Creative the STM social media team is. The Montreal metro map got a Star Wars-themed makeover to mark May the Fourth, the unofficial holiday celebrating the beloved sci-fi franchise. Now if only the metro could move at light speed. The reimagined map replaces all 68 real station names with Star Wars puns.
Political will is aligning behind a transit project that would link Montreal and its northern suburbs. The mayors of Laval, Montréal-Est and the North Shore municipalities of Terrebonne, Mascouche and Repentigny are now calling for a new line connecting their cities to Montreal's East End, including direct connections to the blue and green lines of the Montreal metro.
Pie-IX, born Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, was a 19th-century pope. Charles-Théodore Viau was a moustached businessman and landowner. Jean-Baptiste Henri-Dominique Lacordaire was a fervent Catholic preacher. And François Charles Stanislas Langelier was a career politician. All of them are dead. All of them were men. And all of them are namesakes for the provisional labels attached to future Montreal metro stations on the blue line extension: Pie-IX, Viau, Lacordaire and Langelier. But these monikers likely won't be as tenacious as the white patriarchy these men represent. An STM spokesperson told MTL Blog that the transit company plans to unveil the official names for blue line extension stations in 2023. The organization has also recommitted to including the names of women and nods to "multicultural and Indigenous realities" in its considerations.
2022 was a big year for Montreal transit. 2023 could be even bigger. With a Montreal metro extension charging ahead, the opening of the first branch of the highly anticipated Réseau express métropolitain (REM) and several other projects either already under construction, in the planning stages or otherwise on the table, Montrealers will see some monumental changes in the next decade. Some could fundamentally reshape city.This map shows what the network could look like when construction is done and if some projects in the works actually come to fruition.
After over a decade of planning and construction, the Pie-IX bus rapid transit route (BRT, or SRB in French) will finally begin operation on Monday, November 7. The 11-kilometre line crosses the whole width of Montreal Island from east to west, from Mercier–Hochelaga Maisonneuve to Montréal-Nord, and pokes into eastern Laval.