Well that was an exceptionnal situation. I take the orange line everyday, it's every 150-180 seconds at 8:30. But anyway, my point is that they are increasing the frequency. The orange line will be at every 120 seconds at rush hours once all Azur trains are received.

...but all new buses have A/C. About the waiting times in the metro, it's now every 5 minutes or better until 10pm now on weekdays. And the STM is planning to have the same frequency on weekends too, starting later in 2018.

I think you might be on to something there. My impression is that the Montreal metro is less "downtown centric" : the montreal metro better connects the popular neighbourhoods . So many people use the metro to go to the Plateau (Métro Mont-Royal, think west Queen st West), to Jean-Talon...

The orange line IS every 2 1/2 minutes at rush hour, and once all Azur trains are received (by the end of 2018), the plan is to bring this interval down to every 2 minutes.

Actually, it does not, unfortunately. Gare du Palais isn't going to be connected to the LRT / tramway de Québec.

I'd say the "nativist" wing is a very small minority of the Quebec sovereignty/nationalist movement. They generally don't really care where your family comes from or about your ethnic background, as long as you can speak French. If you do, you're "part of the gang".

Line 3 never made it past the planning stages, in the early 1960's. The City of Montreal paid the whole bill for the initial construction of the metro - strictly on its territory. This hypothetical line 3 would have required a financial contribution from Ville Mont-Royal and Ville...

The $8B figure is only speculation, it has not been confirmed by the Caisse. They are still having discussions with the consortiums to "optimize" their submissions and reduce costs. So we don't know if it is going to end up costing more than $6B in the end.

Same with the Saint-Jérôme line : it wasn't a commuter train, but a long distance train which ran all the way to Mont-Laurier, and only twice per day in the best years if I remember correctly.

That's mostly true in the West Island, where about 15% of Montreal's island population live. Elsewhere on the island, it works mostly on a grid system on arterials like in Toronto, with frequent service. Apparently the routes will be reorganized in the West Island once the REM is in service...

The REM isn't theoretical, the Caisse (CDPQ) has 400 professionals working on the project right now, and Champlain bridge and autoroute 15 are being re-built taking the REM's presence into consideration. This project will get done. The pînk line is a fantasy at this point, though.

Mmm... Sorry to be a little bit off topic, but actually, Montreal is south of Paris, not the opposite. Montreal is at the same lattitude as Bordeaux : 45°30′N, while Paris is at 48°52′0″N. So if Montreal was pretending to be some sort of Paris - which it is not - it would be the "Paris of...