Jason C. McLean

The Montreal metro system has four lines and each one has a number.  The green line is line one, the orange line is two, yellow is four and blue is five.  Do you see something missing here?  I do and so have many others.

Current Montreal Metro map: hiding the numbers for a reason?

All metro maps used to have the lines numbered, now they don’t.  The numbers haven’t changed, though – just click on the station info for any stop on the official STM website or listen to any service interruption announcement and you’ll know that the same numbering system is in place.  So what is the STM hiding?

Where’s line 3?  What happened to it?  Is there some secret train that only military and government officials are allowed to use?  Is it an escape shuttle for the elites of Montreal in the time of catastrophe?  Does skipping line 3 have something to do with numerology?

For years I have speculated and offered opinion, as have many others around me.  Then, one fateful day a few weeks ago, I was doing research for an article that involved the Montreal transit system and I stumbled upon the truth.

Turns out line 3, or the red line, was planned to have 15 stops beginning at the westernmost part of Cartierville and running east, using the tunnel under Mount Royal.  The plan was scrapped because most of the line would have the trains traveling outside, which would require steel wheels instead of the rubber ones used in the rest of the metro system.  Also, with Expo 67 on the way, the yellow line was seen as more important.

Now, the tracks that would have been line 3 are used by the Deux-Montagnes commuter train service instead.  So there you have it, one of the great mysteries of my life solved through a random Wikipedia search.  Or is it?

Solving this mystery has only brought out three new unanswered questions:

Why don’t they just rename line five as line 3 and stop the mystery right then and there?

If the maps have been changed to eliminate all numbers, why not just change the numbers officially?

There’s a tunnel under Mount Royal?! (apparently there is and it’s construction was instrumental in the formation of TMR, but I digress)

Until these new mysteries are solved, though…