My thoughts on Montréal transportation

2025 01 28

Montréal is the second largest francophone city in the world, behind Paris. Much like its bigger sibling, Montréalais transportation is a consistent point of discussion when the city comes up in conversation, and for good reason. Montréal's history has seen its road network develop in a unusual way for Canada, its public transport has achieved global accolades, and cycling has quickly become a part of the city's identity in recent years. Despite this, I kinda hate navigating Montréal. And it's not cus strangers speak french to me.

The same unique history that resulted in the Montréalais road network is also the history that has led to its overdevelopment and subsequent neglect. The île de Montréal is absolutely hell to navigate in a motor vehicles, with excessive, confusing, and inconsistent signage, hardly any lane markings, rediciulously overbuilt junctions, and different right on red regulations from the rest of Québec. And despite the overbuilt road network, there is still horrible traffic

Driving in Montréal is slow, disastorously stressful, and only became possible with the introduction of the "GPS". And you'll be dealing with while being pelted with split second decisions and poor asphalt quality. But maybe this is a good thing? Montréal probably doesn't need it, since it has such a succesful rapid transit network with the métro.

And very well, the métro is the darling of many residents of the city and onlookers alike. Beautiful station architecture, impressive Québécois trains, and sits in the throne of the fastest way to get from point A to point B. Which are all also problems of the métro network.

The métro de Montréal is goldplated to hell and back, has unconventional trains that solve problems that don't exist, and is frustratingly slow for what it is. It also hasn't been expanded in a significant way in almost half a century, and has been outgrown by the city that it belongs to, as a result of the goldplating and trains. The trains on their own cause so many problems.

The métro here uses rubber tyres for the most part, instead of steel wheels on steel rails. This makes the métro unable to handle snow, and the city has naively interpreted this barrier to mean that they need to tunnel the whole network, which is why it makes expansion impossible. These rubber tyres burn into the air from the heat of friction, leaving the air full of microplastics, and the city can't ventilate the stations since it is fully tunnelled. This lack of ventilation also means zero climate control, and the métro is consistently around 10° hotter than the surface, which is kinda unbearable in a city that reaches +30° regularly. To combat this, the new trains use forced air blasts inside the trains to give the illusion of a cooler environment, which makes wearing a skirt a very bad idea (why should i wear something just for the metro?). The inaccessible stations also tend to lead to massive and dangerous stroads at surface level, which feels just grand.

Montréal tends to get a lot of talk around its new métro system, curiously branded separately as the REM. the Transit app, which is based in Montréal, chooses to use this as a justification to disambiguate them by calling the métro a "metro" and the REM a "subway", despite being a mostly elevated line. At least the words technically mean the same thing? I just hope one day we will refer to transit modes based on level of service and priority over other modes, rather than artifically segregating two trains into different categories despite functioning very similarly.

The fundamental difference with the REM is that it uses steel wheels, and so it's allowed to go above ground. This means it actually gets to exist. It also is much smoother ride, in a whole other league for speed, way more accessible and fun, and reminder, it actually exists. I like the REM. but, this is what should be the backbone of the whole island. The REM only covers the west island and south shore, and without REM l'est (which was cancelled) to the east and north of the island, it feels too isolated. The whole island deserves higher order transit that isn't the métro green line. The REM just isn't currently extensive enough to make up the workhouse of the network over the métro, despite having a higher potential for capacity, coverage, and level of service.

What picks up the slack for the lack of coverage is the bus network. The slow, mixed traffic, domestic, low capacity buses. Not even tramways or bus rapid transit. And you'll know it isn't rapid once you discover the kinds of frequencies you see all over the place. every 15 minutes is the minimum guys, not an aspirational goal. The city only has 10 all day frequent services, and they're unreliable. Come on guys. 20min isn't acceptable. Not when it provides such a critical amount of coverage. Ottawa, with 1/4 the population, has almost 30 frequent bus routes, a third of which are rapid transit. Montréal can do better than 10 frequent bus routes that are slow and unreliable. Seriously.

I know im coming at this from the priviledged perspective of living in cities where bus rapid transit and dedicated tramways are normal, but yeah, fast buses that come every couple seconds are more useful than buses you can't rely on. Specially when you aren't able to build for capacity or speed elsewhere.

Now Montréal does have bus rapid transit with the service rapide par bus Pie-IX, complete with its own excessively separate branding, but it does bring more questions than answers. If it takes this long and this much money to... re-activate a old BRT corridor... how the fuck does Montréal expect to complete its long term public transport plans, which are dependent on BRT and tramways everywhere.

And, I am so sorry, but the issues do not just end at the services themselves. In fact, sometimes I am able to look past the fundamentally flawed system when it works. But the way information is presented to users, and the way one pays fares, is so absolutely horrendous that it will barge down the system for as long as it takes.

I've made reference to it already, but system branding in Montréal is a mess. The métro is symbolised with a down arrow, regional rail (exo) is symbolised with an up arrow, and these are fine (or.. they would.. we'll get there). The REM, which is essentially just a modern take on the metro, is symbolised with an... R. The letter R. The one SRB line in the city is denoted with... the generic rhombus symbol for "desingated use area", which are used for all number of things in Canada, including bicycle infrastructure, high occupancy vehicle lanes, and tramways. But the generic rhombus is treated like a logo anyways,

This isn't... too bad, on its own. I suppose. Metro and REM being different is really annoying, but acceptable. But it isn't consistently applied, at all, and there's lots of throwaway language that isn't useful. ARTM, RTM, STM, AMT, train, commuter rail, light rail, light metro, regional rail, exo, etc.. Lots of duplicated language that just adds confusion, especially in the RÉSO. Lots of dated signage that no longer means anything, too. Have fun finding the AMT trains the sign pointed you to (they don't exist anymore). figuring out where the fuck you're going is a task in and off itself. The RÉSO gets a special mention, since all the private property owners choose their own signage without any standards or understanding of how to make signs. The RÉSO is a complete mess. It's all so heavily neglected that you'll hear about people making their own signage and putting it in the stations and RÉSO, and no one takes it down cus it's better than the official shit. But it's still all so confusing, and there's very little standardisation or integration. it feels like no one has talked to anyone else. it's so annoying. Why does regional rail and buses even need its own separate brand name from the rest of the network? Put that shit in the trash. And why aren't graphics and maps and shit standardised? why? why are there different signs to mean the same thing? it's so unbelievable. allo exo? allo exo to hell man

(i know allo exo is a slogan and not a service logo separate from exo, but it sure as hell is stylised as a new type of service, and since it's montréal, you can never know.)

this extends to primarily text-based communication as well. The websites are very verbose and sort information in a very strange way, and are difficult to navigate in a way that is useful. They also overcomplicate just about everything, and duplicates tons of information, but all in slightly different ways, making it feel like new complimentary info. And there's often just missing information? There's absolutely no mention of fare-paid zones on the société de transport de Montréal webpage about transfers? How is someone who has never used transit before supposed to know that you are allowed to transfer between two transfer lines on one fare, simply due to the physical structure of the station enabling it implicitly?

Here's an example of how bad it gets:

Why is the page on "trains and tunnels" accessed from the "Discover the STM and its history" page, which itself is accessed from the "about" page, which, in turn, is accessed from the nav bar. And why is the page itself about.. the speed of the metro, and not about the mont-royal tunnel for mainline trains? See, "train" in Montréal is a reserved term in the wayfinding and graphic design, and refers specifically to regional rail (exo), not the metro. Huh? Beyond that, shouldn't it be rolled into a page about the metro system, and not be orphaned on a entirely separate page. And why is it so roundabout and verbose for something so simple and straightforward? And it isn't just a translation thing, these are also all true for the French version.

(the english pages do have some VERY funny translations though)

But. Here's the thing, there's more than just the STM website. exo and the REM have their own sites, as well as bixi bike share, despite all being used in conjuction with each other. They all have these problems, and range from "aesthetically boring with some cute flourishes" to "ah i see what you were going for but this is just ugly". But the mere fact there are separate sites with their own disparate UX and UI which contain overlapping information, is a wonderful example of the choatic and confusing mess of how information is communicated to the user. Don't get me started how off-island buses have different branding and systems behind them, despite exo, the metro, AND REM, all going off-island.

I wanna make special mention to Paige Saunders' video about wayfinding on the Toronto subway, from the perspective of a Montréal resident. The thing is, though, Montréal's graphics may be better, but they're still bad, and suffer from many of the same issues. They both fall flat on their face when compared to Ottawa, which is wild when you realise that Ottawa has to deal with mutliple languages (toronto: english. montréal: french. ottawa: english AND french) and a provincial border.

In all honesty, the way Ottawa communicates public transport to people is one of the standouts of the system in general. It's probably the best I've ever seen, which feels very wrong to say. I must've been somewhere that does it better?

One of the reasons this is all so important is because of fare payment. Paying fares in a large city region is inherently complicated. This is one of the reasons fare cards were invented, in order to simplify payment to the user. make the computer do the hard work for you. Unfortunately, montréal didn't get the memo with the OPUS card.

OPUS sucks. It just sucks. Paying fares in general is just obnoxious. But OPUS is meant to be the solution.

So, instead of putting money on the card and then it figuring out the fares for you, OPUS makes you buy individual fares. Also there are 4 fare zones, and you must make sure you buy the correct fare. Also there are passes, some of which are valid in all zones, some of which are only valid in certain zones. Have fun buying 3 single tickets in a row cus you got fucked over by transfers and then spending more than a day pass. Forgot that your weekend trip had a bigger monday portion than a friday portion? your loss for buying a weekend pass and not a 3 day pass. Got a 3 day pass for that reason and your hotel is in Brossard? sorry, only the weekend pass is zoneless, despite being cheaper than the A-zone only 3 day pass. Taking the metro more than you expected that week and you only bought a 3 day pass? haha, sorry, but you cant just buy the cheaper 7 day pass.

ALSO you can't load some fare combinations onto one OPUS card. I've had to buy paper tickets because a machine wouldn't let me load the fare I needed onto my OPUS. why. i know some people who dual wield multiple OPUS cards for this reason.

You will waste so much money simply due to user error if you use OPUS. You will lose so much money from getting overwhelmed by the 50 page ticket option menu and just pulling out some cash and putting it in the machine. It does basically nothing for the user. imagine precisely figuring out the exact number of tickets you need in a month, buying those, then getting layed off, and taking way more trips than you normally would cus you have so much more free time. youre spending way more on tickets cus you didnt buy the monthly pass. at least the monthly pass is only 100 bucks for zone A

Also, you need to load it on either a proprietary app (as off Q4 2024! didnt exist before then!) or use a physical ticket machine. there arent enough ticket machines in stations to fulfill the needs of almost Every Rider. Before the end of 2024, the only way to load OPUS without a dedicated machiine, was to get a proprietary OPUS chip reader add-on for your computer, so that you could use OPUS online.

ugh. i hate opus so much. it gets my blood boiling.

OPUS on its own makes me dread using public transport in the region. I hate it so much. But everything on top of that just makes it not feasible for a shocking number of trips. It's often better to bike or walk somewhere, which i like siince it gives me authority over it.

so montréal is becoming kinda a biking city. that's cool. they got a bike share system and everything

problem: getting the bike share requires installing a proprietary app and having mobile internet. which is just, a massive barrier to entry for basic mobility. why are bixi keys not more available, and why can't i just use the transit app to unlock the bike. transit app is MADE in montreal. they can make it work. i just want all my transport stuff centralised into that app ;-;

and so much of the city, even on-island is filled with these absolute hell zones where biking and walking is terryfing. it feels like every residential street in montreal also a throughway. and the stairs everywhere just sucks for accessibility.

still better in a lot of cases, when compared to driving and public transport. but the problem with that is that that is on purpose. its a crutch, and fails to solve the fundamental speed and capacity issues in the city's transport network. it should be an additional layer to the transportation, not the only useful option. i personally generally prefer using my body exclusively to get places, but that's often unrealistic and i need the help of a bus. but thats also unrealistic in montreal? cus shits so bad.

but like still so much better than driving and public transport.

overall. getting around in montréal sucks when you really thnk about it! in practice, though, most people aren't gonna notice, and a load of people in the city actually love their city for its transportation network. The infrastructure is really cool, to be fair. But i take issue with how seamless and easy it is to use, how fast it is, and coverage.

this is where i say that the montréal metro has by far the worst seating layout i have ever seen in ANY public transport vehicle. Hardly any seats, but the way theyre positioned causes huge passenger flow issues.