Buses don’t have snow tires, but can still have traction
STM maintenance workers carve out their own solution, writes Jason Magder.
After the most recent snowstorm saw hundreds of buses stuck in the snow, it got me wondering: do Société de transport de Montréal buses have snow tires, or any other form of traction aids available, like chains, that can help them navigate the streets, especially the hilly terrain in parts of the city, during a snowstorm? Kevin, Pierrefonds
This question was asked last year, but considering all the reports about buses stuck in the snow during the snowstorm this past week, it’s worth revisiting the answer. In fact, there is no such thing as winter tires for buses.
However, STM maintenance crews rebuild the tires for the buses in the fleet by adding new rubber onto the old tires, and carving out the treads. Since there are no winter tires for buses, the maintenance crews create tires with ridges that will grip better in the winter. The traction tires are installed on all the buses starting in mid-November, said STM spokesperson Amélie Régis.
Because the STM rebuilds its own tires, the agency rarely buys new ones, spokesperson Philippe Déry said in the 2014 version of this question. New tires will only be purchased when a tire blows out, he said.
Because the STM rebuilds its own tires, the agency rarely buys new ones.
I have been to Paris recently, and came across an innovative elevator design/installation in one of the Paris métro stations. (Where elevators descend in a diagonal fashion, in line with staircases). The STM seems to be on track to pursue costly excavating to install elevators in its métro stations; perhaps this design would provide would be an alternative solution. I would be surprised if this design is not known to the STM. Fred Girvan, Westmount
The elevator you describe is called a funicular-style elevator, said STM spokesperson Amélie Régis. She said the agency is well aware of the existence of such elevators and could eventually use them, but only in new stations, not to retrofit old ones. She said the space in the existing métro stations would not allow for such elevators to be built. Because the existing métro stations have staircases and escalators, replacing a staircase with an elevator would seriously hamper the evacuation of a station during an emergency, Régis said.
The STM is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit its existing stations with elevators. In some cases, like the Snowdon station, that work has required adding on to part of the station.
Because the stations were not built with elevators in mind, adding them after the fact has been challenging work. In some cases it takes more than a year to outfit a station with an elevator. The STM currently has 12 accessible stations, and plans to have 31 outfitted with elevators by the year 2022. That’s thanks in part to an injection of $213 million in infrastructure money from the federal government, and a revised accessibility plan presented by the STM in March.