Montreal testing green bus shelters in hopes of improving comfort against heat

It may be cooler than average today for summer, but Montreal has seen some extremely hot and sticky days.

With the heat, waiting for the bus can be a long ride. That is why Montreal’s École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) launched a pilot project aimed at testing out green bus shelter roofs. The goal: to help transit users cool down.

“The goal of this project is not to only to improve the urban environment but also to measure the different benefits we can have from those types of installations,” explained Jean-Luc Martel, Professor at ÉTS.

“This project is the fruit of a collaboration between ÉTS, Quebecor Out-of-Home, and Les Toits Vertige which we decided to build two green roofs on two bus shelters: one in Ville-Marie and one in Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, close to the Olympic Stadium.”

Growing plants have been placed on top of the shelters, and as the heat continues, researchers hope to track their growth progress.

“The main goal is to evaluate if we can actually do this and if there’s an actual reduction that is significant or not. So to achieve this we’ll be looking at different bus shelters, so one that will have a green roof and one that will not have a green roof and that will have similar characteristics,” said Martel.

“So by instrumenting both shelters, so we’ll evaluate or measure the temperature inside the shelters with sensors as well as the humidity within the green roof to make sure that the shelter was actually humid to evaluate if it was or not, we’ll be able to compare and see the reduction in temperature that we have comparing both shelters.”

Periodic tests will take place, which will be aimed at enhancing comfort in the shelters.

“This is a pilot project, so only two shelters are being built right now. And the goal will be to expand this on multiple shelters. So this is a great example that can show the population how little impacts like this one that can be done on really small scale can be expanded eventually across the city. And we’re talking about thousands of bus shelters across the city. So obviously a small impact can actually become a much larger impact if this can actually become something that we can replicate throughout the whole city.”

ÉTS hopes to see the impact these shelters have on the environment and society.

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“The hypothesis we have, is that through the evaporation effect of the water contained within the soil after a rainfall event, we can actually reduce or cool down the temperature within the bus shelter,” said Martel.

“You can think of this similarly to what happens when you get out of the shower: your body temperature is going down because you’re evaporating the water that is on you, and you’re feeling much colder. This is what we’re trying to attempt here. We could actually improve the comfort of the users and the vulnerable population by reducing the temperature inside the shelter, especially through heat waves.”

The pilot project is expected to last for two years.