Édouard-Montpetit metro station is one of two stations serving the Outremont area on the North-Western side of Mount Royal. It is also one of two stations serving the Université de Montréal campuses. Located on one of Montréal’s busiest bus lines (Bus 51 on Boulevard Édouard-Montpetit), this station is slated to become even more important to the integrated public transit system on the island when the REM’s station connected to Édouard-Montpetit metro is completed.
Flanked on the Blue Line by Acadie and Université-de-Montréal metro stations, Édouard-Montpetit provides access to much of the Côte-des-Neiges area of the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-des-Grâces borough as well as parts of Outremont. Passengers seeking to reach Université de Montréal’s campus, and more specifically the CEPSUM sports complex, will find this station very useful. Other nearby destinations of interest include the Belvedere Outremont and the Mt. Royal Cemetery on Mount Royal.
There are two ground level entrances at this station, one with 24 stair-steps and one with 22 stair-steps. At the terminal level, there is a bi-directional escalator to reach the upper section of the platform level, but passengers can only go down to or up from the platforms by taking 22 stair-steps.
Crucially, the current state of the Édouard-Montpetit station is temporary at this point. In 2018, construction started on the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) Édouard-Montpetit station. The same station used to be an exo train station on the Deux-Montagnes line which was closed at the end of 2020 in preparation of the continued conversion of the rail line to the REM system. The REM station at Édouard-Montpetit will be one of three in Montréal connecting to the STM’s metro lines, the other two being the McGill station connecting the McGill station on the Green Line and the Gare Centrale station connecting to Bonaventure on the Orange Line. All three of these metro stations will stand to benefit in terms of improved accessibility due to the infrastructure changes being made in the construction process. In the case of Édouard-Montpetit, this means an underground tunnel connecting the stations as well as “high-capacity and high-speed” elevators going down to the metro line platform as well as the 72-meter-deep REM platform.
New infrastructure projects, especially in public transportation systems, provide great benefits on their own to the city and its inhabitants. The benefits they give to nearby existing infrastructure can be just as impactful too, if they are correctly considered. The REM plans have made a commitment to making their stations “universally accessible.” However, universal accessibility can only be reached when an entire system is accessible. This is why it is so important for REM to continue working with the STM and their other multimodal transportation partners to make their services accessible and to integrate the various transportation systems with each other in a fluid and obstacle-less manner. There is a lot to learn from a project of this scale even before it has been fully realized, but it is never too early, especially for leaders of other infrastructure projects, big or small, to start paying attention.