MTC a victim of its own success

Complaints about public transit delays have increased threefold since Montreal's subway network extended service into Laval, north of the city, but there's little that can be done in the short term to relieve the pressure, officials said.

According to documents obtained by Radio-Canada, the Montreal Transit Commission (MTC) has received about 400 complaints since three metro stations servicing Laval opened nine months ago.

That's a threefold increase from the previous nine months, when the MTC registered 122 complaints about slow or overcrowded public transit service, including buses and subway cars.

Ridership on the Montmorency-Cote-Vertu orange line has visibly increased over the winter because ofthe influx of passengers boarding from Laval's three new metro stops which openedin May 2007.

Officials didn't think so many people would choose public transit, and the MTC is now a victim of its own success, admitted agency spokesman Dominic Lemay.

"When we opened the metro, we were planning to receive 35,000 trips per day in that section of the network," the told CBC News. "In January, February of this year, we had 60,000 trips a day."

The MTC increased metro car service during the day by about 17 per cent but improvements to rush hour service are difficult because of a shortage of subway cars in the system, he said.

The agency is studying ways to improve subway car maintenance to keep more wagons on the rails, and may consider running shorter routes on the Orange line to increase service, said MTC operations director Sylvain Duquette.

The agency is waiting for a new fleet of subway cars but they won't be delivered until 2011, and riders should expect orange line rush hour traffic to be heavy until then, Duquette said.