Montreal City Weblog

Kate 10:48 on 2025-11-16 Permalink Reply  

• MarcG 11:05 on 2025-11-16 Permalink

  What’s the deal with having staircases before and after the elevators? I assume there are separate elevators to make those levels accessible but strikes me as an odd/annoying design choice.

• DeWolf 13:11 on 2025-11-16 Permalink

  I spent part of the afternoon riding the new line. A very diverse crowd in terms of age and background, lots of happy people. One dad travelling with his son through TMR was like, “You know, this is actually really fast. Want to keep going to Brossard so we can see the view from the bridge?”

  A few observations:

  McGill Station is pretty cramped and I foresee it getting unpleasantly crowded. But the other stations are pretty spacious, especially Bois-Franc, where a lot of people will be changing trains between the various branches.

  There’s a strangely long dwell time at each of the stations. Maybe it will be adjusted? It was consistent between all the stations and noticeably longer than the metro.

  It’s pretty amazing to be able to travel from downtown to the blue line in just a few minutes. I think a lot of people are going to start using the REM just for the McGill–Édouard-Montpetit stretch. The transfer will probably increase ridership on the blue line too.

  The five high-speed elevators at Édouard-Montpetit are extremely fast. They seem identical to the elevators used inside HKU station in Hong Kong, which is exactly the same depth (70 metres) as É-M. The entire journey from REM platform to blue line platform took 3.5 minutes. The elevator ride itself was only about 20 seconds.

  The entire journey from McGill to Deux-Montagnes was surprisingly fast. A hair over 30 minutes.

• Kate 13:20 on 2025-11-16 Permalink

  Thanks for the report, DeWolf!

• Tim 14:54 on 2025-11-16 Permalink

  Does anyone know if going on the REM counts as having been on the metro? For a single fare, one can only go on the metro once. Can I go on the REM, go out of the station and then get on the metro somewhere else on the same fare?

• DeWolf 16:24 on 2025-11-16 Permalink

  @Tim Yes it counts as a different mode of transit. So you can take the metro somewhere, get out, then take the REM without paying extra if you’re within 120min. At that point it would also be free to transfer back to the metro.

  Such a ridiculous system… not sure why the STM is so dead set against having an unrestricted 120min included on every ticket like so many other systems.

• DeWolf 16:27 on 2025-11-16 Permalink

  To that point, I heard from someone who simply tapped onto a bus and immediately got off to get the free transfer (because metro>bus>metro is free but metro>metro is not).

• Uatu 16:28 on 2025-11-16 Permalink

  @DeWolf I think the frequency is supposed to keep McGill from being overcrowded. At least at the frequency it’s supposed to be running. The dwell time at stations has been inconsistent recently. Sometimes it’s a couple of minutes other times I’ve seen the doors slam shut on boarding passengers after 30sec. It’ll probably more consistent after a time. That train that slammed the doors also made announcements that the next stop was Edouard monpetit when we were heading to nun’s island so there’s clearly some adjustments ahead.

• Tim 21:49 on 2025-11-16 Permalink

  Thank you DeWolfe. I was also unaware that a bus transfer could get a user back on the metro.

• James 10:14 on 2025-11-17 Permalink

  The restriction from the STM has always been only one entry to the metro per ticket.
  So you could go: Bus -> metro -> bus but not metro -> bus -> metro.
  Now with the REM, this rule has not changed so you cannot do:
  Metro blue line to EDM -> REM to McGill –> metro green line

  The problem is that at all three REM-Metro interchanges, you leave the fare-paid area and need to go through the turnstyles again.

  There are other restrictions for the validity of the transfer:

  • Needs to be within 120 minutes of the initial fare validation
  • Cannot transfer to the same bus (example: 105-west / go shopping / 105-east)

• nau 10:28 on 2025-11-17 Permalink

  And because bus to different bus is also a valid transfer, there was one trip I used to do where if the connections were on time and my errand went quickly enough, I could do metro>bus>a short walk>bus 2>same metro line going back in the opposite direction on the same ticket. Agreed that an unrestricted 120 minutes would be much better for transit users.

• nau 10:34 on 2025-11-17 Permalink

  @James No two metro entries may have been the rule, but apparently the system wasn’t able to track that at that point in the past anyway (which I think was pre-2017).

• James 18:43 on 2025-11-18 Permalink

  I stand corrected: metro – REM – metro IS allowed.
  https://www.stm.info/en/info/fares/transfers

  what isn’t allowed is:

  • Cannot transfer to the same bus (example: 105-west / go shopping / 105-east)
  • Cannot re-enter the same color metro station (blue / go shopping / blue)

  Even for unlimited passes you cannot re-scan your card a 2nd time at the same place within a certain time (this is to prevent you using your valid card to open the gate for your friend who doesn’t have a card)