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Montreal’s transit authority routinely took bus service away from lower-income areas of the city while boosting service in higher-income areas over a period of six years, a study has found.

The finding comes from Out of Service, a research project published by Nick Chaloux, a master’s student at Transportation Research at McGill, which is comprised of faculty members and students who conduct research in the field of transportation planning and operations.

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Chaloux analyzed ridership data from the Société de transport de Montréal from 2012 to 2017 and compared how the STM added or reduced service on its various bus lines over that period.

“We can’t really point at why they did what they did,” Chaloux said of the STM. “We can only say the choices they made impacted socially vulnerable and lower-income people.”

Among the findings: The most popular bus routes have been losing the most riders — because those routes saw their service cut more than the rest of the network.