A local software engineer has designed a program to help commuters capture what is among the most quietly satisfying moments of living in Montreal: stepping off a metro train right in front of the escalators.
“Every commuter knows that feeling of, like, ‘I’m gonna stand here and bam! I’m right next to my stairwell,” said Nicolas Kruchten, the engineer behind the program.
Inspired by his own experiences taking public transportation, Kruchten has used videos taken out of the windows of metro cars to create panoramas of all the stops on the green line. While it started as more of an art project, it has evolved into a guide on which metro cars stop closest to the exits – a handy guide for those in a rush.
“If you’re bad at judging distance, it’s really hard to know, okay, the second door of the third car (is the closest),” he said. “My goal was that you could see both where you are and where you’re going.”
Of course, should people start flocking to his creation, it’s possible the best cars could become more congested. However, Kruchten thinks the metro stations are laid out in such a way that problems like that can be easily avoid.
“The Montreal system is fairly well-designed in the sense that the green line, at least, there’s not sort of one car in front of all the stairwells,” he said. “The stairwells are spread out.”
While the site only has guides to stops on the green line for now, Kruchten is hoping to expand to cover the city’s other lines. You can find the green line map on his website.
