Montreal’s transit authority says looming cuts to bus service won’t be nearly as severe as those seen recently on the 747 airport shuttle.

The Société de transport de Montréal cut 747 service by 19 per cent as of Jan. 2.

In June, as part of an effort to cut $65 million from its budget, the STM will cut off-peak service on other lines. The belt-tightening will result in a 3.1-per-cent overall decrease in hours of bus service.

Those cuts will not affect the 747. Nor will they touch the 31 routes in the STM’s 10-Minute Max network, which account for 80 per cent of bus ridership, said STM vice-chair Marvin Rotrand.

Métro service will also be spared from cuts.

“In some ways, (the 3.1-per-cent reduction) is almost a theoretical cut,” Rotrand said. “What it actually does is it spreads out the interval between buses by a very, very short period of time — a couple of seconds here, 15, 20 seconds there. Over the course of the day, it adds up to (a certain) number of hours per bus route.”

At the moment, the STM provides enough departures so that regular-sized buses carry 33 passengers per hour of service. Articulated buses carry 50 passengers per hour.

As of June, the ratio will be 35 for regular and 53 for articulated buses, the STM says.

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