LACHINE, Que. — West Island commuters anxiously waiting for a new reserved bus lane to open along Highway A20 may be disappointed.
Transports Quebec hasn’t set an opening date for the lane, which was scheduled to be ready this fall between the Dorval Circle and 10th Avenue in Lachine.
The bus lane is supposed to decrease commuting times by up to 20 per cent for users.
“It would be a lot easier to get to school or go downtown,” one West Island commuter said at the Dorval bus terminal on Wednesday.
STM officials told Global News they’re confident the reserved bus lane will open before the end of the year.
“I would be disappointed if it couldn’t be delivered,” Marvin Rotrand said from the STM head office.
Rotrand said the reserved lane is part of Transports Quebec’s plans to dramatically increase reserved bus lanes across the island within the next few years.
The STM Vice-Chairman said the raison d’être for the bus lanes is to encourage people to leave their cars at home.
But not everyone is on board with a reserved lane that only heads toward downtown Montreal.
Joseph Huza of the West Island Chamber of Commerce said the business community of the West Island is being left behind.
He claimed there are close to 200,000 workers in the West Island.
Many of them rely on mass transit to get them to work and some of them commute from Montreal.
“Having a unidirectional solution — West Island to downtown — no longer reflects the realities of the business community in the West Island,” he said from Dorval.
Transports Quebec initially estimated the costs of the reserved lane to be $12 million last spring, however an updated figure hasn’t been published.
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