“ITS GETTIN HOT IN HERE”

The Montreal Metro is busy, very busy, it ranks 1st in Canada and 3rd across North America behind New York and Mexico City. STM moves over 1.2 million unlinked passenger trips every day (as of Q1 2014).[1]

According to STM In 2010 the number of total passengers moved was at 7 BILLION

So what if we could load balance this Metro system just like we do on computer networks?

Although this idea can be utilized across the network and beyond, for now, lets focus on one section, Montmorency to Berri UQAM, and the time slot 7:00 to 9am. For those that are not familiar with our super Metro, its the Orange line that goes from an area called Laval. Laval has the highest number of commuters each day.

I've been riding this section for a few years now, and many times i play the game of, Can we make this service more enjoyable for people?

So what got me playing this game and why am I writing this?

Well here’s how my experience unfolded when I first uncounted the STM Rush Hour on the orange line,

Paul to Brain— “Yay! metro comes every 2 minutes, thats awesome”….10 mins later Brain to Paul……in Yoda voice — Deceived you have been my friend” Wow, yes….big deception.

Train arrives, doors open and….well, not much happens, aside from people looking at each other from opposite sides, saying in their respective minds, the following

Train — “Don’t you even think about squeezing yourself on this train” <—> Platform — “Come on people I can see space between your legs, i’ll go there, i am not picky, I’m in a big rush to get somewhere” —

No shit buddy… Perhaps the rush hour commuters are in a rush also, otherwise it’s some new METRO FETISH S&TM suffocation thing that’s super popular(oof, out of breath), well its possible, our magic city is so freaking beautifully diverse. Anyway I digress, this kind of trade off between fellow citizens repeats itself over and over across multiple stops, with many people in offices across Montreal hearing the words …..

“Sorry I’am late, I had to let 5 trains carrying sardines pass me by.”

Furthermore, the whole on-boarding and disembarking is negative points against the so many awesome things the city has to offer towards the happiness factor for its citizens. Like Jazz fest, Igloofest, fest fest, another fest, bestfest yet. Basically theres always something going on to lift our spirits. Theres even a plethora of parks and endless trees line the streets, people are very chill and theres an awesome tribe like mentality of our city that acts like a village. It has to be possible that this morning commute could be way more pleasant and efficient. Its like getting up on the wrong side of the bed, except the bed is a packed, hot sometimes smelly metro carriage.

Over the years solutions have surfaced, with some bizarre ones being fronted:

ONE — making one continuous non stop train — a giant conveyor belt moving at 50 mph.

TWO - going back in time to widen or add additional tunnels to the plans just in case (not fair since they built everything in 2 years, it was a pretty incredible achievement).

THREE — Perhaps they could add one extra carriage to each train….genius right! well except the MTL metro trains stretch the full length of the platforms already, so people in the end carriage would have to experience a sort of arrival but not quite yet since the last carriage would not fit on the platform, plus it could affect stopping distance, accident risk variables.

FOUR- Convince people coming from Laval to car share, focusing on the endless number of cars that have one person in them.

Here comes the load balancing bit!

EXPRESS TRAINS….. could be the key to happier Montreal’s morning commuters.

Express trains could leave the Laval area within a set time block, say — 7:30am to 7:40am. Configured trains could leave every 2 mins just like now only stopping at a few stations on the way, passengers get SPEED, COMFORT and LESS EMOTIONAL CONFLICT with their fellow citizens. Non express riders know the block they run and can adjust their patterns to take advantage of less crowded carriages and waiting on the platform while trains pass one after the other. My finger in the wind guess was five express trains, I felt this allowed for multiple configurations and potential Flexi concepts while causing the least disruption to others, but theres really no calculation been made, it’s just gut and quick exchange with colleges.

So now lets imagine we are programmers, we need a config file that allows us to play with the variables. (Config is configuration, explained here)

Frequency . Stop locations, Speeds, etc etc.

Then data and observations should drive the configs to adapt accordingly.

Live Data, historical data, know patterns and conditions that occur based on factors outside of STM control, i.e weather, power, currency market shifts (weak $ means more tourists perhaps)

Since its not solved yet, it could be cool to get the public together and tech community together to have a crack at this. If you are interested , we invite you to join us.

CLICK TO SAVE YOUR SPOT FOR THE STM HAPPINESS HACK.