Excellent video! Kudos for getting on the first train from the farm fields of Brossard.

Fastest REM Rider Alive

POV you're a disgruntled Montréalais starting your 5AM commute and the REM doors open to a sea of foam: "😬📸😬📸🤓📸😬😬😬📸😷📸😬" Just kidding, I have been waiting for this line to open for years! Glad you had an adventure up here in La Belle Province.

22:57 was LITERALLY where I had my first experience with liminal spaces to that bizarre of an extent. I was 7 and we were staying at the hotel inside Place Bonaventure (don’t recall if it had been a Hilton or not at the time) and I was 7 years old. We got lost walking back from Gare Centrale (of course) and the area we ended up in looked exactly like that.

I love how it's Day 1 and spiders are already at the stations to make themselves at home 😂You moving so quickly from it after realizing it could jump on you was priceless. And you're right, from the bridge, it DOES look like Hong Kong with the mountains! I'm impressed with the REM! I think going the elevated route was a solid choice! Building not just an elevated system, but one with platform screen doors is not only protecting people between stations with the complete grade-separation and inside stations with the platform screen doors, but also no accidents with cars would occur! And of course, you're saving money by not tunneling! Not to mention, elevated trains are an iconic part of urban cultures, like the L in Chicago and the 7 in Queens! REM will make the lives of Montrealers and those in its suburbs way better! On top of having a convenient way to the airport as part of the system's ambitions! But I gotta say: A little touch that I appreciate they did is the sound they chose for when the doors open and close at 0:40 and 1:07. It's literally like you're logging into Windows 98 REM edition. Chef's kiss.

Channels like yours, Selig's Trains and Travels, Classy Whale, and all the other "transit shenanigans" channels out in KZfaq have given me an inspiration to go on similar trips, be thankful for transit in my area, and, in general, take more transit. I feel like I'm not alone here. Y'all have been a force of good in this world.

"That bus lane will be redundant starting today. There's gonna be no more buses using it today" *Famous last words.* And the Joker laugh at 5:24 is so perfect. The chaos of the REM dying and replaced with bus service, Reece being on a passing train, the fanfare, the wonderful views, backrooms, this was quite the experience to review the system! The rolling stock is part of the Alstom Metropolis family. 106 of these two-car trains were built in Sri City in Andhra Pradesh, India. They held a competition on the design for the trains, and the Saint-Laurent design won, with the front lights of the trains being inspired by the new Champlain Bridge. The snail you saw looks like Cepaea hortensis or the white-lipped snail. The native distribution of this species is Western and Central Europe, and they've since been introduced to the northeastern US and Canada, like there in Montreal.

I'm glad they replaced the original Champlain bridge, on top of adding rail space for the REM! The old 1962 one (which was a steel truss cantilever) was extremely degraded by de-icing salt and couldn't handle higher volumes of traffic. Now it can! The current cable-stay bridge was designed by Poul Ove Jensen, who was Dissing+Weitling's project manager for the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark! He also participated in the design for the Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden. It is one of the largest infrastructure projects ever built in North America and with an estimated 59 million vehicles a year, one of the busiest crossings on the continent. It is built to last 125 years with the usage of stainless steel and high-performance concrete. And yes, the English name of Île des Sœurs is Nuns' Island. Basically from 1706 all the way to 1956, the nuns used the island for farming. In 1956, they sold it and the provincial government merged it with Verdun. The development of the island began in earnest with the opening of the original bridge. As part of a master plan, three thousand people moved into 800 units by 1968. Then three high-rise apartments were built the year after. After land was reclaimed, unsystematic construction has continued rapidly since then. Over 20,000 lived there based on a 2016 census.

Love this! I saw you guys at the Panama station during the breakdown. I was one of the hapless commuters who was late for work waiting in line. Heard you guys at the back of the bus. Great insight into the lack of information and signage. It's damned annoying because you know they could do better. Personally I think you're better than Reece. You at least acknowledged that walking into the Panama station will be cold as fuck during the winter. No one else mentioned that.

Really great system, sets an awesome standard for North American Rapid Transit for sure. Can't wait to see the completed system with all of the branches, and hopefully the REM East ends up getting built in spite of all of the NIMBYs

It was a pleasure to meet you there and be your living translators lmao! Nice video as always, and we hope that you'll come back to visit once the other branches open to public! Oli & Jules

So basically, what they did at Gare Centrale with the REM platforms is what the MTA did with the 42nd Street Shuttle. Gare Centrale was designed by John Schofield, architect-in-chief of CNR or Canadian National Railway. Construction started in 1926 but was halted in 1930 as a result of the Great Depression. Construction resumed in 1939 and finally opened in July 1943, as the first of a series of large-scale urban redevelopment projects. Along designing it and hotels for the railway, he also designed several schools, churches, Montreal Forum, commercial buildings, and hospitals, as well as residential buildings in both Montreal and Kingston, Ontario. Learning another language when you visit another place is part of diving into the culture, so if anything, the signage and announcements being in French is motivation to continue learning. Quebec French is so interesting. On top of its isolation from the evolution of European French, which Quebec French retained some of the French verbs, vocabulary, and expressions used in 17th-and 18th-century, they also created new French-sounding words and try to Anglicize as little as possible. Like in France, parking is parking, but in Quebec, parking is stationnement

Always a good day when there's a metro opening somewhere in the world - thanks for bringing us along! That transfer at Gare Centrale is bizarre though...

On Saturday during the test opening of Brossard, the city government had a little table set up explaining their development vision for the areas around stations. The main thing I saw and understood in my poor French is that they want to revitalize the area around Panama and make it into their new downtown. I bet this is a very long term project but I'm excited to see it come into shape!

The quote from La Press about you and Jeremy: « C’est vraiment plaisant et c’est beau. C’est le système de métro le plus moderne en Amérique du Nord présentement », s’était réjoui le jeune Miles Taylor, venu des États-Unis pour visiter le REM. « C’est vraiment smooth. C’est comme dans du beurre », a plaisanté son ami Jeremy Zorek, à son côté. "It is really pleasant and nice looking. It is the most modern system in North America at the moment" said with joy the young Kilometres Taylor, who came from the United States to visit the REM. "It's really smooth, like butter" joked his friend Jeremy Zorez at his side.

The lady's voice on the REM is not just a voice , she is an well known actress in Canada , USA and Europe ..Caroline Dhavernas is a Canadian actress. In the United States, her best known work has been her collaborations with Bryan Fuller. She played Jaye Tyler in the Fox comedy-drama series Wonderfalls, and Alana Bloom in the NBC psychological horror drama series Hannibal. She also starred as Lily Brenner in the ABC medical drama Off the Map. From 2017 to 2019, she portrayed the titular character in the Canada-produced and Canadian- and American-distributed medical drama-black comedy Mary Kills People. She is fully bilingual with no accent , her husband and family are also actors and actresses .

DUDE YOU'RE FUNNY AS HELL!! I follow a bunch of transit channels and they all have their distinct styles and merits, but your bigger-than-life presentation, impromptu observations on the smallest of things and superdaddy jokes brings a fresh air of joy to transit reviews!! I was laughing all the way and totally wheezed on the STCUM bahaha You deserve much success! Keep up your hard work and whimsical style, and in no time you'll break 100k, 500k subs and beyond! I live in Toronto and couldn't be in MTL for the opening but surely will tour all the stations, let's see if it evolves from Screen Zero to Screen One! cheers yo

So much of Cities Skylines starts making sense after seeing North American cities and public transportation systems.

everyone just went crazy when they saw reece

I'm so happy you and your group of friends came to Montreal!! I took the REM on Saturday when it opened and wondered if I'd see you guys. Have a nice visit to Montreal ;)

"Urgence" is French for "Emergency," so as someone with some knowledge of French, as soon as I heard that, I realized that the system had suffered some kind of catastrophic technical failure that kept it from functioning at all.

I live in Laval, north of Montreal, and I discovered your channel because I was browsing for content on the REM. Your review is super super fun to watch! (and makes me pround of our new transit system) I'm subscribed and I can't wait for next year for your review of REM part 2 with the 18 new stations!!

This video was so fun it had me smiling the whole way through!!!

The fact that this opened before line 5 in Toronto is really saying something

Man Jeremey makes the videos so good, him and Miles do so well building off each other and are so knowledgable on transit/trains as a whole. Keep up the great work!

Man, if I'd had to deal with that stoppage I'd be Losing My Religion. Thankfully they fixed it to make lots of Shiny Happy People. But if the communication isn't there then Everybody Hurts.

I had never heard the phrase “kiss and ride” before thank you for teaching me a some new vocab! And thanks for the awesome video too, special shout out to your translators and the snail 🐌

hell yeah, glad you got to ride it boss man, another great video! Hope you got to enjoy the rest of the city as well, I got blasted walking down Catherine St and it made me realize how much I now want to learn French and move to montreal

I love how stoked you all are. ❤

Great Video! It’s so funny and on par with North American transit for the REM to be shuttled on the first day, but despite that hiccup and the horrible wayfinding at Gare Centrale, i have high hopes for this system and think similar projects would benefit countless cities. Hopefully I get to ride the REM soon since it’s the second automated transit system opened in North America in about a month. REM is amazing, except when it isn’t!

Just found your channel recently and its so nice to get to see north american transit in a less formal and more direct way, as a european i try to visit cities in the continent and their transit but can't really do that there. Also you sound really honest with regards to criticisms and pros and cons for the stations. Fun video overall

Damm we need a part 2 in 2024😂🔥

This from Miles in Transit and Company Man's Wawa, why they're successful. What a wonderful Wednesday it is.

I suspected the South entrance at Gare Centrale would be kind of modest but I was not expecting full-on stealth mode!

If i were an engineer I wouldn't open my métro line without you testing it first. The points you made for accessibility and bike parking were incredible insightful.

I think my favourite part is them having a sign on the bridge with "Bienvenue aux usagers du REM". My vivid imagination wishes the bottom half were "Tant pis pour le train" (Too bad, no train). LOL ! I think I really like how airy and clean the stations look. Really cool !

Nice review and video! That was wild that you got bustituted on the first day of revenue service. I agree that REM's communication about the issue could have been better. I'll have to get up there at some point to ride the system (maybe when they open the next set of stations).

and i wanted to ride during the weekend. you had to be there, the lines were insane 😂 (glad to know DIX30 is near a REM station)

It kind of has an airport train vibe.

I'm not gonna visit Montreal again for at least a year (I should probably make the journey once more sections open next year) and this is the review I've been waiting for because I actually have a really good idea now of how the REM is integrated into the fabric of the RESO around Centrale and Bonaventure, plus the ToD off-island looks great... I'm also terrified of entering the backrooms if I ever go there but that's beside the point

Great video.

The cackle at the mcdonalds poutine ad lol, i didnt even think about it but of course fast food places wouldnt have poutine outside canada

YESSS I haven’t had the chance to try the REM yet, but I’m SO excited to try it! Will probably go soon 😄😄😄

I've ridden the public transport in a few cities around the world, and having lived in Boston and gone to school in Montreal, I especially enjoyed your reviews of the GLX in the former and now the REM in the latter. Your videos manage to be both informative and fun, with a lot of practical information combined with sharp insight into what does and does not work. I get the impression that following you guys around on one of your video shoots would be a scream. As another commenter remarked, I think every transit system would do well to hire you fellows to ride their systems and deliver an evaluation. You could establish a consultancy! As for the REM, it's obvious there are some glitches to be resolved, and wayfinding definitely needs to improve. But as you said, it's still better than what you find in most North American cities. I'm looking forward to riding it and I hope you will return to Montreal to review the remaining portions of the network when they open. I'm especially interested in what the underground portion will look like and what will be the deepest station in Canada at Édouard Montpetit. You do a great job, good luck to you guys!👍

Just here to appreciate the 50th Anniversary of BART shirt

2:15 - missed opportunity for a Van Halen acapella deviation EDIT NEVERMIND 13:10

after seeing this video,, i hope you come to Ottawa when line 2 of our LRT opens (whenever that may be)!!!

G’day from Sydney! Where your sister line is, and there’s another in London Crossrail, and somewhere in Spain and Kuala Lumpur’s Putrajaya Line. It’s freaky how similar these systems are, like a Springfield-Shelbeyville feeling. Even your skyways look the same - and from the sounds of it, you’ll have a few weeks of teething problems. It’ll be fine soon.

Oh wow did not expect a station review this soon, what a pleasant surprise! I rode it free exhibition weekend (apparently that doesn't count :p) and the hype was so huge they literally hit max capacity in 3 hours. I love that you guys found a liminal dimension under Gare Centrale. Thats so eerie I gotta find where that is now. Also the mic didn't do it justice but underneath île des-soeurs station is LOUD. Think its the metal siding shaking as the trains go over. Gotta either be tightened or removed.

Saint-Cum Logo.. I died🤣🤣🤣🤣

I need to run to Montréal again

If you liked those stations your going to love the next ones

Jordan wherever you are - you are acknowledged

the liminal space you stumbled upon reminds me of the concourse under center city philly 😂 where you can walk from 8th to 18th st completely underground in the spookiest and most confusing network of tunnels

What an incredible performance of a Chicago highway median station.

22:11 Ooo, just like in the Baltimore MetroSubwayLink!

another miles video week saved

Funny fact: the announcements on the REM are recorded by the daughter of the voice actress who recorded the annoucements on the Montreal Metro. So telling you which station is next is a family business on Montreal's rapid transit!

Video idea Miles: I know you already did Cleveland, but the Waterfront line is back after two years out of service on September 10th. The irony is you weren't able to do the Blue or Green lines last time you were here, and they will again be on shuttle buses when the Waterfront line reopens.

I love the REM. I love the majestic riff that plays when the doors open and close. I love the foamer windows. I love the view of the Montréal skyline from the train. I love how spacious, clean, and well-lit the stations are. More cities should be building systems like the REM instead of street-running LRTs. I guess my only nitpick is that I wish they did announcements in English and French. I know it's Quebec and everything, but transit agencies in other parts of Canada are doing announcements in both languages now; I think the REM should too. Overall, the REM is a fantastic system that other cities can (and should) learn from.

3:15 DAM RM TRANSIT MAKING THE CAMEO AHAHAH

Bro I was in Montreal when this was filmed Can’t believe I missed you am sad 😢 If you rode in on a via train on the 29th then I might have saw you

Nice video. I had to rely on my junior high school French when I was there in May

1:00 In most systems, the stated “departure time” almost always refers to the exact second when the brakes release, not when the doors begin to close. So naturally the doors will begin to close several seconds early, because it's probably not a good idea to release the brakes before the doors are safely shut. Vancouver's Skytrain appears to be an exception, because in Vancouver, it appears that the departure time is when the doors _begin to_ close. AFAIK, the behaviour with the REM is the more standard one. French and Japanese rail and metro systems all share the same behaviour, more specifically, with the Paris metro and the Japanese rail system, and Japan in particular even has public-facing information explicitly stating this.

YOUR THE BEST TRANSIT KZfaqR

Kilometers in Transit BACK AT IT WIDDA banger!!

The current iteratio of the bridge was not built with dedicated bus lanes since it was designed with central deck for transit (eother buses or trains). Early on, it was decided it woudl be rail, so the buses have been running without bus lanes for a few years since traffic switched from old to new bridge. The old bridge had a makeshift dedicated bus lane made with orance coes and switched morning and night. But when that bridge started to need a lot fo duct tape and steel beams to hold it together, the bus lane coudln't be done because they had to keep traffic from edges of bridge.

That train is exactly the same as in Sydney except for the Sydney metro trains are walk through 6 car units. Whats strange is the connecting buses are peak only! In Australia such bus connections are 7 days a week all day.

Jeremy with his sound effects lol 😂

2:49 Narrator Voice: “Little did they know…”

guys what a fun video of a ride on a new train. makes me want to travel all the way to Montreal just to take a ride on it! Very much like the Sydney Metro driverless train. Only thing I don't like is yes fare gates but it is not too bad and connecting carriages- I mean what happens if there is an accident in the carriage you are in - you can't run to the next carriage you have to try and back track in the other direction if possible. Why are the trains especially the front shaped so strangely? Are they snow shovels?

Was wondering if you would see or mention Reece!

That's cool

It is a nice high quality light rail system, I just wish seats were not made of plastic and i would like a slightly different seat layout. It is still amazing!

Hey Miles, while you’re in Canada, please come to Ottawa and roast OC transpo

I've been meaning to mention how serious a nuisance the shad flies (may flies) are around the river...for instance, their abundance is so much at the weeks-long peak that they're blown into your ear holes nearly as much as stuffed way up into your nostrils, cycling there along the seaway path right by the mid-crossing foot underneath the new Champlain bridge --- hence spiders everywhere that confound window washers

5:43 that is so cool! A waste basket! best part of the station not gonna lie

I’m just wondering in what cases does it make more sense to have an automated train versus one controlled by an operator.

Montreal just casually building the best subway stations in North America while I have to avoid slipping on grease at Downtown Crossing.

Watching on the REM right now

When the system broke down, how long did it take to get shuttle buses going?

I'm hoping that in the current station rebuilds the CTA is doing on the blue line, they also figure out how to do enclosed median highway stations, but at the same time its the CTA :/

So if a subway runs above the ground instead of under the ground, is it called a domway?

Will the bus interchange be within the fare gates? It probably could be given that they have fare integration in Montreal now.

Also 20:34 “this is some port authority crap” LMAO

Miles I love your content despite a severe lack of public transport in north Texas where I live. I would like your words to stay on the screen a bit longer. I have to pause to read.

Thank the lord for the guy that put stickers for the rem because i find that the way from bonaventure metro station is AWFUL, otherwise a really great system that is very useful (for me atleast) Great video Miles ! Loved it !

aww reece cameo!

I was at île des sœurs i think like a half hour or hour after you guys 💀

Rule one of Montreal: there will be jingles/chimes/whatever you call 3 musical notes accompanying a door opening

Classic Foamer Hysteria

Looks like this will be an impressive metro system.

That train system looks like an airport tram.

That's the same as Atlanta AirTran but with a few more seats.

I’m not surprised at all about the shutdown Monday morning 😂. It was bound to happen, something always goes wrong on the first day. I visited Tuesday and had no issues on my trips. My video is finally dropping tonight.

5:25 you can hear The Joker laughing😅

The robot train decided to not work.....good job robots!

What does REM stand for in this context?

Hell, even the CTA does better communication than what the REM did 💀

Imagine if the shuttle bus had dots