Montreal Metro | Part of the green line stopped until at least Saturday morning

After the blue line, it is the turn of the green line of the Montreal metro to be disrupted by breakdowns. On Friday, a breakdown lasting more than twelve hours forced hundreds of people to take a shuttle between the Angrignon and Lionel-Groulx stations. And that could still be the case on Saturday.

Green line trains stopped running between Angrignon and Berri-UQAM stations at 10:22 a.m. Friday due to water infiltration.

At 7 p.m., the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) indicated on X that the service interruption was extended “at least until the end of metro service [vendredi] evening “.

“I must have been waiting for a good hour and a half, luckily it didn’t happen on Halloween,” said Samia Lalie, who was returning from work in the middle of rush hour, around 5 p.m. .

Between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., the line of users who wanted to go to the west of the city circled the Lionel-Groulx station entrance, from Atwater Avenue to Saint-Jacques Street. All around, dozens of disgruntled people were trying to reach a loved one by telephone to inform them of the situation. Others, when they left the metro, were stunned to see what awaited them.

Valeria Neault and Olivia Beauregard arrived from Cégep de Saint-Laurent, where they study. Valeria had noticed that service on the green line had been interrupted in the morning, but she had no idea that the outage would last until the end of the day. “We’ll probably walk and take another bus further away,” she suggested to her friend.

Special constables as well as STM agents were present outside the station to give directions to users.

People who wanted to go to the Berri-UQAM station were invited to take the orange line, which was not affected by the outage.

Unresolved pipe break

The water infiltration is due to a pipe break on De Maisonneuve Boulevard, between Elm and Greene streets, not far from the Lionel-Groulx station, the STM said in a press release.

“The problem persists due, in particular, to the significant flow coming from the aqueduct network,” she added. The City of Westmount is responsible for the pipe repair work. But first, excavation work must be carried out to reach the valve.

In the metro, the water will have to be completely pumped out before service can resume, due to the numerous electrical installations.

An eventful Friday

In total, three interruptions were announced on Friday, before the STM closed the section of the green line for good for an indefinite period. At 6 a.m., water infiltration led to a first service interruption.

“We had installed corrugated panels to prevent the accumulation of water, but as these did not hold, there was a new leak,” explained the Transport Company.

In the evening, the other antenna of the green line, between Berri-UQAM and Honoré-Beaugrand, was shut down for around thirty minutes, due to the presence of an unauthorized person on the way.

All this occurs while on the blue line, the Saint-Michel station, closed for a month due to the significant deterioration of a beam, is still not close to welcoming users again. In an update on the progress of the work last week, the STM spoke of an upcoming reopening in the “coming weeks”.

Not easy in the REM

Friday was also difficult for users of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), with strong winds blowing at more than 70 km/h also leading to the interruption of service a little after midday. The light train was, however, able to start running again a little before 2 p.m. This was a second technical glitch in two days for the REM, after another interruption that occurred during rush hour on Thursday, Halloween evening. “As the wind is blowing even stronger on the Samuel-De Champlain Bridge, we prefer not to take any risks with the safety of our users,” said a spokesperson for CDPQ Infra by email.