After six years of construction, detours, and patience-testing delays, the Réseau express métropolitain's Deux-Montagnes branch has arrived. Fourteen new stations now link downtown Montreal to the North Shore, slashing a two-hour rush-hour drive down to about thirty minutes by light rail.

The expansion triples the REM network from 17 to 50 kilometres and quadruples the number of stations from five to nineteen. When the full system is completed by the Anse-à-l'Orme branch set for spring 2026 and the airport connection scheduled for 2027, Montreal will have 67 kilometres of automated light rail and 26 stations.

It's already the world's largest automated light-rail system, and it's only getting bigger.

How it works

Service runs from 5:30 a.m. from both Brossard and Deux-Montagnes stations. Trains arrive every five minutes during rush hour, designed to move more than 42,000 people between 6 and 9 a.m. once ridership reaches capacity. The last train from Gare Centrale to Deux-Montagnes departs at 8:45 p.m.; after that, bus service takes over between Côte-de-Liesse and Deux-Montagnes to allow for continued testing ahead of the Anse-à-l'Orme launch.

The fourteen stations on the Deux-Montagnes branch are, from north to south:

Deux-Montagnes
Grand-Moulin
Sainte-Dorothée
Île-Bigras
Pierrefonds-Roxboro
Sunnybrooke
Bois-Franc
Du Ruisseau
Montpellier
Côte-de-Liesse
Ville-de-Mont-Royal
Canora
Édouard-Montpetit
McGill

Three of those—Édouard-Montpetit, McGill, and Bonaventure—connect directly to the metro, stitching the light rail into the city's existing transit fabric. The route travels through Mount Royal and across three waterways—the St. Lawrence River, Rivière des Prairies, and Rivière des Mille-Îles. Riders can now cross Mount Royal in under three minutes, a first for the city.

Fares follow the ARTM's zone system: $3.75 for trips within Montreal, scaling up to $9.50 for the farthest zones. A ride from Deux-Montagnes to Brossard, connecting the North and South shores through downtown costs $7.

Architecture that moves

The stations themselves are the work of a consortium between Lemay, Perkins+Will, and Bisson Fortin, three firms that spent years figuring out how to give the REM a cohesive identity while letting each station respond to its specific context. While some meet neighbourhoods at ground level, others are above highways or burrow underground, connecting to the metro's blue, green, and orange lines at Édouard-Montpetit, McGill, and Bonaventure stations. The Édouard-Montpetit station, carved deep into the tunnel under Mount Royal, is now the second-deepest station in North America.

"Designing a station excavated directly into rock at that depth came with challenges—mainly, how to make it feel welcoming rather than claustrophobic. The solution was generous public spaces that take advantage of the natural cavern geometry, with heightened ceilings that open up the volume," says Bisson Fortin.

Light, refined finishes create a calm environment, while carefully lit sections of exposed rock highlight the station's distinctive character. Artworks inspired by the mountain's materiality reinforce that sense of place. Even the vertical experience got attention: lighting accompanies the movement of the elevators, softening the perception of depth as riders ascend or descend.

What ties them together is a distinct architectural language built around movement, transparency, and identity. The rhythm of vertical and horizontal lines run across facades and interiors, visually echoing trains' movement, while floor-to-ceiling glass curtain walls with the occasional screen-printed pattern let in natural light.

"Rather than treating glazing as a simple barrier, the design develops it into a performative skin through carefully calibrated glare-reducing fritted patterns. The pattern creates a dynamic visual experience that responds to passenger movement... in vertical circulation spaces, rhythmic patterns reinforce the sense of ascension and mark the transition between movement speeds. On platforms, horizontal striations echo the train's kinetic energy—its acceleration and deceleration," writes Lemay.

It's a choreography of movement, with the envelope treatment participating in the distinction between "slow" and "fast" spaces. Finally, Quebec-sourced engineered wood warms up all that modern glass, running across ceilings and slats both inside and out.

The materials tell a story about durability and scale through grooved concrete panels and metal cladding that hold up against Montreal winters and maintain a clean, recognizable look.

Each station responds to its specific context while maintaining that cohesive identity. At the Mont-Royal station, for instance, the prefabricated panels were designed using a colour palette inspired by surrounding buildings—especially the characteristic red-brick architecture of the neighbourhood—ensuring visual continuity. The station's trench-type construction minimizes its visual impact and preserves key urban sightlines, allowing it to blend naturally into its environment while providing a smooth transit experience.

Essentially, you'll know a REM station when you see one, whether you're in Deux-Montagnes or Brossard.

Not without challenges

The rollout hasn't been without challenges. The South Shore branch, which opened in July 2023, experienced power outages, switch failures, and breakdowns during its first winter. Reporting by CityNews detailed service disruptions in early 2024 which tested riders' patience and forced CDPQ Infra to rethink its approach.

Charles Emond, CEO of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, said the operator has since purchased new equipment, modified systems that struggled through winter conditions, increased resources, and brought in international expertise to prevent similar issues on the Deux-Montagnes line. There's also been extensive work on noise mitigation with dynamic absorbers installed directly on rails to reduce vibrations, plus noise barriers including new gabion walls (wire mesh structures filled with stones) in areas like Île-Bigras, Deux-Montagnes, Saint-Laurent, and Town of Mount Royal.

The phased approach to opening the branches—Deux-Montagnes first, Anse-à-l'Orme in spring 2026, the airport in 2027—gives the operator time to manage the jump from 17 kilometres to 67 without overwhelming the system. That's the strategy for a project that's grown from an estimated $7 billion at launch in 2016 to $9.4 billion.

Still, the REM was completed at roughly half the cost per kilometre of comparable North American projects, with 50 kilometres in operation after seven years—a timeline many similar transit builds take over a decade to achieve.

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Thom Seivewright

The Design Behind the REM's 14 New Stations, and Changing How Montreal Moves