How to make Montreal's Metro perfect.
The Montreal Metro is great, and with a few changes it would be nearly perfect
I’ve spent a lot of time in Montreal in the last 6 months and probably more time on the metro than ever before. In a lot of ways, it’s one of the best rapid transit systems I’ve experienced, and certainly a standout in North America — it’s got a lot of impressive features, from the notably spacious (all underground) stations with beautiful and unique designs (they feel *big* and befitting of a system that needs to move tons of people), to mostly using excellent trains that remain modern feeling today despite being around a decade old.
So Montreal’s system is really good, but I think this is all the more reason to work to fix the few remaining issues it has, so it can from great, to near perfect.
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Where Montreal gets it right
The good with Montreal’s metro begins before you’ve even gotten to a station. The wayfinding on the metro is really good, and the system has one of the only streetscape metro signs in North America that is quite well known globally. Inside stations, the use of light and dark signs, colour, and light boxes makes for a thoughtful wayfinding system that doesn’t detract from the beautiful system, and is just miles better than the most other North American cities. Exits are even labelled with letters, and next train displays have information about how crowded each car of a coming train is — which is pretty cutting edge stuff from a wayfinding perspective.
In my experience, the metro is also fast and reliable. To be clear, the trains themselves are actually rather slow (something out-of-towners have pointed out to me while visiting is that the low top speeds are something you really feel when you are heading under the rivers to the north and south of the island), but the service is quick. You accelerate in and out of stations in a way that only rubber-tired trains can, and as long as stations are densely packed, you move from one to the next quickly. At the same time the system feels quite reliable — there just seem to be less service disruptions that in other cities, and minor delays are not projected needlessly to the whole system (this builds a perception of unreliability in other cities).
Anecdotally, and probably in no small part thanks to the entirely subterranean environment of the system, the infrastructure in Montreal also seems to be in excellent shape when compared to cities I’ve seen around the world. There appear to be less leaks, less wires and conduits bolted haphazardly to every surface, and less temporary-looking fixes and materials. To be clear, that does exist — but less widely than even cities like Tokyo.
The fares in Montreal (which as we get to have a lot of issues) are also really affordable, which is one of those nice things you totally forget about until you realize that three days of subway use in many cities costs as much as a whole week in Montreal.
The last thing that I think is quite notable is just how well covered the urban area is. Most important regional destinations are on or near metro stations, and I would argue the city’s subcentres and suburbs are often quite well-connected too. These metro-connected destinations as well as weaker than average bus options strongly support non-downtown commute trips.
A big boost is also provided by the Blue Line, which really makes the system feel like a true network. While downtown commutes are well served by many subway systems, the Montreal Metro’s crosstown line makes all kinds of other journeys practical without a slow and inconvenient switch to a bus.
What’s interesting is that the downtown coverage is also really strong despite the network being so well oriented for suburban use and the broader region. By having both the Orange and Green lines span across downtown, a ton of capacity and coverage has been provided, and I think that likely contributes to city centre density that falls off further from the true centre, somewhere near René Lévesque and Robert Bourassa, than in other North American cities.
Fixes and Improvements needed for a near perfect system
While it’s good to talk about what transit systems get right, the truth is Montreal’s metro has some baffling problems that haven’t been fixed in years despite their obvious nature, as well as other problems that show a lack of will for change and ambition.
The most obvious problem that appears again and again in my journeys around Montreal is the absolutely shocking gaps in the fare system. While it was exciting to see Montreal adopt and integrated zonal fare system, the implementation is seriously lacking.
Right now, the fare system is ticket and pass oriented, which doesn’t make sense when you have a lot of different multi-fare zone journeys you can make. Sure, Montreal’s system mitigates this with large fare zones, but the problems are a huge pain when you do need to cross from one zone to another. Cross-zone fare options are limited and you can’t easily mix fare types, which is an oddly commuter-oriented design for a city that does non-commute metro travel well! A lot of these problems can be traced to the architecture of the “smart” Opus fare system — which Montreal adopted earlier than other cities in Canada. Unfortunately, the early adoption did not come with subsequent evolutionary follow through.
Of course Montreal lacks contactless open payment options so riders can use their debit or credit cards — which I imagine almost everyone would do if available given the draconian nature of the existing fare system. That being said, even basic fixes have not been made, even when they could have been. For one, there are far too few fare machines everywhere. It is incredible to see people waiting 10-15 minutes or more at the airport when arriving in Montreal just to buy a pass to use the bus, which is a great way to discourage transit use and push people to Uber, where you can pay with almost zero headaches and probably save a lot of time! Even in major metro stations, you won’t see more than one of two fare machines, something that other Canadian cities get far better.
Even on the machines that do exist, the interface feels dated; clicking through options is painfully slow, there is no touch screen, and you have to dip your card — which through using the machines myself and watching friends use them, seems super unreliable.
The metro also lacks another fare technology that most other modern subway systems have — fare gates! Fare gates seem like a small deal, but design them right and they are faster than turnstiles, easier to use with a bag or a kid, and less likely to cause you organ damage if you card doesn’t read properly when you walk through. They also feel like an indicator species for a dated approach to transit.
Wayfinding, while on the whole quite good, also could be better. Next train screens are fairly frequent, but the time until the next train is too small. Onboard trains announcements are fine, but the digital wayfinding screens could be improved to provide more detail when pulling into stations about which direction to head for each (now-lettered) exit.
Another problem that quite literally hits you in the face on the metro is just how hot it is. I think the original sense back in the day — when Montreal was a bit colder on average and there was less service running and heating up the tunnels — was that the metro was more or less an ideal temperature without any help from air conditioning. That just doesn’t seem to be the case today. Trains are hot for a lot of the year and Paris’ new rubber-tired models have air conditioning (this is true in other cities too). Now, the classic excuse for this is that the Montreal Metro is a “sealed” system with its swing doors and entirely enclosed tracks, but I just don’t believe a solution to air conditioning the trains can’t be found. Perhaps doors need to be removed from entrances, perhaps new ventilation shafts need to be added (many have already been) but, not having cool comfortable trains is just bad. And while you might say “then the metro would be cold in winter!” it’s a lot easier to throw on an extra layer than to cool off today. At the same time, if the metro is operating frequent service, the amount of time waiting on hot or cold platforms (they would be hotter in summer with AC pumping heat out of trains) is almost always shorter than the amount of time spent on a train.
Speaking of frequency — it’s simply too low. Far too often when I get on the metro the next train isn’t for six or seven minutes, when I was in Toronto that was every three to five, and frankly the Toronto subway feels less busy than the Montreal metro (controlling for the different frequencies). This is doubly bad because trains were often packed even during off-peak periods — clearly the investment in 20-30% more service would make the experience of using the metro significantly better at a small cost. This cost could be brought down significantly if the STM were to start working towards automation as the RATP has done in Paris on both Line 1 and 2. This is something that the STM is not doing on the Blue line as part of extension are resignalling even if it would be a pretty obvious project, given the line isn’t that long today and a lot of the necessary infrastructure will be installed anyways.
There are also some learnings the system could take from the REM. Obviously the REM has air conditioning and is also automated — providing views that Montrealers seems to be really into.
The metro should go further though: Wifi is a great feature of the REM, and while I’d say it has limited use if your commute is short, once its over 10 minutes long it’s nice to be able to connect to fast and free wifi — especially given the high cost of wireless data in Canada (and not everyone has data!).
There should also absolutely be platform screen doors or gates at every station on the metro. It’s good for safety, and allows trains to enter at speed even with totally packed platforms. You can also have excellent digital wayfinding right on the screen doors. Better yet, they could be designed in such a way to mitigate the rather bothersome loud noise of the metro when a train is pulling into or exiting a station.
Another thing the metro really lacks even compared to other systems in North America is in-station washrooms. They don’t need to be fancy, they just need to be clean, and they should be implemented at interchanges and then at each station in order of ridership. Washrooms are like platform screen doors — really easy to hand-wave away, but the reality is they are a great accessibility feature, they help families, they help seniors, and they help make that odd time you really need a washroom a lot less brutal.
The final, but probably biggest thing the metro needs to fix is access. Any modern metro system should be fully accessible, and the Montreal Metro — while improving — is not, but if the city is smart it will take accessibility improvements as an opportunity for broader expansion. New accessible entrances should always be constructed if a station’s existing entrance is on the far side of platforms, expanding the station catchment, and new entrances should have integrated bike storage rooms to help expand the metro’s bike-friendliness without forcing more bikes onto trains.
If we were to implement these changes on the metro — and there are a fair few — the system would not only be in line with the best in the world, it would be one of the best. Poised to inspire other systems in North America, and provide the citizens of Montreal and beyond the world class system they deserve.
Excellent article, Reece! One thing that’s great about the Montreal metro that I’d add is the fact that there’s cell phone service on the entire network, which is not the case on other underground systems.
Regarding frequency, it used to be better before the pandemic. I remember trains would come every 2-3 minutes at rush hour and no more than every 5 minutes on the orange and green lines off-peak before 10pm on weekdays. The 10 minute frequencies in the evenings can be annoying if you’re transferring, but overall I still find the current metro frequencies tolerable, especially compared to the frequencies of many STM bus lines which have gotten much worse since 2020.
Great article and can't help but agree on all parts. As already noted frequency was and hopefully will be better again soon. I'd also point out that, even though it's behind schedule, they are in the process of installing tap and pay turn-styles.