Montreal metro: No plans for platform screen doors despite pleas from coroners [Video]

Warning: This story contains details about suicide.

Montreal’s transit authority said it has no immediate plans to implement platform screen doors on the metro despite repeated pleas from Quebec coroners who say the safety barriers can prevent suicides and assurances from the province that the costs to install them would be covered.

The city’s new light rail line, the Réseau express métropolitain (REM), opened to the public in July 2023 and was the first public transit system of its size in North America to install the safety barriers at all of its stations. The automated barriers span the length of the platform and only slide open when the train has arrived and is stopped at the station, preventing people or objects from entering the tracks.

But none of the stations in the city’s much larger metro network have such structures. As recently as last year, a coroner urged the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) to install …