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Montreal Metro stations will not be renamed, STM chair says

Changes to 19 Metro station names to be in line with toponymy standards not approved by STM board

CBC News Posted: Sep 04, 2014 10:41 AM ET Last Updated: Sep 04, 2014 10:42 AM ET The STM's board has decided not to proceed with tweaking the names of 19 Metro stations. (Melinda Dalton/CBC)


The Montreal transit authority will not be renaming 19 of its Metro stations to better reflect its toponymy guidelines, said STM chair Philippe Schnobb.

Schnobb visited CBC Daybreak's studio on Thursday to talk about several STM-related topics.

First, he said, the board decided not to rename the 19 Metro stations to reflect their namesakes. Under the proposed plan, Mont-Royal would have been renamed du Mont-Royal to reflect the street it is named for — Avenue du Mont-Royal.

Last week, he said renaming Metro stations is a board decision and that the board had not yet discussed renaming anything other than Square-Victoria to Square-Victoria-OACI.

Schnobb told Daybreak host Mike Finnerty that the snafu came about in the spring when the person in charge of dealing with the STM's toponymy committee submitted minor changes to 19 Metro stations at the same time the request to change Square-Victoria was filed.

"When they did the change, they said, ‘Well, since it’s not, on their view, a change of the name, it was just an adjustment,' they said, 'Well we’ll do everything at the same time,'” Schnobb said.

In any case, he said, the STM board decided to leave the current station-naming convention as-is.

STM exec get raises

Schnobb told Daybreak on Thursday that the 3.5 to 4.5 per cent raises STM executives received this summer were based on performance reviews.

"It's not arbitrary. It's part of a process," Schnobb said.

“The only way for them to get a raise is for them to meet their objectives.”

The STM cut bus service this year to account for budget shortfalls.

People say they're no satisfied with the service, Schnobb said, but it it weren't for highly skilled management, "The situation would be much worse."

Good news/bad news

Schnobb had some good news and some bad news for people using the Vendôme Metro station.

Two elevators and a tunnel connecting the platform to the MUHC superhospital will be built — just not in time for the hospital's opening.

He said the STM already has the plans nailed down, but is waiting for funding.

Schnobb also discussed the coming iBus project, an initiative meant to allow transit users to track STM buses with by smartphone.

“When you’re waiting for the bus, sometimes you don’t know. Did I miss it?” he said.

He said the first buses to get the iBus tracker will be the ones operating out of the Plateau-Mont-Royal bus depot.

The project will begin in 2015 and will be gradually rolled out to all bus depots over the course of the year, he said.





