Quote:
Originally Posted by CityTech
Montreal station is actually useless for Blackburn. Transit in Blackburn is concentrated as an east west corridor on Innes that connects to Blair.
There is a bus route that connects to Montreal station (the 28) but it's far less frequent than the 25 and during weekdays daytime it runs as a long slow winding route through Blackburn. From the community core, it's a 9 minute trip to Blair on the 25 but a 16 minute trip to Montreal on the 28. And that's not even factoring in the frequency difference. So even if you're going east to Orleans it's faster to connect at Blair.
|
The 28 is often more convenient around morning and afternoon rush, as 25 will often be packed with people headed for/from orleans. Also in winter especially I much prefer walking to my nearby busstop for the 28 than walk the 8-ish minutes over to innes road and wait for the 25, in fact most of the year (until covid changed the 28 schedule to hourly most of the day, which is now back to the normal 20-30 min intervals)
Quote:
Originally Posted by CityTech
During evening and weekends the 28 is a lot better as it runs as a straight line on Bearbrook, making the travel times faster. But even then, it's only 1-2 minutes faster to Montreal than Blair, and the 25 is still way more frequent.
|
I feel the schedule is definitely going to change with the opening of montreal stn, if a more frequent 28 comes through the hamlet, (even if its coming to and from beacon hill) I can imagine many transit riders (students and government workers) here taking advantage of that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CityTech
I suppose they could adopt the straight line routing all the time and use the time savings to make the 28 a frequent route but even then Montreal will only be better than Blair for trips to northern Orleans.
|
I think there actually used to be two routes down Bearbrook road, one that was more direct, and the one that snakes around Blackburn
Quote:
Originally Posted by CityTech
tl;dr - the addition of Montreal station won't make Blackburn any more transit accessible than the construction of Blair station already has.
|
I do agree it won't make much difference for us, but time will tell i guess.
It will making biking to and from the train easier(not always a bike rack on every bus), and with the apparent bike storage facilities (if theres enough) I could see montreal stn be an intermodal station for beaconhill and (maybe some) blackburn residents (though the trip up the hill on st.joseph may be a challenge)