A Ride on the R.E.M.

Montreal Just Opened North America's Most Ambitious New Transit System. (You Should Come Check it Out. Really.)

As I send out this dispatch, at 9 am on July 29, 2023, the first leg of Montreal’s Réseau express métropolitain (the R.E.M.), a new, and potentially transformative urban rail transit system, is opening. I’d say this day’s been a long time coming, but really, that’s not fair. Construction only began in April 2018. In the world of North American transit projects, five years is an eye blink. In fact, the first leg was supposed to be done in just three years—a proposed timeline I took with a grain of salt the size of the Ritz-Carlton.

The afternoon before opening day, I joined about fifty or so other journalists, YouTubers, and sundry transit “influencers” at Platform 9 of the Gare Centrale, Montreal’s main passenger rail station, the one that EXO suburban trains and VIA Rail intercity trains leave from.