Index of stations by architectural features

Understanding the functional architecture of metro stations

Overview

Metro stations throughout the world have certain basic components that are dictated by their function: an entrance and exit at street level; a place where passengers enter the paid area of the station by paying and validating their fare (unless the system is free of charge); platforms at the intersection between the station and the tracks, where passengers board and alight from trains; and vertical circulation facilities to connect these different areas together. But there can be a great deal of variation in how all these components are arranged. This index classifies Montreal’s metro stations according to a variety of different architectural characteristics.

One basic characteristic of a station is how many levels these functions are distributed among. While other metros incorporate surface-level and elevated stations, all stations in the Montreal metro are underground, and range from two to six levels. A two-level station is shallow and combines several functions on a single level: typically, besides the entrances, the ground floor contains the ticket hall, which also serves as the crossover, or the space where passenger flow separates to reach the different platforms. A more typical and deeper station will divide these functions between three or four levels. More levels are usually dictated by a station’s role as a transfer station (requiring more than one platform level), or by constraints such as great depth. Where a station has more than one access, the different accesses might have different numbers of functional levels even though they converge on the same platforms.

For more on the architectural terms used below, see the Glossary.

Entrances

In Montreal, most metro stations have their street-level entrances in headhouses, i.e. separate buildings, whether small or large. Several other stations have their entrances integrated into the ground floor of a larger building such as an office tower. Due to the climate, only two have the open-air entrances that are commonplace in other cities.

Many stations have had their accesses modified since being opened. In particular, in the initial network, many stations were built with temporary headhouses, with the goal of leasing the stations’ air rights to promoters who would demolish the headhouse and replace it with a new building — often a high-rise — with the station’s access integrated into the building’s ground floor. Some of these temporary headhouses were never built upon, and during a renovation program in the late 1990s, most of them were demolished and replaced with more permanent headhouses. Other stations have had new headhouses or other accesses added, and a very few accesses have been permanently closed.

Some stations have other surface facilities in or adjacent to their accesses, chiefly for transferring to buses or other surface transport. Bus terminals can include large, purpose-built complexes (for serving STM buses, metropolitan buses, or both); a looping driveway reserved for buses; or simply multiple bus stops on the streets lining the city block that the station entrance occupies. A few stations have purpose-built driveways, called kiss-and-ride facilities, where cars can park briefly away from the street, to drop off passengers.

Transferring to and from buses or cars is technically intermodal transfer, but the term intermodal station usually refers to stations with transfer to other forms of rail transit, i.e. commuter trains or the REM.

Underground city links

In Montreal, many metro stations have indoor connections with surrounding buildings as part of the underground city network. Since the links can be underground, at ground level, or overhead, they can more accurately be called “interior city” links, but the term “underground city” is most common. Underground city links most often connect to stations at the ticket hall level, but can connect at any level.

Access blocks

An access block is a separate vertical axis connecting one or more street-level accesses, a ticket hall, and a crossover providing access to both (or all) platforms. The notion is partially physical and partly functional. The prototypical example of an access block is a physical, vertical excavation between the surface and the trainroom. However, for example, even though McGill has numerous entrances, it can be thought of as having only one access block from a functional point of view, since a fare-free area within the station connects all the gatelines and all the accesses, so that any set of turnstiles will give access to any entrance (though one may have to walk farther).

Most stations only have one access block even if they have multiple accesses, but some have more than one — most commonly, though not always, with a separate access block at each end of the station’s trainroom.

Ticket halls and gatelines

A ticket hall is an area that contains one of the station’s principal gatelines, that is, a row of turnstiles or fare gates. Gatelines lead into or out of the fare-paid zone, i.e. the portion of the station that one must pay a fare in order to access. Validating one’s ticket or pass serves to unlock the turnstile or fare gate and allow entry.

A ticket hall can be at any level of a station, but is most commonly at an intermediate level between street level and the platforms. For this reason, it is often called a mezzanine, although this site reserves that term for ticket halls located on true architectural mezzanines (an intermediate floor in a larger volume).

Some stations have multiple gatelines; the list mostly, but not entirely, overlaps with the list of stations with multiple access blocks. Besides the main gatelines in a station’s ticket hall or halls (usually long, with multiple turnstiles and fare gates and a ticket booth), a station can have smaller, separate gatelines for various reasons. In particular, an elevator may have a separate gateline due to structural constraints. A few stations also have exit-only gatelines.

In cases where a small bank of turnstiles is separated from another but is close by and leads into the same area, this is counted here as a single gateline.

Crossovers

A crossover is a passageway that permits access to both (or all) of a station’s platforms, passing over the obstruction presented by the tracks. The most prototypical crossover takes the form of a bridge across the tracks, connecting a stairway or ticket hall on one side of the tracks to the platform on the other side. However, often a ticket hall is located just above the tracks, with stairways to both platforms, and this serves as a crossover also.

In Montreal, most crossovers are built in such a way that passengers can see the platforms below. This reduces the sense of disorientation and claustrophobia that can be caused by a warren of tunnels. For this purpose, a crossover bridge can be located in a transept, that is, a main volume or transverse excavation above part of the trainroom, wider than the crossover and allowing passengers to see the platforms below; or a ticket hall leading to both platforms can be positioned like a balcony overlooking the trainroom.

Stairs and escalators

Not only underground stations, but all grade-separated rail stations, need vertical circulation facilities of some kind to take passengers from street level to the platforms while passing over (or under) the tracks. As in any other building, the most common and basic form this takes is the conventional fixed staircase. However, escalators are widely used, especially to cover some longer vertical distances. Most escalators are paired with stairs, but some flights have escalators only.

Since the distance between platforms and crossovers is usually short, the last link to the platforms is usually by stairs only; however, some stations have escalators here, either because the distance is unusually long, because much traffic is expected (chiefly at transfer stations), or as a sign of prestige in some downtown stations that were intended as showcases.

Elevators

In addition to making the system more accessible for people who use wheelchairs, elevators also benefit others with limited mobility, as well as users such as parents with strollers, people carrying luggage or other heavy items, and people with bicycles. However, before the Laval extension in 2007, none of the stations had elevators, because ableist social attitudes meant that the integration, autonomy, and mobility of people with disabilities were not considered important.

By 2007, attitudes and norms had changed, and the new stations were built with elevators from the start. Subsequently, over time, existing stations were retrofitted to install elevators. This work started with the orange line, since the Laval stations are on that line; it later spread to the other lines, particularly at stations where elevators could be relatively easily installed.

As of 2026, 31 of the network’s 68 stations (45.6%) are equipped with elevators. (One of them, Jean-Drapeau, remains wheelchair-inaccessible because no other stations on the yellow line have elevators; elevators are currently under construction to reach the yellow line at Berri-UQAM). And like the Laval metro, the blue line extension to Anjou will also be fully equipped with elevators.

Because retrofitting existing stations is an expensive and difficult task in busy underground facilities whose unique geometry and layout often pose challenges, elevators have been installed in a variety of configurations, sometimes making them confusing to use. Some elevators bypass the station’s existing gatelines and therefore have independent fare gates (for these, see Gatelines, above); other stations rely on elevators in outside buildings for access. Often, station structures such as headhouses and ticket halls have had to be expanded and reconfigured to accommodate elevators; sometimes, the station is considerably modified with an entire new headhouse or access shaft added. More recent projects have accompanied elevators with new auxiliary staircases alongside them.

Unfortunately, in 2025, the Quebec government cut funding for the installation of new elevators in existing stations, halting progress in making the whole network accessible.

Trainroom and platforms

The platforms are the spaces alongside the tracks where passengers wait for, board, and alight from trains, which stop alongside them. The trainroom is the long, linear portion of the station that contains the platforms and tracks.

Most stations in Montreal have a trainroom that was mined or built in tunnel; that is, it was excavated horizontally along the metro tunnel, and intersects with one or more vertical access blocks. These vertical shafts, for their part, are usually dug in open cut or cut-and-cover, that is, as a large pit reaching down to tunnel level, in which facilities are built and which is then covered over. This typically creates a large volume over part of the trainroom, called the main volume, which often contains the ticket hall and crossover. The arrangement with a mined trainroom intersecting with an open-cut main volume is the most common configuration in Montreal, chosen because the larger volume makes room for simpler, more open spaces that improve orientation, shorten passengers’ route through the station, and often allow sunlight to enter, but does not have to be dug along the whole length of the trainroom, reducing disruption at the surface.

In some cases, though, especially for deeper stations, the vertical access was dug in such a way that the intersection with the trainroom was excavated entirely underground, with the access shaft excavated either diagonally or, rarely, in an open cut alongside the trainroom.

In still other cases, especially where the station is shallow, the whole length of the trainroom may be excavated in an open cut. These stations can be distinguished because the whole trainroom is rectangular in section, rather than having an arch-shaped ceiling (a vault).

The great majority of Montreal metro stations share a consistent platform layout: lateral or side platforms, i.e. platforms on either side of a central pair of tracks, each platform serving a different direction. A few have stacked platforms, that is, a layout where the two platforms are installed within the width of a single metro tunnel by stacking one on top of the other, with the rails diverging vertically to meet them; these are found at three of the city’s four transfer stations, and at two other stations for geological reasons.

(Other configurations found in other cities include island platforms, where the rails diverge horizontally to pass on either side of a single platform in the middle, serving both directions; and the so-called Spanish solution, which combines both side and island platforms to allow trains to open their doors on both sides, speeding loading and unloading.)

As a result of this consistency, train doors nearly always open on the right, to the point that the vocal announcements at the rare exceptions advise you that the doors will open not on the left, but “de l’autre côté” (on the other side).

The platforms are standardized to the length of a nine-car train: 152.4 metres (500 feet). Even on the blue line, where six-car trains are currently used, the platforms are built to the full length and closed with simple movable barriers, which will facilitate changing over to nine-car trains as is planned with the Anjou extension. The only exception is Saint-Michel station, where the platforms are only completed to the length of a six-car train; fortunately, the rough structure was excavated and built to the full length, requiring less complicated retrofitting.

Because of this consistency in length, trains at nearly all stations stop exactly alongside each other. The few exceptions, most on the blue line, are noted below.

Most recent update: 2026-08-28