Another year of data from Société de Transport de Montréal, Montreal's transit agency!
A few highlights this year:
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Although the Saint-Michel station closed for emergency repairs in November 2024, traffic never bounced back to its pre-closure levels and is still stuck somewhere around 2022 Q2 levels. I wonder if this could be caused by the roadwork on Jean-Talon for the new Blue Line stations making it harder for folks in Montreal-Nord to reach the station by bus.
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The effects of the opening of the Royalmount shopping center has had a durable impact on the traffic at the De la Savane station. I reported on this last year, but it seems this wasn't just a fad.
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With the completion of the Deux-Montagnes branch of the Réseau express métropolitain (REM, a light-rail, above the surface transit network still in construction), the transfer stations to the Montreal subway have seen major traffic increases. The Édouard-Montpetit station has nearly reached its previous all-time record of 2015 and the McGill station has recovered from the general slump all the other stations have had in 2025.
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The Assomption station, which used to have one of the lowest number of riders of the subway network, has had a tremendous growth in the past few years. This is mostly explained by the many high-rise projects that were built around the station since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Although still affected by a very high seasonality, the Jean-Drapeau station broke its previous record of 2019, a testament of the continued attraction power of the various summer festivals taking place on the Sainte-Hélène et Notre-Dame islands.
More generally, it seems the Montreal subway has had a pretty bad year. Traffic had been slowly climbing back since the COVID-19 pandemic, but this is the first year since 2020 such a sharp decline can be witnessed. Even major stations like Jean-Talon or Lionel-Groulx are on a downward trend and it is pretty worrisome.
As for causes, a few things come to mind. First of all, as the number of Montrealers commuting to work by bike continues to rise1, a modal shift from public transit to active mobility is to be expected. As local experts put it, this is not uncommon and has been seen in other cities before.
Another important factor that certainly turned people away from the subway this year has been the impacts of the continued housing crisis in Montreal. As more and more people get kicked out of their apartments, many have been seeking refuge in the subway stations to find shelter.
Sadly, this also brought a unprecedented wave of incivilities. As riders' sense of security sharply decreased, the STM eventually resorted to banning unhoused people from sheltering in the subway. This decision did bring back some peace to the network, but one can posit damage had already been done and many casual riders are still avoiding the subway for this reason.
Finally, the weekslong STM worker's strike in Q4 had an important impact on general traffic, as it severely reduced the opening hours of the subway. As for the previous item, once people find alternative ways to get around, it's always harder to bring them back.
Hopefully, my 2026 report will be a more cheerful one...
By clicking on a subway station, you'll be redirected to a graph of the station's foot traffic.
Licences
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The subway map displayed on this page, the original dataset and my modified dataset are licenced under CCO 1.0: they are in the public domain.
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The R code I wrote is licensed under the GPLv3+. It has not changed in a few years.
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Mostly thanks to major improvements to the cycling network and the BIXI bikesharing program. ↩