Problems on Montreal REM light-rail line on first day of operation

The new Réseau express métropolitain (REM) between Montreal and the South Shore officially entered service at 5:30 a.m. on Monday.

The first morning of the official entry into service of the new Metropolitan Express Network (REM) was not easy; a service interruption forced officials to deploy buses to provide a link between Montreal and Brossard.

At around 8 a.m. Monday morning, the REM began to experience problems. The network's X (formerly Twitter) account first announced a slowdown in service, which eventually became an outage.

Buses have been used to allow users to cross the bridge.

Eventually, service returned to normal shortly before 9:30 a.m.

On Saturday and Sunday, tens of thousands of people used the new light rail system, which was open to the public free of charge.

Since Monday morning, five REM stations have been open on the segment between Central Station in downtown Montreal and Brossard station on the South Shore.

Bus transport over the Samuel-de-Champlain bridge has been halted, but several routes on the South Shore were redesigned so that buses converge on the REM stations.