promised to start construction on an elevator to street level this year, but Gauthier said the agency has made that promise many times before.
Gauthier said RAPLIQ is not only working for people in wheelchairs. There are thousands more with breathing problems who can’t walk up and down the many stairs in métro stations. Parents with strollers, people with canes and even professionals carrying heavy briefcases would benefit from a fully accessible network.
STM spokesperson Isabelle Tremblay said the agency is in the process of rolling out a program to monitor its adapted-transit fleet in real time using GPS trackers, which will allow the service to become more efficient. Passengers will also get a text, email or phone call when their rides arrive.