After four years of work, the new Mont-Royal metro entrance was inaugurated on Tuesday morning. Equipped with two lifts, this station has become the twentieth in the metro network to be accessible to people with reduced mobility. However, the work is not finished and the escalators will not be in operation before the fall.
Installing elevators in existing stations is a costly and complex operation, especially since in the case of the Mont-Royal station, the authorities wanted to maintain access to the métro during the four years of construction. “We are facing technical constraints that are not easily overcome,” explained the chairman of the board of directors of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), Éric Alan Caldwell.
The new aedicula, built at a cost of 50 million dollars, is almost three times larger than the previous one. Equipped with bay windows that let in natural light and a green roof covering an area of 75 square meters, the building will include a mural called “ I come back home » created by the artist Simon Bilodeau.
The fluidity of movement has been improved inside the entrance hall, but the designers took particular care for the light inside the station. “One of the guiding principles of metro station design since the 1960s has been to bring natural light deep into the stations. That’s what we tried to recreate here,” explained architect Patrice Monfette.
To carry out the project and add a footbridge above the tracks, the vault of the metro also had to be consolidated. The materials used, i.e. the brown bricks of the walls and the granite of the floor, are the same as those already present in the station. As for the vertical works present on the quays and created by Charles Daudelin, they will be reinstalled after their restoration.
Slow progress
Mont-Royal station is the twentieth station to be made accessible in the métro network. By 2030, their number should reach 30. The next station to be ready will be that of Place-des-Arts, indicated the councilor and vice-president of the board of directors of the STM, Laurence Parent.
The STM does not yet know when all the metro network stations will be made accessible. “The stations that will remain to be done will be the most difficult and the most expensive”, warns Eric Alan Caldwell. “We will, of course, have to find the financing. »
The opposition to the town hall welcomed the inauguration of the new aedicule, but considers that progress in terms of accessibility is too slow. “Projet Montréal is progressing at a snail’s pace in making metro stations universally accessible. In 2022, only 20 metro stations are currently equipped with elevators out of a total of 68. This is not even a third! Accessibility to metro stations must be a priority,” commented Mayor of Montreal North and member of Ensemble Montreal, Christine Black.