It doesn't look like Montrealers will be riding air-conditioned buses or metros any time soon, despite an opposition party's humourous approach at mustering up support.
A motion by Projet Montreal to have air conditioning installed in public transit was defeated at city hall Tuesday night, despite a video posted to popular video-sharing service YouTube poking fun at the issue and garnering nearly 12,000 hits in 24 hours.
The municipal party's leader Richard Bergeron has his name appear at the end of the video called "Il fait chaud dans le metro," a parody of an advertisement from the 1970's called "Il fait beau dans le metro."
The video cost about $10,000 to produce and was paid for with the money Projet Montreal's members said they saved by using public transit instead of what they would have spent on gasoline, parking and taxis.
Projet Montreal party members said they feel adding air conditioning would incite more people to take the bus and metro during the summer months, estimating a cost of $50 million to install the system.
"If you want to convince car owners to use public transportation you have to upgrade the comfort of it," said Projet Montreal councillor Francois Limoges.
The Societe de Transport de Montreal has said the cooling system would cost much more than the proposed price.
Mayor Gerald Tremblay's Union Montreal party and STM officials feel that installing an air conditioning system would not be a good use of municipal funds.
"If I had that type of money - which I can only dream about - hundreds of millions of dollars, I'm not going to put it into air conditioning. I'm going to put it into better bus services," said Marvin Rotrand, STM's vice-chairman.
Rotrand said the campaign is simply a ploy by Project Montreal to drum up support among young voters.
"It's a populous campaign, and a bit bizarre for a party that says it's the environmental party, which is proposing that more energy be used and there be more greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
Limoges disagrees with the opinion.
"If you convince at least one car rider to use the bus instead of his car you'll have zero sum; if you convince two drivers, you have a gain in energy efficiency," he said.
New York, Barcelona and New Delhi have air conditioning in their subways, and Gatineau, Ottawa and Terrebonne have air-conditioned buses, Projet Montreal says.
The transit authority argues air-conditioned metro trains would push more heat into metro tunnels, making it more expensive and impractical.
Normand Parisien of transit users group Transport said he's of two opinions on the matter.
"We totally support it for urban buses, but for metro, we have to put into consideration not only cost, but the effectiveness of the solution," he said, adding that a fare hike would deter him from supporting it.
The STM has said it is already working to cool down the metro with new ventilation systems for its latest metro cars, and it will test out air conditioning on some heavily trafficked bus routes.
