It’s a tough Friday for public transit users in Montreal: a portion of the metro’s green line has been paralyzed for several hours, the third interruption to occur there during the day, while strong winds forced the shutdown trains of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) between Montreal and the South Shore.
Around 10:30 a.m., water infiltration forced the interruption for an indefinite period
metro service on the green line, between Angrignon and Berri-UQAM stations. A special bus service runs from the Angrignon terminus to the Lionel-Groulx station, where it is possible to take the orange line to get around the city center.
The incident completed a hat trick of service outages for this section of the Green Line on Friday. Around 9:30 a.m., a train breakdown paralyzed it for a quarter of an hour, after a first water infiltration, which occurred shortly before 6 a.m., caused the service to stop for around an hour, still between the Angrignon and Berri-UQAM stations.
Metro cars were crowded Friday afternoon when service on the green line resumed. This video was filmed on the platform of the Berri-UQAM station in the direction of Côte-Vertu (orange line).
Photo : - / François Joly
At the end of the afternoon, the City of Westmount indicated to - that a pipe which is part of its network had been blocked and backfilled. The Société de transport de Montréal (STM), however, claimed that water continued to flow, and Westmount said it believed there could be another leak; additional checks were underway.
The REM affected by the wind
After being immobilized for two hours during rush hour on Thursday, Halloween evening, for an unknown reason, the REM service was once again interrupted between Central Station and Panama station, around the time of noon, Friday, due to strong winds.
At the time of the interruption, the wind reached 70 km/h steadily and the gusts were even stronger
explained CDPQ Infra spokesperson Francis Labbé by email. As the wind blows even stronger on the Samuel-De Champlain Bridge, we prefer not to take any risks with the safety of our users.
The REM gradually resumed service around 1:20 p.m.
With information from François Joly
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