Tuesday, January 12, 2010

No Impact Experiment – Day 3 Transportation

Because we live out in the burbs, this is a difficult one for my family. I work from home and both my children walk to school. We try to keep the kids activities local with the exception of music lessons. But, I do use a car to go swimming two to three times a week (if only Hudson had an indoor pool – any Hudsonites with a lap pool willing to rent out time??). Today I’ll do some tai chi instead of swimming. I’ll try to go to the closest pool more often (still a 15 minute drive away), even though the opening hours aren’t as convenient as the one 30 minutes away.

Our biggest problem with regards to cutting down on transport is that my husband works in Cote Vertu, 48km from our home. Up until this point he’s been driving our fuel efficient Honda Civic as his workplace is too far from the train station (would entail 4hours of commuting per day) and carpooling 25% of the time (co-workers in the area have alternating schedules).
We were so excited when the A40 bus going from Vaudreuil to Cote Vertu was announced. So today, I decided, was the day to research the logistics of having him take this bus. Went to the website www.citlapresquile.qc.ca. Discovered that taking a bus from Hudson to the Vaudreuil station is now possible!! Apparently the Hudson bus going to Vaudreuil is new. Also discovered you can use the A40 bus ticket on the Hudson bus without paying extra and that you can buy the tickets at Depanneur Shaar (10 for $34). Very convenient! The A40 bus leaves 5 minutes after the Hudson bus reaches Vaudreuil, fabulous, very well planned out! He can leave the house at 7:05 and be at work by… 8:35 after the 20 minute walk along the freeway. Ah but then, coming home… They haven’t linked the arrival in Vaudreuil to the departure to Hudson nearly as well as the morning busses. He’ll have to wait for busses and only get home at 7:30…. Which means a 12 ½ hour work day. So this isn’t going to work for us. The best thing to do would be drive to the Vaudreuil train station which will save him 45 minutes of commuting time. He could leave the house at 7:20AM and be home at 6:35PM.
After doing this research, I called the CIT (450-424-2485 ) to request better coordination between the A40 arrival times in the PM and the Hudson bus departures at that times. Apparently the city of Hudson pays for the number of busses leaving Vaudreuil and coming to Hudson and each bus costs $10,000 a year! (St.Lazare also pays a small amount of this.). Okay, this is a lot of money. Is it worth $10,000 so a couple of dozen people (small community) are more convenience to take the bus from the train station? I will let the city councilor in charge of the CIT know the difficulties we are having with the current schedule.

Debbie

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