For this Station Spotlight, we go to Parc Metro station. This station stands out on the blue line as a hub for commuters due to its connection to the Parc railway station (Gare Jean-Talon) which serves Exo trains to the Greater Montréal Area. It is also one of two stations near Parc Jarry, one of Montréal’s bigger parks. Parc Jarry’s many sports fields, open spaces, and public pool attract Montrealers of all ages and abilities. The station’s proximity to the Stade IGA, which once was the stomping ground of the Montréal Expos but is today used for tennis tournaments such as the Rogers Cup, is particularly appealing for sports enthusiasts. It is also an essential connection to the Park-Extension and Mile-Ex neighborhoods, both for residents and visitors.
Parc has a single entrance at the ground level which has bi-directional escalators moving passengers to and from the terminal level, as well as a 70-step staircase. From there, the passenger is faced with a troubling obstacle. Parc provides an example of one of the most commonly found issues in Montreal’s three-leveled metro station that was identified by 4 Days 4 Lines’s audit of the Montreal metro. These “Limbo Stations,” as we call them, have escalators from one level to another, but only stairs between the other two. At Parc metro station, this problem manifests itself in the lack of escalators going down from the terminal level to the platform level, despite the presence of escalators from the ground level to the terminal. This leaves passengers with reduced mobility in a “Limbo” state at the terminal level where they are forced to take the 23 steps up from or down to the trains if they need to utilize this station.
