Comments on: Explore Two Montreal Transit Maps, 70 Years Apart

By: Peter Laws

Peter Laws — Wed, 15 May 2013 02:03:17 +0000

Oh, another thing. The autoroute building came along long after the automobile had taken over. Look at the 47/48/49 aerials to see that it started with improvements to the existing highways (Hwy 2 being twinned even then along the Lakeshore, brand new traffic circles at either end of Cote de Liesse, Hwy … whatever became 117 north from the Decarie circle) not to mention urban boulevards being created from existing streets – Dorchester, Jean Talon, etc.

By: Peter Laws

Peter Laws — Wed, 15 May 2013 01:44:55 +0000

I’m not sure you can even call the ’41 map a projection – it seems distorted in other ways (paper copy in BRS’ Grumley #3) though not as bad as some previous ones.

As much as I love street railways, the “permanence” claim drives me nuts! They are no more permanent than buses as evidenced by the disappearance of several hundred km of routes between about 1935 and 1959! They have certain advantages, but permanence is not one of them!

That said, the permanence of *routes* is apparent from the mashup. Hell, the STM still uses the same numbers for a bunch of routes that have been there since they started numbering c.1923. 80, 17, 11, 55, 58 car lines all still have buses with the same number over at least part of their routes.

About the OPUS data – what percentage of customers still put cash in the farebox? I’ll guess that there are certain groups that are more prone to do this (elderly?) and numbers might get skewed on routes that those groups frequent …

By: ant6n

ant6n — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:48:19 +0000

@James
The slider effect can be slick, but I’m a bit concerned it may make the the tool more cumbersome to use, because of the more mouse actions that would be require to switch. Right now it’s just click to go back and forth, which I kinda like. Alex (Dergachev) also told me about the slider 😉

By: James McKinney

James McKinney — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:35:36 +0000

Besides opacity, you can try the before/after slider like on http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/11/02/164194937/interactive-slide-to-see-before-and-after-sandy which uses http://www.catchmyfame.com/2009/06/25/jquery-beforeafter-plugin/

By: ant6n

ant6n — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 02:23:40 +0000

@Joseph At some open data hackathon last year, the stm published some opus card data, covering 4 weeks in 2011. I couldn't find the source of the data again, but I have a copy of it (I'd feel uncomfortable giving it out though). I created a summary of the weekday data on a google spread sheet here. This is just off opus card tap ins, so take that the data with a grain of salt.

By: Joseph Alacchi

Joseph Alacchi — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 01:50:21 +0000

Hey, great post! Where’d you get the 2011 ridership data from?

By: ant6n

ant6n — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:15:03 +0000

I meant the statement as in contrast to the modern perception that ascribes permanency to heavier rail infrastructure compared to, for example, buses (i.e. read the next sentence).

By: Justin

Justin — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 23:59:26 +0000

Nicely done indeed â€“Â fun to compare and a useful research tool as well. I wonder what you're thinking of in particular when you say "Note how bus/tram-lines survived, whereas heavier rail didnâ€t." The losses of rail lines can be categorized as follows: â€“ tram lines on private rights of way: these should never have been abandoned; they were too narrow (and unpaved) to run buses on, so the bus lines were downgraded to running in mixed traffic. The most important ones (Millen, DÃ©carie) were finally replaced by metro lines. Lachine without fast trams (or local trains) suffered a multi-decade downturn. The loss of the Montreal & Southern Counties line on the Victoria Bridge led to the refocusing of South Shore development toward Longueuil (metro) and Brossard (Champlain Bridge), freezing Saint-Hubert in mid-development and maintaining the small-town status of Chambly. â€“ mainline railways: the collapse of the passenger rail system in North America in the 1960s and 1970s also affected Montreal, and all local trains were lost by 1988 except for the Deux-Montagnes and Vaudreuil/Hudson lines. Many have been reestablished since the 1996 creation of the AMT. Two important factors to consider. Only in the past five years or so has STM ridership reached the levels of the 1950s tram system just before abandonment, despite the fact that the metropolitan population is about three times greater, and the STM service area is much bigger than the area Montreal Tramways covered. There was a drastic collapse of the modal share of public transit that occurred at the time of the abandonment of the tram system, that even the opening of the metro in 1966 hardly affected. (The tram abandonment was not the only cause: this was the time of the mass exodus to the suburbs and the construction of the autoroute system.) The other factor is related to the autoroute system: with so much investment in public highways, it was no longer possible for privately-run passenger trains to compete, and thus they disappeared. It required public support and organization (AMT), not to mention chronic highway congestion, to revive the trains.

By: Herve

Herve — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:18:07 +0000

@ant6n I didn’t know about linear transformation matrices, I just looked them up, they look really useful! I learned a bunch just from your two paragraphs, thanks!

By: Jim P.

Jim P. — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 02:30:28 +0000

It’s magic! Really well done. The city transport system in time-lapse evolution.