CHALLENGE

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Description

Public transit is vital to the functioning of modern cities. Without the density of jobs and residents that bus and metro service provides, so much that is uniquely rich about cities would be diminished: social life, arts and cultural production, economic opportunities, and more.

Public transportation also sits squarely at the center of the fight against climate change. Every trip taken on public transport emits just a fraction of the carbon that a comparable trip by car would release, and the density of development enabled by transit allows for radically lower emission lifestyles. Transit, therefore, should be poised for a bright future in the coming years, when the battle against climate change will accelerate.

And yet, never in recent memory has the very existence of transit been more in question. The pandemic decimated transit ridership during its first wave. While demand has partially recovered, buses and trains in North America are only about 80 percent as full as they were before COVID-19. Given the tenuous nature of transit funding, a decline of fare revenue of that magnitude has had a significant impact on the ability of transit agencies to provide high quality service.

Montreal, by many measures the leading transit metropolis in North America, has recently proposed a combination of service cuts and fare increases that could trigger a decline in ridership from an already lowered base. Prominent Canadian transit leaders are expressing fears of a ‘death spiral’ in transit ridership, where higher fares lower ridership, a cycle that drives service levels progressively lower.

The rise of work from home and hybrid work has brought into question the traditional 9-to-5, five days a week work patterns that underpinned so much of how public transportation, in Montreal and elsewhere, was designed to operate. The future of transit ridership, as well as the very future of urban commuting and travel patterns, remain uncertain.

Yet in the midst of an uncertain landscape for transit as the pandemic slowly subsides, Montreal has embarked on perhaps the most ambitious expansion of transit infrastructure in North America in recent decades: the Reseau Express Metropolitain, or REM. While the design of routes and location of stations is, in most cases, already determined, there is much lingering debate about the design of stations and their integration into the urban fabric.

This is where we are asking you to focus your proposal: how can the design of a major investment in public transport infrastructure set an optimistic tone for a post-pandemic, climate-ready and carbon-negative metropolis, and rethink what we should expect from spaces of transit?

While the recent ridership plunge is the most immediate problem for public transport, other trends will also shape its future. Most critically, the impacts of climate change are starting to be felt. Quebec, while relatively insulated from the worst of global climate impacts so far, has had notable incidents in recent years that will become more common over time. A heat wave in 2018 killed 86 people, and last fall, extreme levels of precipitation demonstrated how ill equipped some sewer systems are to deal with the new reality. Designing for urban resilience and adaptation to climate change will move to the forefront of public concerns in the coming years. How can redesigned public transportation lay the foundation for a more resilient city?

The pandemic has also ushered new levels of social conflict, with a rise in conspiracy theories, fringe political movements, and wealth and class inequality. At the same time, a global refugee crisis has manifested itself in Montreal, with larger numbers of people seeking a home in an unfamiliar terrain. Transit has traditionally been a place where classes and different people come together. Can a reimagined transit system explicitly address these issues?

The pandemic has not been all negative for urban areas. Many cities embraced a move to foster more active transportation during COVID lockdowns, and many neighborhood residents used the work from home opportunity to connect to their neighborhood in new and deeper ways. Montreal, already a leader in cycling and walking infrastructure, deepened its commitment to active transportation. How can this trend be integrated into the development of new REM stations?

Transit stations are public infrastructure and civic monuments that have few parallels in urban development. Their primary purpose will always be the efficient movement of people, but the current moment demands so much more. Montreal’s REM expansion is a unique opportunity to express the urban and social values of a metropolis. Montreals’ proud history of urban transit infrastructure includes significant works of public art in stations. How can this generation's public transport investment help express an optimistic vision of the future for Montreal? How can the design of transit stations and their adjoining urban fabric help build the foundations of a post-pandemic city? How can transit become infrastructure for more than movement?

Andrew Salzberg is a faculty advisor at Columbia and lecturer at MIT passionate about building sustainable transportation systems for the future. Through his work at Uber, Transit App, and Populus, he has spearheaded advocacy for clean transit infrastructure and policy, and has recently developed and led a course on Decarbonizing Urban Mobility.