Orange Line (Montreal Metro)

Orange Line / Ligne Orange
standard gauge
Electrification	"Third rail", 750 V DC on the guide bars at either side of the track
Operating speed	25–72.4 km/h (16–45 mph)
Route map Legend Montmorency Garage Montmorency De La Concorde Cartier Rivière des Prairies Laval Montreal Côte-Vertu Saint-Charles Garage Du Collège Henri-Bourassa De La Savane Namur Sauvé Youville Shops Plamondon to Blue Line Crémazie Côte-Sainte- Catherine Jarry Jean-Talon Snowdon Beaubien Villa-Maria Rosemont Vendôme two single tunnels Laurier Place-Saint-Henri Mont-Royal Green Line to Angrignon Sherbrooke Lionel-Groulx Berri-UQAM Berri-UQAM formerly Berri-de-Montigny Duvernay sidings Berri service platform Georges-Vanier Lucien-L'Allier Longueuil Champ-de-Mars Bonaventure Place-d'Armes Bonaventure Square-Victoria–OACI This diagram: view talk edit

The Orange Line (

The Orange Line measures 30 kilometres (19 mi) in length and counts 31 stations. It is the longest subway line in Montreal and the second-longest in Canada after the

On November 3, 1961, Montreal City Council approved an initial Metro network 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) in length.[1] Line 2 (Orange Line) was to run from north of the downtown, from Crémazie station through various residential neighbourhoods to the business district at Place-d'Armes station.^[2]

Work on the Orange Line began on May 23, 1962 on

On October 14, 1966, the section between Henri-Bourassa and Place-d'Armes opened, forming part of the original Metro network.[6] Completion of smaller sections were delayed by several months. On February 6, 1967, the segment from Place-d'Armes to Square-Victoria-OACI opened, followed on February 13, 1967, by Bonaventure.

Prior to the inauguration of the initial network, extensions were proposed in all directions, including the West Island. In its 1967 Urban Plan, entitled "Horizon 2000",^[7] the city of Montreal planned to build a network of almost 100 miles (160 km) by the end of the twentieth century. On February 12, 1971, the council of the Montreal Urban Community authorized the borrowing of C$430 million to extend the Metro. This amount increased to C$665 million in 1973, and to C$1.6 billion in 1975. This expansion plan included the costs of extending the Orange Line westward, a distance of 20.5 kilometres (12.7 mi), adding 16 new stations, as well as the construction of a new garage.^[8] The terminus station, Salaberry, would have been an intermodal station with Bois-Franc commuter rail station.

From the beginning, the plan was to expand the Metro to the northwest, but massive cost overruns on the expansion of the Green Line in preparation for the 1976 Summer Olympics, led to several years of delays, including a moratorium on underground expansions in 1976. To cut costs, three planned stations (Poirier, Bois-Franc, De Salaberry) and a maintenance workshop at the end of the track were eliminated.

In 1979, the Minister of Transport,

The western segment was constructed in the 1980s and was opened in several stages. On April 28, 1980, it was extended from

Laval extension

After a break of more than two decades of expansion, the eastern segment was extended from Henri-Bourassa by three stations into the city of

The Laval extension was inaugurated on April 26, 2007, and it opened to the public on April 28. It was completely financed by the Government of Quebec, which mandated for the former Agence métropolitaine de transport (AMT) (now ARTM) to realize the project. The STM acted as a subcontractor for the AMT and was responsible for the installation of fixed equipment. The project extended the Orange Line by 5.2 kilometres (3.2 mi), 4.9 kilometres (3.0 mi) not including the depot past Montmorency, at a cost of roughly C$143.27 million/km, which is slightly below the average cost for Metro extensions in other major cities. The total cost of the extension was $745 million.^[9] To that amount, $12.4 million was added in 2008 to build a second entrance to Cartier station in Libellules Park, located northeast of the intersection of des Laurentides and Cartier.

Accessibility

When opened in 2007, the stations on the Laval extension were the first accessible stations on the Metro, with elevators and other features for disabled persons.^[10][11]

In the 2010s and 2020s, older stations were

In the medium term, there are plans for the Orange Line to be further extended toward the northwest from Côte-Vertu. The extension would include two new stations: Poirier and Bois-Franc. The latter would create a transportation hub with the existing Bois-Franc station on the Réseau express métropolitain light metro.^[18]

After the extension of the line into Laval, Gilles Vaillancourt, a former mayor of Laval, suggested for a further six stations to be added to the line. Three of them would be in Laval and three in Montreal, which would together turn the Orange Line into a loop.^[19] In 2011, the City of Laval proposed adding eight more stations to the line, including five in Laval, to complete the loop and to serve the Carrefour Laval terminus.^[20]

On 18 June 2019, the Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain approved a report for extending the Orange Line by 6.4 km to the north and east of the current

Maintenance

The Metro trains are stored in the Saint-Charles Garage, north of Henri-Bourassa station, and in the garage at Montmorency station for passenger cars. They are maintained at the Plateau d'Youville, which is located between Crémazie and Sauvé stations. Centre d'attachement Duvernay, which is connected to the Green Line, is used for maintenance of way equipment. The Snowdon tail tracks and connecting track, which is connected to the Blue Line, is also used for maintenance of way equipment.

A new garage was built immediately north of Côte-Vertu station that opened in March 2022, expanding the capacity of the Orange line by 25% and reducing wait time between trains from 2 minutes and 30 seconds to 2 minutes across the entire line.^[22]

Service

Operation hours and frequency

The Orange Line operates between 5:30 a.m. and 12:30 a.m on weekdays and Sunday, and between 5:30 a.m. and 1:00 a.m on Saturday.^[23] Trains arrive at stations every 2 to 7 minutes during peak periods, every 3 to 8 minutes during off peak periods, and every 6 to 11 minutes at weekends.^[23]

Rolling stock

At the line's opening in 1966, MR-63 cars were used on the Orange Line. In the early 1980s, MR-73 cars replaced the older MR-63 cars, which were used again on the Green Line. Introduced in 1976, the MR-73 is the second generation of high-performance Metro cars, identified by rectangular cab headlights, blue and dark orange interiors, 124 kW (166 hp) traction motors that growl while they accelerate out of a station, side vents, and a unique three-note sound signature when the train pulls out of a station.

With the introduction of the newer MPM-10 trains in 2016, the MR-73 trains in service on the line were gradually transferred over to the Green, Yellow, and Blue Lines. On 20 June 2018, a decorated MR-63 train gave a final "farewell tour" of the Orange Line before the model was retired from the entire system the following day. All remaining MR-73 cars operating on the line had been transferred over to the other lines by the end of 2018.

List of stations

Station	Inauguration date	Odonym	Namesake	Transfers/connections	Location
Côte-Vertu	September 3, 1986	Côte-Vertu Boulevard	Notre-Dame-de-la-Vertu (Our Lady of Virtue; 18th century name for the area)	Terminus Côte-Vertu	Saint-Laurent
Du Collège	January 9, 1984	Du Collège Street	cégep )
De La Savane		De la Savane Street	savane (a savanna or Québécois for swamp)		Côte-des-Neiges– Notre-Dame-de-Grâce
Namur		Namur Street	Namur, Belgium
Plamondon	June 29, 1982	Plamondon Avenue	Antoine Plamondon (Québécois painter) Rodolphe Plamondon[24] (Québécois lyric artist)
Côte-Sainte-Catherine	January 4, 1982	Côte-Sainte-Catherine Road	Côte Sainte-Catherine, 18th century name for area of Outremont
Snowdon	September 7, 1981	Snowdon Street, Snowdon neighbourhood	Name of area's former landowner	Blue Line
Villa-Maria		Villa-Maria High School	Latin form of Ville-Marie (former name of Montreal)
Vendôme		De Vendôme Avenue	Likely from the French Dukes of Vendôme	At Vendôme : Candiac line Saint-Jérôme line Vaudreuil-Hudson line
Place-Saint-Henri	April 28, 1980	Place Saint-Henri	A parish church named for Saint Henry II (to commemorate Fr. Henri-Auguste Roux)		Le Sud-Ouest
Lionel-Groulx		Lionel-Groulx Avenue	Fr. Lionel Groulx, Quebec historian	Green Line
Georges-Vanier		Georges-Vanier Boulevard	Georges Vanier, Governor General of Canada
Lucien-L'Allier		Lucien-L'Allier Street	Lucien L'Allier (General Manager of the Transit Commission when the Metro opened)	At Lucien-L'Allier : Candiac line Saint-Jérôme line Vaudreuil-Hudson line Terminus Centre-Ville	Ville-Marie
Bonaventure	February 13, 1967	Place Bonaventure	Bonaventure Station, in turn for former Bonaventure Street St. Bonaventure, Italian cleric	At Montreal Central Station: Mascouche line Mont-Saint-Hilaire line Adirondack Réseau express métropolitain Terminus Centre-Ville
Square-Victoria-OACI	February 7, 1967	Victoria Square; International Civil Aviation Organization	ICAO headquarters
Place-d'Armes	October 14, 1966	Place d'Armes	Historical rallying point for city's defenders
Champ-de-Mars		Champ de Mars Park	Common term for military exercise ground ( Mars , god of war)
Berri-UQAM		Berri Street Université du Québec à Montréal De Montigny Street	Simon Després dit Le Berry and Testard de Montigny	Green Line Yellow Line Gare d'autocars de Montréal
Sherbrooke		Sherbrooke Street	John Coape Sherbrooke (governor-general of British North America)		Le Plateau- Mont-Royal
Mont-Royal		Mount Royal Avenue	Mount Royal
Laurier		Laurier Avenue	Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada
Rosemont		Rosemont Boulevard; Rosemont neighbourhood	Named by developer U.-H. Dandurand for his mother, née Rose Phillips		Rosemont– La Petite-Prairie
Beaubien		Beaubien Street	Prominent landowning family
Jean-Talon		Jean Talon Street	Jean Talon, intendant of New France	Blue Line	Villeray– Saint-Michel– Parc-Extension
Jarry		Jarry Street	Stanislas Blénier dit Jarry père, landowner Honoré-Bernard Bleignier Jarry
Crémazie		Crémazie Boulevard	Octave Crémazie, Quebec poet
Sauvé		Sauvé Street	Name of a landowner	At Sauvé station: Mascouche line	Ahuntisic- Cartierville
Henri-Bourassa		Henri Bourassa Boulevard	Henri Bourassa, Québécois journalist and politician	Terminus Henri-Bourassa
Cartier	April 28, 2007	Cartier Boulevard	Sir George-Étienne Cartier Québécois politician, Father of Confederation	Terminus Cartier	Laval
De La Concorde		De la Concorde Boulevard	Place de la Concorde in Paris	At De La Concorde station: Saint-Jérôme line
Montmorency		Collège Montmorency	Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec and landowner of Île Jésus )	Terminus Montmorency

See also

• Green Line
• Yellow Line
• Blue Line
• Red Line (Line 3)
• List of Montreal Metro stations

References