300 New Buses: STM Reaches a New Milestone in Bus Fleet Expansion Strategy
The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) has reached a new milestone in its plan to add 300 buses to its fleet with the completion of expansion work on the Legendre bus garage, which will soon house 56 of the new buses.
The five-point strategy involves:
- Adapting an industrial building, leased by the STM for five years, to house 50 buses – completed in 2019
- Renovating the roof of the St-Denis bus garage to extend its lifetime – completed in 2019
- Expanding three existing bus garages—Anjou, Legendre and St-Laurent—to house a total of 160 new buses (expansion work on Anjou and St-Laurent will be completed in the spring)
- Building the new Bellechasse bus garage, which began in 2019 and will be commissioned in 2023
- Beginning studies into building a bus garage in the east of Montréal, planned for commissioning in 2025
Chair of the STM Board of Directors, Philippe Schnobb, said:With these 300 new buses, which should finish arriving this year, our bus fleet will grow by a record 15%. Our teams pushed their imaginations and ingenuity to allow us to receive these buses on short notice and in spite of the difficulties of the last year. So we are very proud of this accomplishment.
Chief Executive Officer of the STM, Luc Tremblay, said:As we have no service cuts planned for 2021, these additional buses will enable optimal bus fleet management. Using them will let us use the older buses more sparingly, so that when we do increase our service offering, when ridership is back up, we will have a more reliable, newer and more comfortable fleet for our customers.
The Legendre bus garage project began in 2019 and cost $43.4 million for both engineering and construction, remaining within the initial budget. The work involved:
- Expanding the indoor parking lot to house 56 additional buses
- Expanding the mechanical workshop to house three new maintenance areas
- Refurbishing the outdoor employee parking lot
- Refurbishing the existing indoor bus maintenance facilities
Several sustainable development principles have also been incorporated into the new building, including the choice of materials, the amount of natural light and the reduced water consumption. The project will also help reduce the heat island effect by upping the site’s proportion of greenery from 9% to 15% with the addition of about 50 new trees and a green roof.
Executive Director of Bus Services, Renée Amilcar, said:Despite the additional challenges brought on by the pandemic, we have successfully carried out this project without rescheduling any operational or maintenance activities and with no impact on our service. What’s more, we are looking ahead to the future and to bus fleet electrification. We’re thinking about the needs of tomorrow by making space to house the equipment that will be needed to maintain and charge these electric buses.
This article was originally published by STM.
