by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Since last October, a secret band of Montreal singles has designated the last metro car privileged turf to meet and greet strangers in the hopes of sparking a romantic connection. The initiative, proposed through mass sending of e-mails, has urged lonely hearts to “consider your $2 bus ticket as a membership to a dating club.” Montrealers hoping to find love underground are instructed in the widely-forwarded note to enter the tail car and “smile and say hi to anybody… Smiles are contagious and at worst, your smile and greeting will have started or ended somebody’s day on the right foot.”

The initiative is apparently the work of an elusive Montrealer named Timmi Sims. Efforts to reach Sims went for naught, but according to the literature, the project is a copy of an initiative tried on the New York subway, apparently a hit since last summer.

There are four main instructions for those hoping to get lucky en route through the city’s transport tunnels. Those interested in finding a significant - or at least temporarily significant - other should, according to the campaign, “1 - Always take the last wagon. Eighty per cent of life is being in the right place at the right time. 2 - Remain standing to ease the process of socializing. 3 - Smile and say hello to people. 4 - If somebody catches your fancy, ask, ‘Are we on the right line? Or is this the correct direction to go to such-and-such a place?’”

Some doubt that such a campaign will change the often-desultory stare-at-the-floor culture of local metro riders. “I’m skeptical that it would catch on,” says Normand Parisien, executive director of public transit advocacy group Transport 2000. “But it’s important to try to encourage social exchanges between metro users. Such a project could humanize the experience, which right now can be impersonal. We should encourage anything that brings a better ambiance to the metro.”

Metro officials have a hands-off policy towards riders on the make. “We’re neither encouraging nor discouraging this,” says Societé de transport de Montréal rep Odile Paradis. She notes that she has heard little of the effort since it started. “Perhaps they didn’t get the word out widely enough,” she says. But in principle, anyway, the metro brass has no objections to anybody trying out their pick-up lines on others riding in the last car. She says that complaints from riders about too-friendly co-passengers are “very, very rare.”

On the evening of Friday, Feb. 14, few back-of-the-train commuters displayed behaviour unlike those of any other car. Indeed the phenomenon of Montreal commuters hitting on others was either non-existent on that night, or possibly too subtle to the naked eye. When interviewed, riders of that car pleaded ignorance, as none of 12 approached knew of the project. But one young man travelling with friends reported that using the last car for romance has long been a part of local culture. “When you have sex on the metro, the last car is the place to do it,” he says, “because it’s the last car to enter the station, so you have time to get back in place.” :